It's only a hyphen

It wasn’t until I got married and decided to hyphenate my last name that I realized what fear a simple piece of punctuation instills in people.

Changing your name, whether it's due to marriage, divorce, adoption, or parents who wanted you to get beat up, is hard enough as it is. And yet I decided to make it even harder.

Little did I know that somehow I was the very first person on earth to ever choose to hyphenate. I mean clearly, if anyone else had done it before, maybe people would know how to deal with it, right?

Apparently not. So to Jada Pinkett-Smith, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, and Carol Moseley-Braun: I know your pain.

My bank started things off by telling me to pick just one last name. Then, a certain credit card company made life particularly difficult for me. “We don’t have hyphens,” the representative told me over the phone. “Okay, but um, that’s my name,” I responded. “Sorry. Nothing we can do,” he said.

Somehow people with other pieces of punctuation in their name don't face the same challenges. No one gets a puzzled look when they hear a last name like O'Malley. It hardly seems fair.

Every time I go to pick up a prescription at the pharmacy I have to ready myself for the inevitable confusion. I start out by saying “My last name is B-S. The first name is Alisa.” Then I get a befuddled look from the pharmacy technician. “It’s hyphenated,” I explain. Then they ask “Okay, so what’s it under.” I didn’t realize I’m supposed to be familiar with the store’s filing system. This has been going on for over two and a half years.

Now I’m fine with getting cards addressed to me as just Alisa B. or Alisa S., even though neither is technically correct. Heck, sometimes I use one or the other if the situation suites me. It’s the variations that get to me. Please don't mash both last names together. That just looks silly.

I read in the Sun a few months ago that Stephanie Rawlings Blake, president of the Baltimore City Council, got fed up with people calling her Stephanie Rawlings or Stephanie Blake and decided to hyphenate. I hope it works for her.

When it comes to me, I'm not changing anything. Both last names are all mine, like it or not. And hey, as long as the people who handle my paycheck get it right, I'll be just fine.