Dear Prudence: My family won't use my changed name

[cereta]

Q. My family won’t stop addressing me by my old name: I absolutely hated my name growing up. It was in the top 10 names the year I was born, so I was one of many girls with that name in my grade. It didn’t suit me at all. It was picked out by my mother, who abandoned me when I was a toddler, because it was a derivative of her name. I legally changed it almost immediately after my 18th birthday.

It’s been over a decade, and most of my family members still refer to me by my former name, and even address mail and public Facebook posts with it. They often complain that it’s just “too hard” to switch but have no problem using my recently married cousins’ new last names. Some insist they are trying, while others will only use my name in a loud, sarcastic tone. Recently, my aunt called my work for a family emergency requesting me by my old name, and when they couldn’t figure out who she was referring to, they made an announcement over the intercom. This lead to a lot of uncomfortable conversations with my boss and co-workers about why I changed my name, why I chose this one, how my parents feel about it, etc. One co-worker now jokingly calls me by my birth name.

I’m not transgender, so I don’t feel I have a right to claim this is traumatic, but it feels horrible and invasive. I’ve had a lot of conversations with my family, but they do not take it seriously. Since that incident, I have been in the mindset to stop talking to them entirely until they can address me properly, but they’re likely to make me feel guilty for it. What do I do?

A: This is sheer perversity. They’ve already demonstrated they’re perfectly capable of remembering someone’s new name if they approve of the reasons for choosing one (like a woman taking a man’s name upon marriage). You’ve dealt for over a decade with a group of people who have communicated to you, in public and in private, “You don’t have a right to change your name unless we agree with your reasons for making the change. What you want is ridiculous and cumbersome, we will never try in good faith to call you by the name you’ve had for 10 years now, and will whenever possible draw attention to how ridiculous we find you.” There’s no need to feel like you don’t have a right to feel distressed about this simply because you’re not transgender—this is a real and serious problem for you.

Since you’ve already tried repeatedly to convince them to no avail, I think you should follow your instinct and take a pause on speaking to them until or unless they’re willing to knock off this unkind name game. Of course they’ll probably try to guilt you into talking to them again, but since they’re already trying to make you feel guilty now, I think it’s worth doing. “I’ve tried explaining this to you. I’ve tried asking you. I’ve seen you call others by their new married names absolutely seamlessly. What I’m asking for isn’t difficult or burdensome. You don’t even have to like my name, I’m only asking that you offer me the basic courtesy of using it. If you can’t, then there’s no basis on which we can have a conversation. Please let me know when and if you’re willing to stop fighting me on this, because I’m not going to have another argument with you about the subject.”

Comments

[mommy]

The family emergency part is what tipped this over the line from obnoxious to absurd for me. If you're calling someone at work because of an emergency, then you use the name that will get that person on the line in the shortest possible time. LW's aunt created a delay that otherwise wouldn't have existed, and she did it in a way that could easily have resulted in LW's employer hanging up after stating that they had no employees by that name.