Shanna Katz Kattari, a 34-year-old professor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work, and her husband, a trans man, combined their names Katz and Pittari to create their last name. “We wanted to have a shared last name but didn’t want either of us to feel like we were giving our name up,” she said. “Plus, it felt like a way to queer a really heteronormative institution.”
Society isn’t always set up to accommodate these kinds of name changes. Ashley Stull Meyers, a 31-year-old arts administrator in Portland, Ore., who combined her maiden name Stull and her husband’s name Meyers, was told when she renewed her driver’s license that she couldn’t have a two-part last name without a hyphen.
“Some administrative people just don’t seem to be able to wrap their minds around it, while others insist their computer systems or government forms won’t allow it,” Ms. Stull Meyers said. Samantha Bellinger, an event planner in North Hero, Vt., has found that the women she works with can usually change their last names with just their wedding certificates, whereas men sometimes have to appear in court.
Laws around name changing vary from state to state and can get quite technical. Maxine Seya, a 26-year-old journalist in Newport Beach, Calif., and her husband were unable to create the name they originally wanted, Sera, because of a California law that allows couples to take “a name combining into a single last name all or a segment of the current last name or the last name of either spouse given at birth.” Their original idea combined her name Yang and his name Cser, but “ser” and “a” weren’t considered segments of each name, defined as two or more letters.
Tracy Brisson, a wedding officiant in Savannah, Ga., said grooms she works with have been allowed to take their brides’ last names in Georgia, but one had to petition the court to do so in Ohio. Georgia presents its own obstacles, though: It only allows one spouse in a marriage to take on a hyphenated name.
Name changes also may present challenges for those looking to keep their lineages traceable, though Ms. Christensen said this isn’t as much of an issue as one might think. “Most name changes are public record and well documented,” she said. “If your name change requires a court order, in most cases, the public can access the court filings online.”