Some of you might have noticed I’ve been rocking a new name recently, so I wanted to write a little on what that’s all about.
From today I officially, legally, have a new surname! I’ve switched from Simeon Rowsell to Simeon Seneca. Hence the new domain you’re on 💁♂️.
No I haven’t gotten married, or fallen out with my loving family, or signed up to a witness protection scheme, but I did have a child.
Amongst the foetal excitement, panic and last-ditch-attempt at getting a dishwasher in time, naturally it didn’t take long for my partner Helena and I to start thinking about their name. The first name was fun and came easy enough, as were the middle names.
But we knew the harder question was, “what do we do with our surnames?”
I’m keenly aware it’s a delicate, knotty and personal subject. Many of us are now having the same conversations when we hit a stage of CoMmItMeNt, whether it be marriage or a child or whatever shift warrants it.
Surnames became hereditary in England after the Norman Conquest in 1066. That’s properly ages ago. Wonderfully though, here in 2025, you now get to decide what feels right for you. It’s no longer a one-size-fits-all-but-not-really thing. An opportunity for creativity!
Ultimately, we made a new one up; Seneca.
We gave it to our son initially and now that we have a comparatively clear run of life admin headspace and don’t need the passports for a bit, me and Helena have made the jump too.
Taking a sample of the people I know, making a new surname seems uncommon, but I think it’s a neat solution if you’re trying to tick the same boxes we were.
List of our boxes…
- We both wanted to share a surname with our son
- We wanted to feel an equal sense of ownership over the name, both for ourselves and for each other
- We wanted to mark the change in our lives, both becoming parents and our changing relationship with each other
- We wanted it to be something meaningful to our family
- We wanted our son to have something flexible enough to play with when he asks the same questions for himself
More common alternatives that didn’t work out…
- We tried double-barrelling it but it was too much of a mouthful and would get annoying quickly
- We tried awkwardly smashing our surnames together but it sounded terrible honestly
So making a new one up felt like a fun option, a chance to try an alternative ritual, and maybe the only solution without having to change our boxes. And in the UK you can totally do that - the law is surprisingly progressive in that respect. You can kind of do whatever you want.
Given that you have the pick of all the words in the world, we found it harder to choose. The trick was not to overthink it, which for better or worse is a favourite past-time of mine. Keep it simple. I was coming up with all sorts of pretentious rubbish that might represent our outlook on life or whatever but it was too contrived.
In the end we looked up “where do surnames come from”; commonly place names (toponymic) or occupation. So Seneca represents a place that is important to us.
Conveniently we’re not impartial to a bit of Stoic philosophy either. Seneca wrote:
“Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.”
It feels strange to have a new surname and like other such changes in life, even though you know they’re positive, they can still be tinged with melancholy. I’ll miss my old name, I’d become somewhat attached to it. I did shuffle it into my middle name so I’ll continue to carry it with me.
In the end though, it feels exciting. The three of us are all stepping into the unknown together, equally, as a new family, with freshness, commitment, hope and new domain names.