By Mar-Vic Cagurangan
Variety News Staff

WHEN reporter Trina A. San Agustin gets married later this year, she will drop her maiden name and change her byline to adopt her fiancé’s last name. “I’m old-fashioned,” she said.
Guam Community College student Tes Venzon said she would hyphenate her name if ever she gets married.
“I feel secure about who I am. If you want to call me Catherine Zeta-Jones, that’s fine,” Venzon quipped. “If I get married, I will use both my maiden name and the last name of whoever I marry. That’s a good compromise.”
Keeping or changing one’s identity and identification is a matter of personal choice, and none of the government’s business. Thus, the government should stay out of it, according to three women senators who introduced a bill that proposes to change the law on hyphenation of surnames.
Bill 109 seeks to allow women to either retain their maiden names or hyphenate them with their husbands’ last names upon marriage without having to go through a costly and time-consuming legal process.
At the same time, the bill would give men the option of hyphenating their own surnames with their wives’ maiden names.
“This bill would authorize women and men to decide on their names without having to pay fees and go through a name-change process,” said Sen. Tina Muna-Barnes, D-Mangilao, main author of Bill 109.
The bill is co-authored by Minority Leader Judi Won Pat, D-Malojloj, and Sen. Judith Guthertz, D-Mangilao.
The current law requires women to file a petition with the court to either retain their maiden names or change them before applying for a marriage license with the Department of Public Health and Social Services. When a woman gets a divorce, she has to go through the entire name-change process again before being allowed to use her maiden.
“This whole process takes at least a month and a half. It’s not only time consuming but it also clogs up the courts’ dockets,” Muna-Barnes said.
“The bill would make things easier for people to choose what names they want to use,” she added.