Throughout my life I’ve legally changed my name, twice. Not to evade the law or because I’m trying to hide, but because I never felt that my birth name made me fit in.
Growing up, I was born Kylie Sharpe and knew straight away that I was different from the rest of my family. My mother remarried when I was nine years old, and I was gifted three sisters. But they had a different name than I did.
I don’t remember my biological father when I was growing up. The first time I remember meeting him, I was 12 years old and he was a stranger.
In 2010, I was away on scholarship, finishing my masters degree in a foreign country, when I got a Facebook message from him. It was a “required” invitation to his wedding to a girl not much older than I was. I felt it was time to tell him to break away.
I wrote that I wished him all the happiness in his marriage and that if he had more children, he would have learned and would be a better father to them. I told him that he wasn’t my father: my father was the one who was there my whole life—who raised me.
My message was not received well. But in the end, he made a point that propelled me to change my name for the first time: “You should just get married so you can change your name.”
At the time, marriage was far from my mind. But the thought of changing my name was an immediate one.
I messaged my mum to ask my dad’s permission to change my name to the family name I had grown up with. So, legally, as a 24-year-old, I changed my name to Kylie Campbell.
It actually felt like I belonged to my family, although I would spend most of my adult life on the other side of the world.
So I spent the next few years having a name that matched my family’s. But, forever my birth certificate would have my biological father’s name and my original surname because I had changed it as an adult. My school degrees, my records (all in my previous name) would constantly remind me that I was never born a Campbell.
Then I met Ryan Clarke.
Who knew that meeting a guy on Tinder in a remote, northern, tiny town would result in marriage! But after seven months, I asked him to marry me.
While Covid happened and we kept rescheduling our wedding, we discussed name changes.
Typically, women change their last names. Seventy per cent of women in the U.S. change their name; while in the U.K. it’s a whopping 90 per cent.
For me, that didn’t quite fit. I felt I had just changed my name to belong to my family; I didn’t want to just be a Clarke. So I talked with my future husband: “I want us to have the same name. I want our kids to have our name so that they always know where they came from …”
He didn’t even flinch and said, “Let’s both change our names.”
I was shocked. I figured he’d be a guy like other guys I had seen, throughout history, who typically wanted sons to carry on their names. But, no, he understood; and so, when we married, we both changed our names. I’m now and forever, Kylie Campbell-Clarke—belonging to the Campbell-Clarke family forever.
What’s in a name? Everything!
Check this out: bbc.com/worklife/article/20200921-why-do-women-still-change-their-names
