Two items in this one I wanted to note.  The first is from John Walsh, a column about his former sister-in-law Jo.  When Jo divorced Walsh’s brother, she wanted to drop the name Walsh, but did not want to go back to her maiden name.  So she sat down with her teenaged sons and thought up a new name.  What she settled on was “Jo Sohneronne,” pronounced “Jo’s on her own.”  When Jo went to get new ID forms, each clerk she approached told her she’d have to change her name legally before they could issue her identification.  When she asked to see the regulation that said she could not put the name “Jo Sohneronne” on her bank account, Social Security card, or driver’s license without a court order, the clerks were unable to produce any such regulation.  So, she made the change successfully. 

I wish I’d read Walsh’s piece several months ago.  When Mrs Acilius and I got married this spring, she was excited about adding my last name to her name.  She was going to keep the three names her parents gave her, but use my last name as her new last name and her old middle and last names as two middle names.  So, if her given name had been Michelle LaVaughan Robinson, she would have become  Michelle LaVaughan Robinson Acilius, and would have signed herself Michelle L. R. Acilius.  The clerk at the Social Security office told her she couldn’t do that.  She could hyphenate, the clerk said, but she couldn’t  have two middle names.  Why not, asked the missus.  “A lot of brides weren’t using their names the way they were supposed to,” the clerk replied.  Mrs Acilius asked me what she should do.  I said what I always say, which is that I don’t tell her what to do.  She decided to keep her middle name and drop her maiden name.  That satisfied the clerk, but Mrs Acilius has been regretting it bitterly ever since. 

The second item was from the 26 July edition of Chuck Shepherd’s “News of the Weird.”

Until Mayor Sharon McShurley changed the protocol this year, fire stations in Muncie, Ind., had been delivering reports to department headquarters downtown by dropping them off in fire engines. McShurley ordered the department to learn how to send reports by e-mail. [Star Press (Muncie), 6-25-09]

I called someone I know who lives in Muncie, Indiana and mentioned this item to him.  He was not only unsurprised that his hometown featured something called “News of the Weird,” but was surprised that a digest under that title could appear week after week and mention Muncie only occasionally.   The town has come up since then; the digest for the week of 2 August reported on a Muncie brawler who started his fights by stealing his opponent’s false teeth out of their mouths.