In the name of love

In October 2008, racing against California’s gay marriage ban, Chloe and Frankie Frankeny wed legally in San Francisco with one chore already done: Chloe had taken her wife’s name two years before.

“It was the only way we had to fit into a mainstream role that was understandable to anybody,” says Chloe, managing editor of a fashion website.

“When I told my father I was taking Frankie’s name he was sort of blown away because I definitely consider myself a feminist.”

For the Frankenys, the name switch couldn’t magically grant all the marriage benefits denied same-sex couples, but it was one more way to express their union.

It’s a symbol rendered even stronger now that legal gay marriages are on hold in California, and for partners who’ve never had the option.

Logistically, a name-change for gay couples isn’t always as simple as trotting out a marriage certificate, the proof most required in heterosexual marriage.

Emotionally, the journey is about love, commitment – and a way to ease anxiety over being misunderstood as non-relatives in emergencies or considered less-than as parents.

Kirsten Palladino, who runs the online gay wedding ’zine Equally Wed, took her partner Maria’s surname last year without benefit of a state-sanctioned union in Georgia.

She’s seeing more couples go to court for name changes, settling on hyphenation or one partner’s surname over the other.

“We have grown stronger and are speaking out for ourselves in this way,” says Kirsten, 32. “There’s nothing stopping us from taking each other’s names, even if we can’t get a marriage certificate.”

She became a Palladino after running a newspaper announcement of her intentions once a week for four weeks and appearing before a judge, just as people going through a formal name change for reasons other than marriage must do.

“I was nervous,” she says. “I didn’t know how the judge would feel, but he was great. Personally, I had to deal with some identity issues after, but becoming a family unit with my wife trumped anything else for me.”

College sweethearts Kathryn and Heather Kraft of Newton, Mass., just celebrated 12 years together and have a new baby.

They had a church wedding five years ago in white gowns with 10 bridesmaids after obtaining a marriage license under their state’s gay marriage law.

Whose name did they choose? Kraft over Heather’s Cole “because we’re very close to my family and wanted to add to that family in a noticeable way,” Kathryn explains.

They had considered combining names into a new one that “represented both of our ancestry, but in the end we’re very traditional people,” she says.

Cole is now a middle name for the entire family, including baby Esther.

Making the switch with a legal marriage certificate was no trouble for Heather, until she tried to get a U.S. passport ahead of a trip to Europe.

“We were shocked when Heather’s application was denied,” says Kathryn, a 32-year-old family therapist. “The passport office would not recognize our marriage certificate as proof and insisted that she had to go in front of a judge to have a court-ordered name change.”

After six months, Heather was issued a “known as” passport identifying her by both names.

“It’s a small thing that isn’t noticeable when you look at her passport, but the process was long and an unnecessary reminder that things aren’t exactly equal,” Kathryn says.

Jason and Anthony Cline committed to each other in 2001 during a hotel ceremony in their native Indiana, where gay marriage is outlawed.

They thought about heading to a state where their union would be legal but decided not to bother, knowing they’d return home to suburban Indianapolis without that recognition.

Jason, 33, legally changed his name, going through a newspaper notification process and enduring questions from a judge, like Palladino did.

“The process seemed cold but it helped prove our relationship to our friends and family that maybe weren’t as advanced in their thinking on the topic,” he says. “It helped solidify our relationship to the people that we knew and to the world.”

Chloe Frankeny sees other practical outcomes to changing her name, including proof of family status in case of a medical crisis.

“With the same last name we could say we were sisters,” she says. “We’ve all heard stories of partners kept apart in emergency rooms. That was a precaution we wanted to take.”

Some 80 to 95 percent of heterosexual couples marrying for the first time legally adjust their names, research shows.

Marni Kahn, a doctoral candidate in sociology in Atlanta, took partner Casey Brown’s last name after a marriage ceremony that blended their Jewish and Southern Baptist roots.

“It really did tie things up nicely,” says Casey, a marketing analyst.

Los Angeles actor/writer Marcos Mateo Ochoa, 29, chose to hyphenate instead. He goes by Cermak-Ochoa after marrying partner Frank Cermak on Oct. 4, 2008 – a union legally recognized in California with 18,000 other same-sex marriages there before voters approved Proposition 8 and ended the practice.

He plans to make the name switch legal once the court case is resolved.

“We want to identify ourselves as being united, but with California being so flip-floppy on this, it’s just a matter of when we go about the process,” Marcos says.

“Is this going to be another obstacle, another hurdle for us to go through?”