A Note About the Name

A few people have asked me what this whole "Hamsder" nonsense is about.

When Emile and I got married, we couldn't figure out what to do about our last names... neither of us was very happy with the traditional approach. We seriously considered both changing our name to Mary's maiden name which has disappeared due to modern naming traditions, but somehow that felt a little odd and forced. Our next brilliant idea was to combine our names into some uber-cool new name that we could both adopt. After coming up with many combinations, the highlights of which were "Snydilton" and "Hamsder," we gave up on that approach and kept our own damn names.

We thought we would figure out something brilliant by the time the kids came along.

Not so much.

When I was pregnant with Larkin (we didn't find out sex before the kids were born) we decided we would dole out last names according to the baby's sex. Again, there were decisions to be made. Do we do the obvious thing and name girls Hamilton and boys Snyder, or the opposite since that would really just be delaying the problems inherent in patriarchal naming lineages? We decided on the former because the whole thing was already plenty confused.

Think that was the end of it? Oh, no...

So what about baby #2? Does the last name of the first baby dictate the last name of all subsequent babies? Should the second baby get the unused last name in the interest of fairness? Would it be weird to have two kids with different last names and the same parents? Well, yes, but that was what ended up happening. We decided to stick with the sex-based last names and toss the other last name in as a middle name (just to keep it exciting).

We ended up with Larkin Marie Snyder Hamilton and Finn Victor Hamilton Snyder. I expect we will be hearing some complaints in the future when they realize the enormity of what we've laid on them. Obviously, there will be no protests from us if they choose their own name modifications in the future.

Hamsder remains our favorite name that isn't. We use it as a convenient way to refer to all four of us, but we were not so unkind as to make it official for the kids.