My Name Story

I was telling someone this story and they loved it, so I thought I’d share - because I do love the story.

Around ten years ago I got divorced, and after the dust had settled (well, before if I’m honest) I realised and decided I wanted to change my name. It was a fairly amicable divorce, but it happened because he cheated on me, and I did not want to keep his name. Plus, it always reminded me of his mother :-)

When I thought more, I also realised that I did not want to revert to my maiden name either. At this stage of my life I was becoming even more left/socialist and definitely embracing feminism and I did not want to have any name given to me by any man. No matter how much I loved my dad.

There was nothing acceptable in my family tree, well, there was but my mother put her foot down and I wasn’t attached to it enough to rock that boat. She thought it was a ridiculous idea to change my name as it was.

So, as you do when you want to choose a new name, you start to think of book characters or names of favourite TV/movie characters. And I am a bit of a geek so one of my top 3 was Summers - as in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I felt it was a good name, it reflected the fact I’m a summer baby, and it made my initials SAS. Either threatening or sassy depending on my opinion of you. So Summers I became. It was fairly easy to change by Deed Poll, the challenges were getting everyone to change my name on official documents - gas and electric companies seemed to be the worst.

I’m really glad I changed my name, I am very happy with it, and I feel it suits me more than either of my other names did.