My husband and I combined our last names when we got married — it started as a joke, but then it just made sense

• Marcy Donnelly and Chris Buerger, 50 and 52, combined their last names when they wed in 2000.
• The couple applied to the courts after deciding to call themselves Mr. and Mrs. Donnager.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Marcy Donnager. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I met my husband, Chris, when we both worked at SeaWorld in San Diego. I had a permanent position in the education department, and he was part-time.

We got talking at the beginning of 1996 when we were supervising a sleepover for scouts in the shark exhibit. We had to stay awake all night and just clicked.

Nevertheless, we only started dating at the end of the year after Chris left SeaWorld and moved to San Francisco to start a career in financial services.

We began a long-distance relationship. We were at least a two-hour drive apart, so we mostly saw each other on the weekends.

Then, in 1998, we split the difference and shared a home in Orange County. We got engaged at Christmas.

The idea of combining our last names came to us on a trip to Las Vegas. We said how fake everything was in the city. We met people our age who said they were venture capitalists and had flown in by private jet.

It started as a joke, then we realized it made sense

None of it seemed real, so we made up names for ourselves. I was Sasha, and Chris was Chip. But our adopted names didn't suit our last names, Donnelly and Buerger.

"We're going to introduce ourselves as Chip and Sasha Donnager," we laughed. Buergdonn sounded too weird. We ended up telling tall tales all night with other people who were telling tall tales.

It started as a joke. Then, we realized it made sense to take a syllable from each of our last names and create a new one. I was traditional in other ways, but I didn't want to be known as Mrs. Buerger for the rest of my life. I consider myself a feminist, but that didn't play into it at all.

We told our parents. They didn't think it was a good idea. They were concerned that it was some sort of fad and that we would regret it later. They didn't care about our choice of name but thought the whole thing was strange.

"Nobody else does this," they said.

Our wedding took place on May 6, 2000. We didn't want to freak out our parents, so when we were declared husband and wife, the person who married us called us "Chris and Marcy" — without a last name.

Then, once we had our marriage certificate, we used it in the court proceeding to legally change our names to Donnager. If anybody objected, we had to place a $40 ad in the local newspaper — a so-called "fictitious name statement."

Our name change is a non-issue for us now

After paying the $80 fee and completing many forms, we appeared in front of a judge in court. It was a group hearing with a bunch of other people changing their names. But we were the only ones who were doing it because of marriage.

Afterward, we had to line up at the Social Security office to get new Social Security numbers. We went to the DMV and some banks with our name change decree. The employees were shocked and asked ridiculous questions about things that were none of their business.

People have asked about our name change over the years, but it's a non-issue for us now. "When you get married, you combine everything — your home, your finances, and eventually your genes," we say. "Why wouldn't you combine your last names?"

Our sons, Aidan, 20, and Austin, 17, love the decision. They think what we did was cool. I remember Austin being in kindergarten and having a little crush on a girl whose last name was Green.

"Mom, if we get married, we're going to be the Greenagers," he said.

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