I've always liked my name. Well, maybe not in grade school, when "Jennifer" was the norm, and "Jessica" was exotic. And I got tired of responding to the inevitable "Is it short for anything?" question at the start of every school year ("No, it's just Tori").

I actually got off pretty easily, as I was named for a woman whose real name was Story and whose nickname of Tory caught my mother's ear. Though considering the career path I took, perhaps Story would have been fitting after all.

But all in all-and especially where my last name is concerned-I've had no complaints. In fact, I always said I would know I'd found the man for me when he convinced me to change my name.

To my surprise, however, my otherwise traditional husband really didn't care if I changed my name. Perhaps this was a reverse psychology ploy from a guy who, in fact, has a degree in psychology because the result of his dispassion was that I really wanted to change my name. It came as a shocking development to us both.

But I always stopped short of saying that's what I definitely wanted to do; you see, my husband's last name is a little, well…it's Gum. I love the man dearly, but that was a toughie. I have no idea when being called "Mrs. Gum" isn't going to sound funny. And I don't mean "funny" as in wow-I-have-a-new-name-I'm-not-used-to; I mean "funny" as in rolling-on-the-ground-laughing-at-the-name-until-you-realize-it's-yours.

And as far as I can tell, should the need arise, there's no child's name on earth that sounds really good with Gum except Charlie, which my brother-in-law already figured out and used for his son. A friend who's currently picking out baby names of her own recently told me, in all sincerity, that she would leave "Sticky" and "Wrigley" for me, should I ever need them. Nice, huh?

And then there's the fact that I'm an only child, which means "Phelps" would die with me if I changed my name (of course, I guess it would die with me even if I didn't change my name). While that's never seemed to overly concern my father, it mattered to me.

I didn't bother making a "pros" and "cons" list about the whole name change thing. In my experience, those don't work because you always end up going with the decision you wanted in the first place, despite how the numbers come out. So I saved the ink and came up with a compromise: I'm still Phelps at work but, heaven help me, a Gum at home.

Another part of the Great Compromise is that I legally took my maiden name as my middle name. My middle name had been Ann, for no other reason than that my parents were obviously exhausted after experiencing a jolt of creativity with my first name. I imagine them sitting around saying, "What's the most common middle name we can saddle her with? Oh, I know!" (My apologies to other Anns. I'm sure your parents put a lot of time and effort into selecting it.)

I highly recommend the "maiden name as middle name" solution to other women hunting for a post-marriage moniker. I look at it this way: You're still legally you-but with a bonus name. My aunt and uncle purposely didn't give their daughter a middle name when she was born, leaving her room to do this very thing. And when she got married, she did indeed use her maiden name to fill in the blank. Fortunately, she had a very cool maiden name.

When I asked my husband if we should consider the same course of action, he laughed and said, "Who would want to keep Gum as a middle name?"

Yeah, good point. TPW