Hi. My name is Stewart Cork. At least it is at the moment. It’s going to be changing in seven months time. Let me explain to you why.
The short answer is that it’s because I’m going to get it changed by deed poll. The more correct answer is because I’m getting married (yay!) and will be changing my name when I do so.
Myself and my fiancee are quite liberal minded and believe that men and women are created equal, albeit with different dangly bits. Traditionally a woman would take her husband’s name upon marriage. To us, this feels a bit too much like a man is possessing the woman. A woman is giving up her name but the man is giving up nothing. Whilst some elements of our wedding will be traditional, there are others that will not and this is one of them.
It is important for us that we both have the same surname as a symbol of our union and so we have both opted to give up our inherited surnames. We have picked something new because double-barrelling and combing our names in other ways didn’t sound very good.
The surname we have opted for is Anderson. This is my grandmother’s maiden name and it is also a traditional Scottish name. As Jo is half-Scottish, this felt like a nice way to honour both of our ancestries so that it still felt like a link with our pasts in the same way that our current surnames do.
There are other bonuses with this. One is that there is an Anderson tartan which I will be wearing on
our wedding day.
Another is my hope that I will gain the nickname Neo after Keanu Reeves’ Mr Anderson in The Matrix.