The Last Name Game

We get a lot of questions about why we went with my last name for Calvin instead of Dan's last name or a hyphenated version thereof.  Then there are the smashed together versions we could have gone with that would have bastardized the original names, and we weren't into that (even though I love smashing words together).  "LeMiller" and "MiClair" just didn't do it for us.  

No, It had to do with my name's relative scarcity compared to Dan's.  In terms of American names by rank, "Miller" resides at #6.  "LeClair" sits at #4,196.  Besides: who's gonna tell ya that Miller is a more interesting last name than LeClair outside of French-speaking countries?

It was Dan's idea, not mine, for the record.  We figured that, if Calvin marries someone down the road, they're going to feel inclined to pick one or truncate it anyway, so we may as well just pick one for him, and it might as well be interesting.  We didn't intend for it to be the political statement that it looks like, kind of like when we got married and decided not to do wedding rings.  We didn't do it to make any kind of a statement about the symbolism of rings or the cost of weddings or anything like that.  We just did it because that's what suited us.  

Disclaimers: No offense meant to all my friends and family with the last name Miller.  No offense meant to people who hyphenate and people who smash their names together. I salute you all for having names and for doing things the way that suits you.