Since then, my resistance has become more entrenched. I still find every letter I receive (usually from my godparents) addressed to Mrs Marriedname unsettling. I stand in the hallway looking round for this strange and unknown person. I feel like myself, my family and the life I had before I met my husband are being erased. I’ve only known him six years. How come he gets to obliterate my history?

I try to persuade myself that it is but a quaint and charming vestige of the long-ago days when women were effectively owned by their husbands but it continues to feel more like a sign of unwillingness to let those days truly pass.

My name does matter, and more than I thought it would. I was never a terribly active or committed feminist. I always felt that using ‘Ms’ was an affectation, a pose – a sledgehammer of a position to crack a teeny-tiny nut of a point. Who cared whether people knew you were married or not?

But it does make a difference. I use both Ms and my maiden name now as protection against being defined by something – my marriage, my choice of husband – that I feel is irrelevant to the wider world. It was nothing to do with anyone or anything else. I don’t really mind how my godmother addresses her envelopes. But the person who earns the money on her bank statements is Lucy Mangan and she would like to be recognised as the person who does it.

Perhaps my sense of self should be able to shrug off what is from one point of view the entirely superficial alteration of a name. Maybe I am a freak who just doesn’t love her husband enough (as the man himself has helpfully suggested after reading this over my shoulder). Or maybe I should just start referring to him as Mr Mangan, and see how it makes him feel. Ah. Judging by the spluttering paroxysms that have just begun, I think I may have opened up a fresh field of enquiry. Here’s to the next two years…

Contact Lucy Mangan at lucy.mangan@stylist.co.uk and on twitter.com/lucymangan

Picture credit: Rex Features

"I'll never take my husband's last name"