It’s time. I seek simplicity and unity. <\/p>\n
I spent 40+ years with Petro as my surname. I earned two degrees and a professional license with it. So when I got married, I struggled with the question of whether to keep it, hyphenate it, or drop it altogether. I tried hyphenating. What a hassle! Most people ignore the part before the hyphen, or it causes them to stutter. (Grocery clerks are apparently mandated to look at the receipt for your name and then use it when thanking you for shopping there; they mangle it every time.) My doctor’s office doesn’t accommodate hyphens, so all my records were Petroharper, which is just weird. And since I now have a child whose last name is Harper, it’s just an added wrinkle I don’t need. I’m tired of clarifying that my surname is different from my child’s, tired of spelling it, and tired of explaining.<\/p>\n
Besides, when I changed my social security record and driver’s license, there was no hyphenation. Petro legally became my middle name. My driver’s license renewal came to Harper, Kathryn<\/em>. So if they<\/em> think my surname is Harper, I guess it is. <\/p>\n But seriously, I’m going to start 2008 as Kathryn Petro Harper, and since middle names are not that important in this culture, this means I’ll usually be Kathryn P. Harper on most documents, and Kathryn Harper in general. If this is of interest to you, consider yourself notified.<\/p>\n At least I didn’t attempt to change my surname to an unpronounceable symbol, a la The Artist Formerly Known As Prince<\/em> (who apparently learned his lesson and returned to being, simply, Prince). I spared myself ridicule. Whew!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s time. I seek simplicity and unity. I spent 40+ years with Petro as my surname. I earned two degrees and a professional license with it. So when I got married, I struggled with the question of whether to keep it, hyphenate it, or drop it altogether. I tried hyphenating. What a hassle! Most people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-motherhood","category-social-science"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2193"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4524,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2193\/revisions\/4524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}