A Frink by any other name...

My husband and I have different last names. In fact, my husband, mother-in-law, father-in-law, stepson and I have five surnames between us.

It's not like I'm in love with the sound of my last name or enjoy explaining it every time I make an appointment. I don't even speak it when ordering or picking up, because with my accent it sounds like Frank, and when I overcompensate for my accent, it sounds like Freak. So I just spell it out to people: F-r-i-n-k and add, "Like 'drink,' but with an 'F.'"

The name was common in my hometown, and is the name of a character and a producer of "The Simpsons." But non-Brunswick County natives and less-than-hardcore Simpsons nerds have never heard it before and love to give me terms of endearment I've heard a million times before, including:

Freaky Frink
Super Frink
Super Frinky
Frinkshow
Frinkenstein
Frinkster
Frinkazoid
Le Frink
Frink-o-rama
Frink of Nature

My sister Jill used to sing along with the old-school rappers Whodini “The Frinks Come Out at Night" because she thought that's what they were saying. My first shot at literary fame in college was marred when the magazine printed my byline as "Leigh Ann Fink."

So yeah, it's not the greatest name in the world, but it's my name, and it could be worse. Steve e-mailed me a story from Yahoo UK quoting a London city councilman named Ed Balls. And let's never forget the NASCAR driver named Dick Trickle. Or the English actor Edward Woodward, whose name Noel Coward described as sounding like "a fart in the bathtub."

I got married when I was 36 and had been working and making a name for myself in this town for 14 years. The idea of taking a man's name seemed really outdated to me, especially as Steve didn't give my daddy a goat and four chickens. Hyphenating my surname didn't appeal to me, as Steve and I weren't from landed gentry and didn’t create an empire with our marriage. Add to that the fact that I have two first names and didn't need my business card cluttered up with two last names as well: I’d have to choose between using a tiny font or knocking off a line of contact information.

My very traditional, Sainted Southern Mother put up a huge one-woman campaign to “do the proper thing” and become Leigh Ann Plowman, but I’ve worn her down over the last three years. I just remind her that she and I have the same last name -- the one she gave me -- and nobody could ever question our mother-daughter relationship.

Come to think of it, her claims of “tradition” might just be a smokescreen. The Sainted Southern Mother stories in my columns and blog that appear alongside headshots of my ever-changing hair color could be her number-one reason for wanting me to abandon our unique name.

Sorry, mama. Not gonna.