Last name limbo continues....

In about 4 weeks I will be moving out of my apartment. The deed to the apartment is under the name Watanabe, but that's OK.
I will need to begin forwarding my mail to the new address, which is Chaim's cozy (real estate lingo for tiny) abode on the Upper East Side. Less than a week after I officially move, I will have to stop my mail for a month, when we go to Japan (using my old passport).

I have already begun changing my addresses for my bank statement and other bills, though the name is still Watanabe. The Post office will forward mail for Watanabe, but 50% of the mail will be for Spiller.

And on top of it all... The Upper East Side is changing their Zip Code and dividing it up into three different numbers!!!

identity crisis- the new name plan

A friend of mine asked me today if I had officially changed my last name.

As of today I still have two identities:

The DMV never took my old license back when I applied for the new one.
The Social Security people now have my new name, so all of my paychecks made out to M. Watanabe are now collecting my pension under the name Spiller.
My passport and credit cards, school ID all still have my old name.
It is very difficult to change names in the middle of the school year, so my new name plan is to begin totally anew at the beginning of September.
Plus the deed to my apartment is still under Watanabe, and I don't want to add more paperwork to that whole process anymore than there needs to be.

I sold my first book art/ sculpture piece today. When I dropped it off at the collectors house this morning, one of his assistants introduced herself to me and said that she knows me from my name.

"really? Micki Spiller? or Micki Watanabe?, because I just changed my name."

"Spiller is the name think I know. I used to work at Granary Book Press and didn't you do a project with them?"

"no but I would love to do an edition with them...Before I decided to change my name, we Googled 'Micki Spiller' and it came up clean, so there can't be another Micki Spiller!"

She looks at the card on the table, a Franklin Furnace Benefit invitation that I've just brought over.

"Hey isn't there a Hillary Spiller who does the fund raising at the Furnace?"

"No, but there is a Harley Spiller, who I'm married to who works there."

"Does he write books on Matisse?"

"no I believe that's Hilary Spurling..."

Now, I'm more than ever confused, and no matter what name one has, a person will forever be confused with another who is known for doing something totally different from what they do. It doesn't matter whether its' Spiller or Watanabe, I shall be confused with another person at some time or another.

Happy Valentines Day!

On Valentines Day I got a delicious bag of dim sum from Harley's secret place in Chinatown.
And our official Marriage Certificate

The strange thing is that it came addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Migiwa Watanabe...
Next stop: DMV and social security.

Last Name Limbo

WATANABE: A name riddled with so many vowels, telephone solicitors often ask if I am Native American.

Now I know why women had no problem changing their names in the 1950's. Beaver Cleaver's mother didn't work out side of the home. She probably never applied for a social security card. There was no reason to. I, on the other hand am realizing what a pain it is to be traditional, and take my new husband's name. This is just 1/4th of the ID's that I will have to change-

My mother’s maiden name, Watanabe, is the 5th most common surname in Japan. I grew up in St. Louis in a time when there were very few Japanese families and yet there were four other Watanabes in the 2-inch thick Southwestern Bell White Pages; a dentist, a violinist, a conductor and one other that I never met. Watanabe is considered the “Smith” of Japan, and so common that my mother’s oldest sister married an unrelated man also named Watanabe. Everyone knows at least one Watanabe and thorough out my life, I have been asked if I have a brother, father, uncle, aunt, etc who is an actor (Ken- Last Samuri or Gedde- Long Duk Dong in Sixteen Candles) a fashion designer (Junya), a musician (Sadao- soprano saxophone), a Yakuza “Godfather” (Yoshinori), a Peruvian Poet (Jose), an artist (Mikio- who does mezzotints or Hiroshi- photographer of kabuki), a feminist activist (Mina- works with Amnesty International) or an architect (Jin, Hiroshi, or Makoto).

In most eastern cultures, the surname always proceeds the given name, placing more importance on the clan than on the individual, so when I moved to the US my identity as an individual became more pronounced the further I moved away from my roots, culture and the Watanabe family.


Migiwa, my given name, is a phrase lifted from Psalm 23, literally meaning “beside the sill waters”. In Japanese, it is written in hiragana, because the uncommon name was too complex for the government officials and clerks who worked at the town office in the small island farm community where I was born, and they could not figure out how to write it in the usual kanji, or Chinese characters. Apparently they first refused to register it as an official name. My mother’s explanations of the Song of David from the Bible fell on deaf ears in the room full of Buddhist and Shinto clerks. So they compromised and spelled it with the easier, and more poetic Japanese writing system.

The origin of my family name is related to a profession as are most, and means ‘one who crosses the ocean to carry people and products by boat.’ My mother’s mother’s maiden name- Murakami comes from a pirate that collected tax from ships which crossed the Seto Inland Sea. I will be visiting that same Seto Sea this year with a different surname.

I am anticipating this change, and run home every day to open up an empty mailbox, and every day I am dissapointed when the official envelope containing the documents which will enable me to be the next Mrs. Spiller doesn't appear.

When I send out e-mails from my new Mrs. Spiller address, I automatically go into my friends spam box. I tell my students I am currently between last names.

Fifteen years ago (or so) I changed my identity from this:


to this:


and now i'm waiting for the next incarnation...