In two months’ time, I get married. It’s a big occasion for many reasons: I’ll be making a lifelong commitment to the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met, it’s the most expensive thing I’ve ever done, and it will also be the first time that my family have seen me cry in public since an ill-advised midnight screening of Ghostbusters II.
But having just read Jamie Maple’s excellent article for this series about taking his wife’s surname, it occurs to me that it’s significant for another reason: it’s also the day that my surname is Killed.
No, that’s not a stray capitalisation on the “K” of “Killed”. My fiancee’s surname is “Killin”, mine is “Duggins”. After we marry, we’ve decided to put them together to create a new surname: “Killduggins”. As a mark of how much I love my partner, I’ll spend the rest of my life with a surname that sounds like it’s being uttered by a mafia boss whose family I’ve just disrespected.
The main reason for it is feminism. As a pair of self-avowed feminists, we’re keen to try to rethink the way we approach getting married – an institution whose ideas about women are, to put it politely, very much routed in the past.
So the idea of asking the person I love the most in the world to change her surname – a key part of who she is – and start using mine instead? You might as well have asked me to scorch her bum with a hot branding iron, grunt “You mine now, wench” and manacle her to a kitchen sink. For me, that’s what it would feel like.
Obviously this isn’t to say there’s anything wrong with women taking their husband’s surnames. But for me and my fiancee, there’s something about creating our own joint surname that feels perfect. Neither of us is asking the other to subjugate our identity to the other, and it goes one step further than just having a double-barrelled surname. Instead, we’re creating an entirely new, joint identity that draws upon our existing ones. Merging our surnames says: “No-one owns anyone in this relationship – it’s a genuine partnership.”
We’re doing this because we think it’s a genuinely romantic thing to do. But by appending “Kill” to the beginning of my surname we have, admittedly, also had a bit of fun with its exact wording. After all, if you’re going to create a brand new identity to recognise your union, it should probably be one that says something about your personalities – and we’re nothing if not a bit silly. Hopefully, one day, we’ll have tiny Killduggins children who will reinforce the fact that men and women are equal partners in relationships with every utterance of their surname. But they’ll also have people say things to them like: “Killduggins: What is that? Irish?” And they’ll have to sigh: “No, my parents just picked a surname whose wording made them smile.”
To date, I haven’t had a single person ask me if I’ll be sad to lose my surname. In fact, most people tend to think it’s quite sweet – albeit in a deliberately silly way. My partner was briefly worried that my family might not be so cool about it, particularly given the “Kill” adjunct to my surname. But I’m pretty sure they’re fine with it. I mean, if I’m honest, I haven’t even asked them. They’re decent, reasonable people, so I can’t imagine them objecting to the idea of wanting a surname that doesn’t imply ownership of your wife.
Actually, for me, that’s it in a nutshell. Despite what the evidence tells me in terms of the lack of other people I know who are taking a joint surname, I don’t actually think there’s anything particularly unusual about what we’re doing.
As men in a modern world, shouldn’t we be doing things that reflect our values? Shouldn’t we be trying to reshape the past into a future that reflects our identity and the things that matter to us?
All I know for sure is that by creating a joint name for my soon-to-be wife and me, I feel like we’re adding something extra special to our wedding day. I don’t just get to marry the love of my life. I get to create a future that is uniquely, irrefutably ours and ours alone – which is what marriage is really all about.
Do what feels right with Philips: whether that’s creating your own surname or finding a grooming routine that works for you. Find out more at philips.co.uk/dowhatfeelsright
