We're in a circle, and nobody's gonna break through

So I've always said that I was going to take my wife's last name when (if) I get married. That was, of course, assuming I didn't marry someone that couldn't wait to drop their last name either (Lilie, Mindy). In that case, my first suggestion was my Mom's father's family name, Festo. The reasoning is very simple - I don't like my father. I certainly acknowledge that he is the donor of half my genetic material, but that's about it. I mean, he wasn't as bad as some - never abused me, always paid his child support, but those are about the only good things I can say. I don't blame any of the bad things in my life on him, but also, give no credit for any of the good things. I'm not very fond of his family in general, so I don't want to pass on the Martin surname. The 'Jr' can go for the same reasons, and Barclay? It's a family name of one of the families in his ancestry, so it can go too. The William is neutral towards either family, and I go by "Billy" anyway, so it can stay.

Anyway, Janelle dropped this bomb on me - she wants to get her name changed as well this summer, also to drop Martin. That really caught me off-guard, but doesn't surprise me that much - she's four years younger than me, so she has even less connection to him than I do. She's been thinking about Schiavello, which is Mom's father's mother's maiden name. I like it too - William Alexander Schiavello sounds really nice, even if it's kinda long and has a lot of syllables. Mom jumped in at this point, saying that if we're both dropping Martin, she's going to as well, since she only kept Martin so we'd all have the same last name. She'll probably take Festo, her father's family name. She mentioned that he might be a little hurt that we jumped back a generation, so it's still under debate what we're taking. We were joking about hyphenating it, like Schiavello-Festo or something like that. Of course, I could get away with using one as my middle name - William Schiavello Festo. So, we'll see how that goes.

Ashlee Simpson -- L.O.V.E.