I have been thinking about this for some time now. A little mishap which is following a trend of happily ever after fall outs. Divorce is a pretty common thing these days, those once strong vows exchanged just don’t hold the weight they used to. If you are happily married then congrats to you, it is not an easy accomplishment. But for the many who do follow this trend of divorce (myself included), how many women do not change back to their maiden names?

That question, that one ponder, brings a lot of things to the front of my mind. Ones’ last name is a verbal tell of who you are. It is your ancestral link, a clue to where your from and which family you come from. But when a woman so chooses to not change her surname back, we now have an person who has successfully masked their past and hidden a large part of who they are. I as well, am one of those people. I know my answer about why I never went back to my maiden name. I kept my married name, even though the choice was free on the divorce paperwork, I wanted to keep the same last name as my son. A choice I don’t regret but it doesn’t feel like my last name, even when I see it written down, it sometimes looks foreign. But I guess after changing a name you’ve had for the past twenty-some odd years that is bound to happen.

Now as I was thinking about how many people (e’hem, women) are walking around with false identities to their pasts’, it stretched, how many of these women then remained unwed and went on to have a child or children. Now you have kids walking around with absolutely no tie to their last name worth more than mom’s failed marriage. Continuing this cycle down generations and now the task of finding genealogy or building a family tree becomes close to impossible. No, pretty much, it does become impossible. Hey sorry, that big nose of yours? Your great great grandmother was actually Jewish not Irish, just never changed her name back.