I'm rather fond of my given name, which is Joanne Elizabeth (shhh, don't tell anyone!). It would never occur to me to change it. I'm not a big fan of my last name, which I won't divulge because it's extremely rare, and I'm fairly certain I'm the only person with my name in Britain. However, I figured long ago that, were I lucky enough, I'd be able to lose my last name through marriage.

Now, this would all be well and good, were it not for the fact that the addition of one particular letter of the alphabet would cause my initials to spell a word that my brother Marv would find hilarious, and would never let me live down. Unfortunately, my beloved's last name begins with such a letter. Worse still, all his brothers have the same sense of humour as Marv.

However, we have devised a solution to prevent our brothers from dying of laughter. My beloved and I are big fans of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials books - I to the point where I can't watch The Golden Compass for fear of ruining the images in my head, he to the point of going by Will's name rather than his own (my beloved has far worse given-name issues than I, and Will suits him much, much better). So, to avoid the issue, I'll simply take Lyra as a second middle name. We're brought that much closer together, crisis is averted, and we live happily ever after.

(Disclaimer: our collective brothers' sense of humour is mock-racist only. Anti-Semitism in the 21st century is not cool, my friends.)