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

[cereta]

I must have very low expectations of my family. It never even occurred to me to expect my family to use my chosen name (although in fairness, I didn't start using it offline myself until I was in my early 40's). I can't even get them to stop using the hated short form of my given name my parents assigned me, and almost no one else has called me that since I was 18. That said, other than my mother, I barely interact with my family, and they pretty much have no interaction with the rest of my life.

All that said, LW has made it clear that this is important to her, and for them to ignore her wishes is, as Prudie says, perverse. It's a bit like my sister sending me mail to "HatedNickname Spouse'sLastName," when she knows perfectly well I didn't take his name, and that it aggravates me, only on a scale of about 10x worse. I think Prudie's advice is good. There's not much else that's going to get through them.

[jadelennox]

When I decided to stop going by the diminutive form of my name, I just stopped answering to it for several years. It mostly worked, though I don't know if I'd have been ballsy enough to cause that much friction if I'd been older. My dad always very pointedly used my full name after that. When my sister's kids were little and used the diminutive it was clear the full name was something the family only used when speaking to me, and not when speaking about me, but I was okay with that, honestly. They're the only people I respond to when they use it; everyone else, I honestly think they're talking to someone else.

[james]

I had a very similar experience - I legally changed my name when I was 21 (about 26 years ago now). Mostly none of my relatives have ever used my real name. One step-grandmother does, but she was and always has been an "outsider" to the family.

However, I detached from my family for other reasons, so I almost never have any contact with them. I have managed to get to the point of my parents using my initials - I email them regularly though not often, and I sign with my legal initials and they return in kind. This makes the whole thing easier on them - and I don't care about them enough to push for more.

But the attitude of not using your legal name is basically, they felt like I was a) disrespecting them and b) oh my gosh how can we ever explain this to other people ha ha so we won't do it.

Relatives who don't respect you don't deserve to have you in their lives. Unless you need their support for something, you might end up happier if you just cut them off.

[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.

[neotoma]

I *loathe* the common nickname derived from my name. I give people one frosty warning of "My name is ----, not ******" and if they try using the nickname again, they get a glare and a deliberate, blatant ignoring of them.

I'm of the opinion that the LW should get up and walk away from the conversation when their family uses the old name. It's a boundary, and it needs to be reinforced hard.

[eleanorjane]

I kind of wish Prudie had tackled the side issue of it causing problems at work, too, like some scripts for getting coworker to knock it the fuck off.

[grammarwoman]

I want to buy the LW a beverage of their choice, because I feel like I've been dealing with minor variations on this my whole life.

Like, my dad and brother have the same first name, but my dad has always gone by a popular variant of the name, so trying to figure out whom people wanted when they called on the phone was irritating. I have gone by the short version of my name my whole life, with a snarly reaction to people I don't know well who use the -y form, which results in my correcting people when my best friend introduces me with the -y form.

The most confusing is my in-laws. FIL has gone by his middle name forever, so far as I know; my husband started going by his middle name in high school, almost 30 years ago. Yet the in-laws consistently call him by his first name, which considering we named our kid the same, is a "Who's on first?" situation all around.

NAMES! *argh*

[cereta]

At one point in my college life, pretty much every other guy I knew was named Dave. Two of my closest friends were named Dave, and lived with a third Dave and a Larry. This led to interesting phone conversations like, "Tell her Dave called," "Oh, you are going to have to be much more specific than that," or "I'm sorry Dave; I thought you were Dave."