A Guide on How to Pick a Married Last Name Getting married? The number of decisions you have to make for the wedding, let alone decisions that will impact the rest of your life, can feel overwhelming. Taking on a life-long partner may also mean a new, life-long name. Changing the name, you've had since birth, is a big decision. Whether in same-sex or heterosexual nuptials, names play an important role and can impact children, career, identity, and ultimately, your happiness. "Should I Change my Name?" walks you through how to choose a last name that's right for you and your future spouse. Author Marcia Morgan examines the six most common married name options including separate, merged, linked, and newly-created names, and reveals the benefits and challenges of each. She weaves in personal stories from men and women who embraced their married name choices and those who had regrets. The firsthand accounts illuminate how gender roles, religion, or family of origin can deeply influence name preferences for you and your spouse-to-be. Morgan shines a light on the intriguing history of how married names were based on oppressive laws and reveals the meaning behind today's naming traditions. She takes you on a journey around the globe to look at naming practices in other countries and cultures. The book simplifies an otherwise overwhelming decision process so you and your partner can say a hearty "I Do" to the married name you choose. Best-selling author Marcia K. Morgan, Ph.D., brings a wealth of experience from over 40 years as a sociologist, researcher, trainer, and national expert on gender issues. Marcia and her husband live in Bend, Oregon.

A fully revised and updated version of the classic baby name guide, featuring updated trends, facts, ideas, and thousands of enchanting names! Your baby’s perfect name is out there. This book will help you find it. The right baby name will speak to your heart, give your child a great start in life—and maybe even satisfy your relatives. But there’s no shortage of names to choose from, and you can’t expect to just stumble upon a name like that in an A-to-Z dictionary. Enter the revised and updated fourth edition of The Baby Name Wizard. This ultimate baby-name guide uses groundbreaking research and computer-generated models to create a visual image for each name, examine its usage and popularity over the last one hundred years, and suggest other specific and promising name ideas. Each unique “name snapshot” includes a rundown of style categories the name belongs to, nickname options, variants, pronunciations, prominent examples, and names with a similar style and feeling. This new edition also contains expanded sections on popular names and style lists. A perfect, up-to-date guide to the modern world of names, The Baby Name Wizard will delight you from the first name you look up and keep you enchanted through your journey to finding the just-right name for your baby.

A companion to the popular website APracticalWedding.com and A Practical Wedding Planner, A Practical Wedding helps you sort through the basics to create the wedding you want -- without going broke or crazy in the process. After all, what really matters on your wedding day is not so much how it looked as how it felt. In this refreshing guide, expert Meg Keene shares her secrets to planning a beautiful celebration that reflects your taste and your relationship. You'll discover: The real purpose of engagement (hint: it's not just about the planning) How to pinpoint what matters most to you and your partner DIY-ing your wedding: brilliant or crazy? How to communicate decisions to your family Why that color-coded spreadsheet is actually worth it Wedding Zen can be yours. Meg walks you through everything from choosing a venue to writing vows, complete with stories and advice from women who have been in the trenches: the Team Practical brides. So here's to the joyful wedding, the sensible wedding, the unbelievably fun wedding! A Practical Wedding is your complete guide to getting married with grace.

Who am I? It’s a question a lot of children seem to ask themselves, at which point being “them” simply isn’t enough. They want to be someone better. Many kids want to change their names. This is what happened to Wilma Lee Wu. One day, Wilma decides she no longer likes her name, and she sets off for the Change Your Name Store to find a new one. Once at the store, the possibilities seem endless. Mrs. Zeena McFooz, the store-owner, says that Wilma can try out any new name she wants with one catch: she must “go for a ride” to discover what it means to be that name. Will being Babette Bijou from France be better than Wilma Lee Wu? What about Dominga Delfino from Belize? Featuring an exciting story of discovery from author and humor blogger Leanne Shirtliffe (of IronicMom.com), and fun, simple illustrations by Tina Kügler, The Change Your Name Store takes children on a journey to find their true identity and to celebrate who they are—name and all. Children ages 3 to 6 will be able to relate to Wilma's search for who she really is. The book promotes diversity, which is an important topic to kids to understand at an early age, and will be a good addition to preschool classrooms and urban homes in particular. Zeena McFooz is gentle and matter-of-fact, and the tone of the book is one of exploration and celebration of our individuality. The illustrations are sure to captivate kids' attention while helping to bring this important message to life. Sky Pony Press, with our Good Books, Racehorse and Arcade imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of books for young readers—picture books for small children, chapter books, books for middle grade readers, and novels for young adults. Our list includes bestsellers for children who love to play Minecraft; stories told with LEGO bricks; books that teach lessons about tolerance, patience, and the environment, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

The most helpful, complete, and yearly up-to-date name book What's new about names? The new edition of 100,000+ Baby Names by Bruce Lansky features the most up-to-date lists of names, trends, advice, and fascinating facts about names, including: Hundreds of newly popular names and variations The latest list of top 100 names for boys and girls The latest naming trends: what's hot and what's not The most rapidly rising and falling top 1,000 names Updated lists of names to consider, including names of newly famous people and fictional characters The most popular gender-neutral names and their rates of use (more for boys, more for girls, or 50/50) New (and classic) celebrity baby names And our list of names from around the world keeps growing! Here you'll find more than 100,000 names--complete with origins, meanings, variations, and famous namesakes. You'll find names from major linguistic and ethnic groups of origin, including English (19,000 names), Latin (11,000 names), Greek (11,000 names), American (11,000 names), Hebrew (9,000 names), Hispanic (9,000 names), French (8,000 names), Irish (7,000 names), and German (6,000 names)--plus thousands of Scottish, Welsh, Italian, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Scandinavian, Polish, Native American, Hawaiian, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Australian/Aboriginal, African, and Hindi names. The list features unique spellings of popular names that are catching on, plus newly popular names and variations not listed in other books and websites.

Poet. Dancer. Immigrant. Artist. Son. Brother. There’s always more than meets the eye . . . Valentin “Val” Chmerkovskiy has captivated viewers with his striking performances on Dancing with the Stars since his first step, season after season. His raw talent, dashing looks, and genuine kindness have made him an instant, beloved star. Now, for the first time ever, viewers will have an all-access pass to Val’s life—and in I’ll Never Change My Name, Val bares his soul, illuminating the thoughtful person he is both on and off the stage. In this revealing memoir, Val opens up about his life and career so far—where he’s come from and where he hopes to go. He shows the reader some of the most notable moments from his childhood in Odessa, Ukraine, and his tight-knit family’s immigration to the United States—including his struggles learning English as a stranger desperate to fit into a different culture, how he worked to become a premiere ballroom dancer, and, of course, the collaborations and competitions with his brother and fellow DWTS sensation, Maksim “Maks” Chmerkovskiy. After years of practice and discipline, Val, along with his older brother Maks, have reached the pinnacle of success, but it took a great deal of hard work and gratitude to get there. Sharing at times intimate and at times entertaining moments with early dance partners all the way up through celebrity dance partners such as Laurie Hernandez, Zendaya, Kelly Monaco, and Rumer Willis on Dancing with the Stars, Val expresses his enduring gratitude for the opportunities America has afforded him and his family, and for everything this country represents—offering hope not only to fans, but everyone with a dream. Inspiring, heartfelt, and compulsively readable—including sixteen pages of never- before-seen photographs, as well as a foreword by brother Maks Chmerkovskiy—I’ll Never Change My Name is filled with Val’s honesty and insight, and moments that are sure to touch readers’ hearts and inspire us all to keep it moving.

A "stunning" (Hanif Abdurraqib), "unputdownable" (Mary Karr) meditation on queerness, family, and desire. How do you know if you are transgender? How do you know if what you want and feel is real? How do you know whether to believe yourself? Cyrus Dunham’s life always felt like a series of imitations—lovable little girl, daughter, sister, young gay woman. But in a culture of relentless self-branding, and in a family subject to the intrusions and objectifications that attend fame, dissociation can come to feel normal. A Lambda Literary Award finalist, Dunham’s fearless, searching debut brings us inside the chrysalis of a transition inflected as much by whiteness and proximity to wealth as by gender, asking us to bear witness to an uncertain and exhilarating process that troubles our most basic assumptions about identity. Written with disarming emotional intensity in a voice uniquely his, A Year Without a Name is a potent, thrillingly unresolved meditation on queerness, family, and selfhood. Named a Most Anticipated Book of the season by: Time NYLON Vogue ELLE Buzzfeed Bustle O Magazine Harper's Bazaar