Saying goodbye to my old last name is weird

So, Lori Frankforter and I finally decided on a last name, the one we’ll be using after the wedding ceremony this Sunday. As I mentioned earlier, we’d considered an amalgam of our two, current surnames (my favorite being “Frankentaylor”), but in the end decided they all sounded too much like something that would rise from the slab in a mad scientist’s castle.

We also looked at the traditional fallback route: using my admittedly boring last name. She actually liked the idea of being “Lori Taylor.” I guess when you’ve gone through life named after a much-maligned meat product, anything seems an improvement.

I’ve never been happy with my own last name. For one thing, it’s my adopted name. My “biological” name remains forever shrouded in mystery, which is my way of saying I couldn’t get my mom to talk about it and now she’s passed and with her the opportunity to discover my true origin. (I assume it has something to do with being rocketed to Earth from my native planet, Krypton – something like that.)

Also, Taylor just doesn’t fit with the rest of my name, which was visited upon me by my Irish grandparents: Michael Patrick Kevin … Taylor? See, it just doesn’t fit.  Should be O’Malley or Shaughnessy or Sweeney.

I figured, since Lori and I were getting hitched anyway and name-changing would be happening as a matter of course, now was the time to take the plunge. Now or never. We opted for now.

Turns out it’s harder than you may imagine to pick a new last name for yourself. After six decades as Michael Taylor, everything else sounds … weird. After weeks of discussion – in large part “mostly in jest” names like “Papageorgiou” and “Fizzlebottom III” – we had all but given up.

Nothing felt right.

Then my lifelong buddy, Terry Cavanaugh, whom I’ve known since ninth grade, left a Facebook post suggesting “Guinness.” Why? Because, for the past 20 years I’ve been making music every weekend with The Guinness Brothers Band.

Now, other than the fictional character I “play” onstage, there never really was a brother in that band named Guinness.

I named the band after the beer on a whim because I couldn’t think of anything better and our first gig was coming up fast. I needed a name for the then-fledgling group and figured Guinness Brothers would do in a pinch. The name stuck. And against all odds in a business rife with musical mortality, the band has managed to hold together all these years.

At any rate, Lori Frankforter saw Terry’s post and decided she liked it. I have to admit, I do, too. Michael Patrick Kevin Guinness. I can live with that. And, as I mentioned earlier, for Miss Hot Dog, anything’s an improvement.

We’ve already filed the paperwork at the county clerk’s office. After saying our “I do’s” Sunday afternoon, we’ll be Lori and Mike Guinness.

Yeah, yeah, it’s kind of a silly thing to do, but what the hell. You only live once. Or maybe twice. I’m not here to argue theology.

Naturally, there’s a truckload of paperwork to be done following the ceremony; trips to the Social Security and Secretary of State’s offices. Probably a lot of red tape beyond that even. Nothing’s easy once the Feds get involved.

But I know my Lori. She will persevere and cut through that red tape like a hot knife through butter. I’ll sign where she tells me.

I just hope we’re not making a mistake here. I mean, we could have gone with “Fizzlebottom III”.