A while back, I had written apost which briefly touched on the touchy subject

of married women and their names. In this post, I had put forth my view point, namely that I did not mind changing my surname post marriage. One of the interesting comments on that was from a lady, whose view point was a little different from mine.

At the time, I was a quite busy in the real world, so I didn’t really take up the issue immediately. However, in the spirit of better late than never, here’s my rejoinder, as applicable to me –

Before I got married, I used to be known as Monishikha Bhattacharya. Now , I prefer Monishikha Roy-Choudhury as opposed to Monishikha Bhattacharya Roy-Choudhury.

Why? Well, I could say that filling out the name column of forms was hard enough with my maiden name, so I’d rather not complicate matters with my full name ;).

Now, one may ask, why drop the maiden surname and keep the married surname. My answer to that:

Legally , I am Mrs Monishikha Roy-Choudhury nee Bhattacharya ,a fact which I knew and accepted as an adult . In the environment that I live in (i.e.an Air Force campus) ,I do, by virtue of being married to my husband who is an IAF officer, and whether I like it or not , for official purposes, I am Mrs Roy-Choudhury . In the social context, i.e. in ALL my interactions with friends, neighbours and Air Force acquaintances, I don’t use a surname, I am Mini or Monishikha, depending on who I am talking to. Both of these are names given to me by my parents, and I like them enough to use them with pride.

As far as being known as somebody’s wife is concerned, well, for a large part of my life ,I was known as my parent’s daughter to their friends, Mini to mine, and Monishikha to my teachers. When I was living alone , my colleagues knew me as Monishikha Bhattacharya, my friends still knew me as Mini. Post marriage, my husband’s friends as well as mine, know me as Mini, and some of them are in fact , amazed to find out that I have another name too.

So whether you know me as Mini, Monishikha , or Monishikha Roy-Choudhury nee Bhattacharya, I AM an ever-changing sum of many factors, such as my genes, upbringing, values , thoughts, ideas ,interactions with my parents, sibling, spouse , society etc., and the “adoption” or “rejection” of my husband’s surname does not add to or detract from who I am.