During a certain period of my life, the realizations that I could not marry this person came at me so often that I took to ignoring them. Among them was the time my fiancé seemed shocked that I wouldn’t be taking his name upon wedding him the following fall. Why on earth, I asked him, would I do anything of the sort? I had been a professional writer for about ten years at that point. I had amassed hundreds of bylines as “Jennifer Armstrong.” Not that I was some massively famous writer — most of those bylines were in local newspapers like The Daily Pilot and The Daily Southtown, or in the home décor trade magazines I’d spent a particularly odd year editing, Residential Lighting and Accessory Merchandising.

But by this point I was also an editorial assistant at Entertainment Weekly, a national magazine, and I had written several feature stories there. I had no intention of disappearing into his identity and starting anew as a journalist so that no one who had ever known me in my previous 30 years on earth would think, upon encountering my byline on an article about Jessica Simpson, “Hmm, I wonder if that’s the Jennifer Armstrong I knew in college …” or whatever. I wanted that moment, even if I’d never know about it. Plus Facebook was happening, so it was only a matter of time before I more often than not did know about it.

And so it was that “changing my name” went on our list of unresolved issues along with “having babies soon” and “moving farther into New Jersey” and, for that matter, “committing to each other for life.” Those issues were eventually resolved by the cancellation of our wedding and my move to a studio apartment in New York’s East Village.

But my attachment to my name went beyond my lack of desire to commit to this one man, or to any man, at that time. I had, perhaps, put more thought into my name than I had into my mate, in a way. I’d gone along with my college sweetheart onto the marriage track with no resistance, figuring this was just what people did. I followed him to Southern California after college with nary a shrug.

I did, however, take the time to agonize over my name: As I began my journalism career, I made a commitment. I would no longer be Jenny Armstrong, as I was in childhood. I would not be Jen Armstrong, as I was in college. I would be Jennifer Armstrong. This was my best shot at retaining my identity but becoming a new, grownup version of the Jenny we once knew.

Clearly I hadn’t paid as much attention to my relationship, even though I stayed in it for another eight years past graduation. Once I left my engagement, I finally grew into the Jennifer Armstrong I’d hoped to be: independent, dating, making like-minded literary friends, concentrating on my career.

I swore, for entirely different reasons now, that I would never, ever change my name. It was a good name! A strong name. My name. The name with which I earned enough money to pay for my own apartment and furnish it alone. I completely agreed with all the reasons Jill Filipovic gave for sticking with her (admittedly difficult) given name in a recent Guardian piece that reignited the age-old debate. In fact, I still do agree, to a certain extent: There’s still nothing feminist about 90 percent of married women taking their husbands’ names. But I’ve recently stumbled upon the joy of being able to change the identity you present to the public, a “joy” that patriarchy all but forces on married women and denies all men.

Why would I ever want to change my strong, simple, Anglo name?

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