Some choices feel deeply personal, until the people around you take them as a rejection.

So, what would you do if your name never felt like your own? Would you let it go to keep the peace? Or would you quietly take back control of your identity, even if it left someone you love in tears?

In the following story, a young woman finds herself in this exact situation and decides to make the change. Here’s what happened.

AITA for changing my hyphenated name into one?

I (19F) was given a hyphenated name at birth. My mother (42F) was the type of woman who didn’t want to change her last name and kept it while getting married to my father.

I am their only child, and when my mom gave birth to me, they agreed on a hyphenated name since she wanted her last name to play a part. My last name was Thatcher-Moore (Thatcher being my father’s last name and Moore being my mother’s).

During childhood, I always hated it; kids would sometimes poke fun at me for my last name. I also thought it sounded ugly and was a mouthful.

I preferred Thatcher alone; it went better with my name and was better than Moore.

As she got older, she got tired of dealing with a hyphenated name.

In Junior High, I began to tell people that my name was Mari Thatcher instead of Mari Thatcher-Moore.

When my mom caught on, she’d get either very upset or very angry.

Sometimes she’d yell and demand I stop. Or cry, saying she just wanted her daughter to be a part of her.

I felt sympathy for her, but it was also my name as well.

When I turned eighteen and graduated from high school, I was debating on actually changing my last name to just Thatcher legally. I had been in college for a few months when I decided to go through with it.

Rather than being angry, her mother was sad.

That Christmas break, my mother figured it out (I’m not sure how, but I wasn’t really hiding it from her), and she absolutely freaked out.

I first thought she’d be extremely angry with me, but she was heartbroken. She sobbed and refused to speak to me.

Now I have angry relatives, especially my father. He says he didn’t ask for this, and I broke my own mother’s heart and should be ashamed.

AITA?

Wow! It’s easy to see both sides of this, but making such a big deal out of it seems sort of silly.

Let’s see what the folks over at Reddit have to say.

This person thinks she should’ve been honest up front.

Here’s someone who thinks she’s wrong for how she talks.

As this comment points out, she’s not a child anymore.

This person can easily see the mom’s side.

They need to sit down and talk.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.