My co-worker, originally from India, blushes as he asks, “Do you know what your last name means in Hindi?”
“No,” I answer. Could it be the name of a flower? Or perhaps artistic one? I muse.
“Well,” he replies, staring at his feet, “I don’t know if I should tell you.”
I’m instantly intrigued. Checking if my future last name meant something bizarre in Hindi had not been on my wedding To-Do list.
The initial decision to pick a new surname had been fairly easy. My fiancé, Mats, was open to changing his last name, as was I. His parents, who live in Sweden, had co-created their last name when they got married because they both had common names (think: the Swedish version of Jones or Smith) and wanted something different. So they concocted a name that was meaningful for them: Frännhagen.
Americans had a hard time with this name, pronouncing it as if it were Irish, “Fran-agan,” or otherwise butchering it. The poor grocery clerks who are supposed to say, “Thank you Mr. Frännhagen,” would stare at the name on the receipt and just say, “Uh, thank you.” Even fellow Swedes found the name — which had not existed before his parents’ marriage 30 years prior — a mouthful. I wasn’t exactly jumping at the opportunity to take Frännhagen as my own, knowing it would mean a lifetime of painstakingly spelling it out or correcting people.
Asking my soon-to-be husband to take my last name, Naylor, didn’t feel right either. It was enough that he was living in my country, speaking my language and attending all the holiday celebrations of my family. I wanted a moniker that symbolized our new life together.
We briefly discussed somehow combining our names, but Naylorhagen or Naylor-Frännhagen seemed a cruel curse for our future offspring. That’s when a recently married friend suggested we choose a new name. “You can do that?” I asked.
The abbreviated answer, I would find out, is that anyone in the United States can change their first or last name, as long as it is not an offensive word or for immoral purposes. Wikipedia’s examples of words you can’t change your name to include “God,” “Superman,” “Copyright,” or “Delicious.” Luckily those were not our top picks.
We discussed potential names as we took hikes together. More accurately, I talked and Mats listened. The whole wedding process seemed a bit much to him, but he did his best to be a good sport. We came up with the name “Lund” — the city in Sweden where we had met five years prior.
But was it too short? Should it be Lundberg, or Lundstrom? No, we decided, Lund would be fine. Short, simple and symbolic.
As with most things wedding related, the process of changing our names was not as effortless as we first thought. We found that Sweden has specific rules allowing a husband to take his wife’s name, or vice versa, but does not allow couples to switch to a surname that already exists and is not in either partner’s family lineage. To satisfy those legal requirements, I changed my surname to Lund before the wedding, so that Mats would officially be taking my name upon marriage. I had my first (and hopefully only) time in front of a judge where I was sworn in and confirmed that I indeed wanted to change my name. With the judge’s approval, I became Ms. Lund. A few months later, on our wedding date, we became Mr. and Mrs. Lund.
My husband, a Swedish citizen living in the U.S. on a work visa, went to the San Francisco INS office to update his green card — a tedious, red tape laden process in a post 9/11 world. With some protest and manager intervention, he was able to get the paperwork, but months later it came back denied — they apparently did not let a man change his last name due to marriage. My husband got his own day in court to have his last name officially changed. Finally, in the eyes of Swedish and American law, we were The Lunds.
A year later, I stand in the office kitchen urging my co-worker to tell me what my hard-won new name means in Hindi. Embarrassed, he shifts his weight and answers diplomatically: “It’s a slang term for the male genitalia.” With a few keyword internet searches I learn the truth — my name, Lund, can be officially translated into a handful of colorful Hindi epithets, with the tamest meaning “dick” and the worst a term for maternal copulation.
Fortunately, visits to India are not on our horizon. And if we ever do go there some day, perhaps we’ll use our newfound naming skills to concoct an alias.
Kristy Lund is a freelance writer. Say hello at kristylund.com.