Hapa Hua-Qiao

I'm often asked about my surname. More often, I'm not asked, but I can sense the confusion it creates.

Some people -- always women, interestingly -- commend me for it. Other folks are apparently less sure, or even incredulous, insisting on calling me by my "maiden name" ("bachelor name"?) even if they've known me only since The Switch.

I'll admit, I sometimes don't quite believe it myself. More than once these seven years, I've accidentally called myself "Mark Van Haren." I suspect it's that I, just like the curious people I meet, never expected my name to change. Most (American) girls assume -- or used to? -- that they'll one day change their name. But for me, Van Haren was never my "maiden name", just my name.

Of course, that thinking changed. Having only my wife change her name didn't feel gender-equitable to us. And as a hua-qiao, my wife didn't want to lose the Chinese-ness of her surname. What to do?

Option 1: Both remain unchanged. But we'd lack a common family name. Would it even feel like we're married? What name would the kids take?

Option 2: Both adopt some brand new name. But what? And that probably doesn't solve the Chinese-ness issue. We'd probably both feel we'd lost something.

In the end, hyphenation seemed the only viable road. In theory, I was good with this. In practice, "Wong-VanHaren" has always been a little difficult to get excited about. "Wong" breaks up the (original) flow of my name, like a middle name I suddenly insisted on always using. And the new moniker got off to a rocky start when, at our wedding, we were pronounced "the new Mr. and Mrs. Wong-VanHaren", and our unwitting assembly of dear friends and family... wait for it... they laughed. Ouch.

Maybe what's weird(est) about it for most people is that the two names are so different. It ain't Smith-Jones or Chang-Wong. I'm a haole guy with a merely hapa-haole name, and I suppose it just looks funny on me, like a kente cloth on an Inuit.

Anyway, just deal with it. :-) I do. Oh, and please try to get it right. It's "Wong-VanHaren," with three -- count 'em, 3 -- uppercase letters and not a single space in the mix.