I forever changed my identity a couple weeks ago. I was at the town clerk’s office, applying for a marriage license. As we filled out the paperwork, I kept changing my mind. In the end, it came down to whether or not I thought we would last. I decided to go for it. I didn’t just change my status to Married—and have to update my Friendster profile—I also took my husband’s name. I am now Hanna Ingber Win.

I faced no pressure to change my name. My husband said he would not mind if I remained Hanna Ingber. In Burma, where he is from, the wife usually keeps her own name.

I was also not following a big tradition in my family. If anything, I was breaking from the norm. My mom kept her maiden name and raised me to be a strong feminist. She pushed me to work hard and speak confidently, not to worry about having a date every Saturday night.

The men in my family have also always encouraged me to think more about my education and job opportunities than about settling down. When I first got engaged, my step-dad responded, “But what about your career?”

I want to have it all, I explained. Like most of my female friends, I want to one day rise to the top in my profession and also have a couple cute children. Who will leave work early to take the kid to the doctor’s appointment? We haven’t figured that out yet. For now, I am focusing on becoming a team with my husband: a shared home, a shared name. To me, it is more important that we split the household chores than that he take my name too.

It helps that I am still relatively young and just embarking on my career. In journalism especially, name recognition is important. If I were getting married at age 35, I doubt I would change my byline.

My sister is getting married this summer and keeping her name. When I told her a couple months ago that I was considering the big transformation, she said: “What? We’re no longer going to be the Ingber Girls?” Jeez, I thought. That’s depressing! I didn’t want to let go, to completely break away from my family, my childhood, my identity for the last 25 years. Hanna Ingber was the 12-year-old animal rights activist, the teenage advocate for sex education, the columnist in the Argus at Wesleyan University, the young woman who moved to Burma for a year all by herself.

I decided I would keep Ingber. It is who I am. It is me.

But Ingber is not exactly the prettiest or easiest to pronounce of names. Even I sometimes stumble when saying it. I answer to everything from Hanna Ingwer to Hannah Ingerberger.

Win, on the other hand, is rather nice. It also represents my new identity. I am still Hanna Ingber, the former activist and current journalist. But I am now also part of a new Jewish-Burmese family. I am the wife of Aung Moe Win. The future mother of X Win and Y Win (hopefully). I am Hanna Ingber Win. Like Hillary Rodham Clinton, I tell people.

It sounds like a good plan, but problems keep arising. For one, I always forget that’s my name. I have been leaving messages asking people for interviews all week. At first I say, “Hello, this is Hanna Ingber…” By the end of the message, I remember my new identity and say, “Again, it is Hanna—H-A-N-N-A, Ingber—I-N-G-B-E-R, Win—W-I-N.” Maybe that’s why no one calls back – they accurately think this reporter doesn’t know her own name.

I also don’t want to relegate Ingber to a middle name and certainly not to a middle initial. Yet forms don’t seem to comply with the new me. I tried to become a Costco member last Saturday. I remembered my new identity, but couldn’t fit it into the boxes. Instead, I sucked it up and wrote Hanna I. Win. (Which also sounds weird—what am I winning?) But then the sales clerk wanted proof of my alleged identity. Isn’t remembering my new last name good enough? “Fine,” I said, “Just make it Hanna Ingber.” Changing your name loses some of the fun if you can’t even use the new one.

And what about my real middle names? I have two—Catherine and Strauss, the latter is my mom’s maiden name. Where do they fit? Can I have five names? I think that’s asking too much. But those names are part of me, too. Maybe I will keep them legally but leave them off my credit cards.

The final problem—so far—is the postal service. My grandmother promptly asked how to address her letters to my new husband and me. Are we Mr. and Mrs. Aung Moe Win? No, in that my identity seems to go from being strong and vibrant to being Mrs.

So maybe we are Ms. Hanna Ingber Win and Mr. Aung Moe Win. That doesn’t exactly flow smoothly. On the other hand, it keeps us together as one family, but still clearly defined, separate people. If only we can figure out how to split the chores exactly down the middle, we’ll be set.

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Hanna Ingber Win (!) is a staff editor and writer at Pop and Politics. Pushing Off is a column of her dispatches from twentysomething land.