Life Without A Last Name

Basic Info.

It would be for most people. But this all too familiar sight as I made an account to start this blog was what would inspire the title, Wandering Namelessly, because for almost as long as I can remember, I haven't known what to answer when this question is asked.

Speaking to people I meet through life, it's easier. "I don't have one," I'll shrug, sometimes a brief explanation will be needed but most of the time it's nothing more than a passing peculiarity in their eyes. However, for me, it's always a bitter reminder of that very fact: that I don't have one.

Don't get me wrong, it's not a legal or cultural thing. I live in a culture and a country where surnames are very much the norm, and legally I have two, but they have long since stopped being names and started being weapons that the two sides of my family use against each other.

Until my second or third year of primary school, I had a last name. It was long, Polish, my grandfather would complain that I was pronouncing it wrong and it still took me two tries to spell on occasion, but I had one. But after what I assume was an argument between my parents, by then bitter exes, my mother marched up to the school and put an end to that. The teacher took away my books and gave me new ones with my mother's last name on them, and that, as they say, was that. I wasn't allowed to question it or ask why, and I certainly wasn't allowed to use my name, which was now not my name but my estranged father's name.

It was confusing and hurtful, and at age 7 I began wondering what to answer when someone asked my last name. Should I say the name I knew or the name I was expected to use? It only got worse a year later when my father came (albeit intermittently) back into my life. He made it clear that he was hurt, angry, and that the name I was now living under was not my name. It was my mother's name. It lends itself easily to vulgarity, and he made sure I was aware of that. Plus, her family were evil, he said, so that name was evil too.

So now, I had 2 names on my birth certificate, and neither of them were mine. One was my mother's. One was my father's. Both became a statement of loyalty, both ways to choose one parent over the other, both ways to hurt someone and give someone else a one-up, neither of them were my own identity.

I tried to bring it up to my maternal grandmother once, a short-tempered woman with whom I've always had a strained relationship, one night in my teens when things seemed good. She mentioned my mother's tendency towards irrational behaviour and I took my chance and asked what happened when my name was changed, and she flew into a rage, spending an hour screaming, berating me and disowning me on my deceased grandfather's behalf for disrespecting the last name that had been forced on me as a child. I sat silently and decided to never try to defend my right to use either name again, partly because I couldn't stand the drama, but primarily because I simply didn't want to use any of these people's names, names that would give them the satisfaction of "beating" the other side with not a second thought to the fact that they were my names too.

When I joined Facebook soon after, I put my account in my mother's surname, because that was the one my friends at school knew me by. However, when I tried adding some family members from my father's side of the family, it was soon clear that no-one by that name was welcome on their friends lists or in their lives, and when I changed it to their - my - name, my maternal grandmother once again, for want of a more delicate phrase, lost her shit. I hyphenated them, as they were on my birth certificate, hoping that it would calm the waters, but au contraire, it only caused the insults, sniping and emotional manipulation from both sides to escalate as they demanded the removal of the other's name. It was then that it became clearer than ever that I simply did not have a last name of my own.

I'm now 27, and I still freeze when someone asks me what my last name is. Sometimes it depends what's on the paperwork said person is dealing with; those times are easy although defining myself with either of those names still feels uncomfortable, but other times I have to do a quick analysis of the person and their relationship to me and my family in my head - do they know anyone on either side of my family? Who are they more likely to meet?

If it's safe on those counts, it becomes more personal: who am I more willing to upset? I don't want to upset anyone. Who do I want to choose? I'm not choosing anyone, right? They're my names too. But they're not. They're not- "I don't have one."

Over the years, many people have suggested choosing a whole new last name, but a last name, a family name, to me it signifies belonging. I would find it strange to pick a random name and group myself in with a random family, and picking a name from my own family tree would lead right back to the same issues, so I could never figure out what to change it to. I've struggled with finding a sense of identity throughout my life, and I've recently come to terms with the fact that my lack of a last name and sense of belonging is a huge factor in that.

I suppose you're wondering, then, how this story will end - which name I put into that form above, and what comes next, and I'm pleased to say that there is a happy ending on the horizon. I recently became engaged to my partner, a man with a level head, a loving heart and, as fate would have it, a very Balkan last name that none of the people who took my name from me can pronounce. He told me to put his last name into that form and anything else that requires it - after all it's only a matter of time - and I've never felt more like myself.

My days of wandering namelessly are numbered, and I couldn't be more thrilled.