What's in a name?

I legally changed my name yesterday, for the second time in my life. It's not only a major pain in the ass dealing with social security, the DMV, insurance (car, medical, dental), and all the bills I have under my name (phone, electric, water, car loan, credit card ...) but it's also very stressful deciding on what the new name will be. Okay, so I guess obviously part of the new name is Jeff's last name, but what do I do with my maiden name? And what about my middle names? I agonized over this for a few months before striking proverbial gold and settling on a name the night before last.

The primary issue is that my parents gave me two middle names which makes my given name fairly long: Anna Mary Kathleen Lofgren. If you try and ad a hyphenated last name in there (which I did with my first marriage - Anna Mary Kathleen Lofgren Berry) you get something that is so ridiculously long that even the staff at the DMV do a double-take (and let's be honest, they see a lot of names from all sorts of backgrounds and with no offense intended, foreign names can get crazy long by Western standards and I think I had them all beat). Plus, when I did the double last name before I was intending to just go by one for day to day things (Berry).  I never ever wanted to be addressed as "Mrs. Lofgren Berry" and yet it happened all the time and people would stumble over the letters like they were just learning to read. Pharmacists would file my prescriptions under Lofgren half the time, Berry the other half, doctors would file me under the opposite of what I called myself and it was always a huge pain in the ass.

So you may be wondering why I don't just drop Lofgren and make life easy? If you are asking that you must not know me that well because I think most people would say I don't tend to do things the easy way. I like to do things the Anna way. It's a little wild, a little crazy, definitely unconventional and often illogical, but it works for me. Or I make it work for me and get frustrated with anyone or anything that stands in my way or questions my methods.

At any rate, Jeff was intent on my taking his name, and I liked the idea of the three of us sharing a common last name so I acquiesced. Thorner would be my last name. I refused to consider a hyphen after living with the annoyance it caused for too many years already. I didn't want to drop my middle names as they were given to honor important women in our family and it seemed disrespectful. I couldn't fit Anna Mary Kathleen Lofgren Thorner in the little spaces provided in the name change form from social security ... I was stuck in a quagmire. And then, as I said, I struck gold, sitting on the couch with Jeff bemoaning my quandary.

I filled in the form and headed out the door for my date with Destiny at the social security office (actually I forget her name but she was a real hard-ass). And now ladies and gentlemen, for the big unveil!! If you take a look at my ID you'll see a unique name that met all my criteria and fits into the provided spaces on legal forms:

Anna M.K. Lofgren Thorner.

Mrs. Thorner for short. Or hell, just call me Anna, it will be less confusing that way.