The Sometime Blogger Formerly Known As…

Ryan Noonan

Ryan Noonan is an economist with a small federal agency. Fields in which he considers himself reasonably well-informed: literature, college athletics, video games, food and beverage, the Supreme Court. Fields in which he considers himself an expert: none. He can be found on the Twitter or reached by email.

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67 Responses

  1. Patrick Cahalan says:

    You can email the photo to me and I’ll get it up after 5 if nobody else does.Report

  2. Nob Akimoto says:

    Ryan married Peggy Noonan?Report

  3. Burt Likko says:

    Mazel tov! Will Mrs. Noonan be joining us in Las Vegas?

    I will be very interested in learning about the experience of changing your last name. My wife took my name and more than seven years later the process is still incomplete. So your experience, coming in a somewhat less common form, promises to be interesting indeed.Report

    • Patrick Cahalan in reply to Burt Likko says:

      I know a couple wherein both changed their name to an amalgam of their previous names.  I know several where they both retained their original last name.

      They’re all a pain in the ass, as near as I can tell.Report

    • Ryan Noonan in reply to Burt Likko says:

      Unlikely we’ll be seeing her. We are both fairly sad about this.Report

    • Will Truman in reply to Burt Likko says:

      I have a male friend who changed his last name for personal reasons (I think he had a falling out with his family). He married, and his wife took his chosen name. I hadn’t been aware that he’d changed his name until I got an invitation to his wedding.

      My wife intended to hyphenate, and swears she is going to one of these days, but all of the licensure issues with medicine make it a more daunting task than usual.

      My preference was that she takes my name, at least socially if not professionally or legally. Outside of that, I don’t really have a preference as far as hyphenation versus keeping her birth name. Truthfully, having different last names is less of a big deal than I had expected it to be.

      The reasoning behind my preference mostly has to do with basic conformity. I do understand the issue of norms. The tradition I would prefer conform to is that each party keeps their name, daughters take their mother’s name, sons take their father’s, and household names are hyphenated. But those aren’t the norms we have.Report

  4. Tod Kelly says:

    Welcome back, Mr. Noonan!  Many, many congratulations!

    And thanks for the shout out.  Same goes back to you.Report

  5. Jaybird says:

    It’s wonderful to be married.

    Maintain a sense of humor.

    Be sure to have married someone who can maintain a sense of humor.

    Good luck!

     Report

  6. Kazzy says:

    Congrats!

    My wife was supposed to take my name, which is long, spelled incorrectly, pronounced incorrectlyer, and just a general mess. We’ve been married 8.5 months now and she still has her short, phonetic name.Report

  7. Miss Mary says:

    My (now ex) husband took my last name when we married 4 years ago. It confused the people at the local social security office, but it was a breeze mostly. We got a few looks when he listed his former name as his “maiden” name on paperwork.Report

  8. North says:

    Many congrats! Missing Vegas continues to be an increasingly bitter cup.Report

  9. Plinko says:

    Congrats, Ryan!

    My wife kept her last name, hyphenation has all the problems Will mentioned above, but it’s been a hassle. I don’t know how much of it is just the state of Georgia but we have to pull out the marriage certificate a lot more often than I think we should because people ( most importantly, state officials) want proof that two people with different last names are married. You guys will avoid that problem, at least!Report

    • Will Truman in reply to Plinko says:

      I expected more in the way of social conflicts (particularly because we live in Deep Red America), but really most of the problems we’ve had have been as you described: entities not believing we’re married or not making common privacy exceptions on the basis that we’re married. For instance, I complained about a particular credit card that wouldn’t let me make a payment on my wife’s account and was told by someone (with a shared last name) that they did that sort of thing all the time. Nobody has flinched or rolled their eyes or done anything rude about it (like insisting on calling her by my name or vice-versa), though, which I was lead to believe would happen.

       Report

      • Tod Kelly in reply to Will Truman says:

        When we bought our first house the month after we got back from our honeymoon, our job duties meant that my wife did most of the daytime legwork, and I did the sitting and hearing what she had learned at night.  So when it came time to fill out all of the various mortgage paperwork, she filled out the first slots of personal information and i filled out the second.

        When we moved in, we started getting all of this junk mail for new home buyers, and it was obvious that our mortgage company had sold our info and that we were automatically assumed a gender by our order of info.  SO she got all kinds of catalogues for power tools and garage-stuff, and I got the stuff for drapes, dish ware and vacuum cleaners.Report

  10. James Hanley says:

    Damn fine looking couple.  Congrats.Report

  11. Mike Dwyer says:

    “I have taken the unorthodox step of taking my wife’s name instead of vice versa.”

    These are the moments that I realize I am not quite ready for modern culture. But nevermind that, congrats! Marrying my wife was the smartest decision of my life and after 7+ years I hope you will feel the same way. The best ones make us better men.Report

    • Ryan Noonan in reply to Mike Dwyer says:

      Even better? My best man was a woman. (Although technically we didn’t have a bridal party, she spoke during the ceremony and gave the traditional best man toast during dinner.)Report

      • Mr. Blue in reply to Ryan Noonan says:

        I don’t plan on changing my name unless my future wife has an awesome one, but unless something changes between now and when I get married I plan on having a Best Woman, my flatmate. I’ve asked if I could call her a Best Broad, but she said no. Not that I’m going to be getting married any time soon. Traveling 25 weeks of the year tends to put a damper on relationships.

         Report

      • Patrick Cahalan in reply to Ryan Noonan says:

        Eh, the best man as a woman thing doesn’t raise eyebrows any more in California.Report

  12. Ian M. says:

    I hope you love marriage as much as I do.Report

  13. David Ryan says:

    Congrats!Report

  14. Kyle Cupp says:

    Congratulations, Mr. Noonan!Report

  15. Erik Kain says:

    Congratulations, Ryan! Hope you make it to Vegas. Bonneville was a pretty cool name, though. For my wife and I we both opted to just keep our own names since neither of us particularly cared to give them up.Report

  16. Christopher Carr says:

    Probably a mundane question, but how does that all work out legally? Is our system built to accommodate male surname changes?Report

    • Not ideally, but there is a process for men to change their names. As I mention above, a friend of mine did without getting married. Another friend changed his name when he changed from a him to a her.Report

    • Jason Kuznicki in reply to Christopher Carr says:

      When we got married in Canada, we were both given the option to change our names, as (I understood) all couples were offered.

      We both declined, as we both were already thinking of our professional reputations.  And search engine optimization, too: “Jason Kuznicki” isn’t quite unique, but it’s close enough.Report

    • Sure. It turns out the major thing you have to do is get a new Social Security card. The SSA doesn’t particularly care – as far as I know – which direction the name change goes, as long as you can present a recent marriage license with both names on it. Once you have a Social Security card, you can get a new driver’s license, and then you have the two most important pieces of ID it’s possible to have.Report

  17. Scott says:

    Such liberal sensibilities are so cute.  My mother the liberated woman wanted to hyphenate her name. She did and it was a disaster. She got mail in her maiden name, married hyphenated name and in my father’s name.  I told my fiance that she was joining my tribe and taking my name.Report

  18. Ryan Noonan says:

    In case anyone is curious, I got a Social Security card issued in my new name today. It took 5 minutes and almost no effort.Report

    • But I also got mail addressed to Ryan Bonneville, so it probably wasn’t worth it.Report

    • Mike Dwyer in reply to Ryan Noonan says:

      While I totally respect people ‘s various naming choices I have to admit that I didnt really feel like I was officially married until my wife’s name change came through. I still love hearing my last name on her voicemail at work.

      I will also say that my daughter having my last name even though her mother and i were never marriws made school docs about 100 times easier to navigate.Report

  19. Murali says:

    Wow I totally missed this. I was wondering why Ryan had changed his surname and I stumbled upon this. Anyway belated congratulations!Report