Another quiet day here today. All I had in my pictures folder was this reminder that we have volunteer grapevines (with tight clusters of unripe grapes) in the driveway. It reminded me of Nicole living on a vineyard and I amused myself by wondering what we might name our "vineyard". (Because, as I don't know much about wine, clever names and fun labels are the most important part of the wine business for me.)
I think it would have to be something with "Doggie" in it. I mean, that was the main contender when we changed our family name 17 years ago... Doggie Tales? Domaine d' Doggie? Woof Woof Winery?
(As it turned out, when we finally changed our name, we knit together one of my family names and part of Big A's. I love that he changed his name as well, and always think about how he had to petition the courts and pay a fee to do that--our current patriarchal system is not set up for men to change their names when they get married.)
Pic: One of our volunteer grapevines. I don't know how the vineyards further north do it, because our grapes aren't at all ripe by the time Fall rolls around...
4 comments:
When Beth and I had our commitment ceremony (in '92) we considered changing our last name to Haus because we each had a surname in our family tree (her mother's maiden name, my grandmother's maiden name) that ended in "haus." But we kept our last names.
The kids have hyphenated last names (mine and hers) and we considered changing our last names to that one when we got legally married (in '13) so we'd all four have the same last name, but we didn't do it. The funny thing is a lot of people seem to think we did because we often get personal mail addressed to Beth L-A or Steph L-A. We do sometimes refer to the whole family that way, and we have return address labels with the hyphenated last name (no first names) we use when something is from all of us (like a Christmas card).
Nice.
R and I have different last names, and it has never once occurred to me to change to a third last name. I really like my last name and R really likes his - he was super close to his paternal grandpa, and the last name is quite distinct. So a third never even occurred to me! The boys have his last name, but my last name is their second middle name. I occasionally hyphenated when the boys were in elementary school to cut down on any confusion.
The vineyard we live on, R's grandpa worked to own it in the 1930s. It's called Pioneer Vineyards.
Steph--I adore your last name! TBH, I thought it was a name you'd picked until I saw your sister's name :). "Haus," given your connections to it, would have been nice too, but not as distinctive as L-A. How did you choose the order for the kids' names? I mean--why L-A and not A-L? (In our case, D-L, D was shorter so it went before the L. L-D didn't sound right. Was it a sound test for you too?)
Gillian--Thanks!
Nicole--Love how specific to each person all the names in your family are... but they're all still flexible and connected.
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