Goodbye To The Wagners!

Back in February me and my Huz posted messages about changing our names.  Since that time, I have gotten lots of positive feedback but I've also gotten questions from others who never read the articles.  Soooo I decided to post both of them right here for people to be able to scan. 

MINE:

WHAT'S IN A NAME...

Well, it's in motion... After a long discussion with my husband, he's decided to change his name and do away with any remaining connections to his adopted "Wagner" family and to also alter his first name from Winfield to his initial birth name of Sven. I think this is a wonderful idea for emotional closure since his parents are gone and those who remain are oblivious to the world LOVE or FAMILY.

Since we're legally married in Washington DC, he asked if I wanted to change my name also. I assumed Wagner about 20 years ago when my sexually abusive, drug addicted step father (Sande) croaked.

So I thought for awhile and since his name is going to be Sven Andréas Wallin, I decided to move mine to Rikard Michael Wallin.

Rikard, (isn't that so awesomely exotic and cool?) and I can still be Rik for short so people don't have to call me a new name...

So there you have it FB Peeps!! My new name will become Rik Wallin over the coming months.. (by the way, in Sweden the name Wallin sounds like Vall-een)

MY HUZ

Naming Convention

Posted on Saturday, February 1st, 2014 at 11:42

“Wow, that was basi­cally an auto­bi­og­ra­phy,” my friend John said after he read my book, BRENT: THE HEART READER.

Busted. Brent’s fam­ily is full of goody two-shoed Duck’tards, who exude


 homo­pho­bia. Their idea of fun included phys­i­cal and emo­tional abuse and at least one case of man-on-boy rape. I’m not a “real rel­a­tive” accord­ing to them.

I lifted much of that from my expe­ri­ence with the rel­a­tives of the cou­ple that adopted me. They res­cued me from fos­ter care, and I am as grate­ful for that as I know how to be. “The sys­tem” was awful. Thank good­ness I only spent six years there. Almost imme­di­ately after I was adopted, I was diag­nosed with Hodgkin’s Lym­phoma, and the cou­ple that adopted me got me the best med­ical care that was avail­able. I will be grate­ful to them for that (and all the other things they did) as long as I live.

They’ve been dead for 10 years (mom) and 12 years (dad). That left me with a bunch of cousins who were able to abuse me with impunity. Way back, mom kept her rel­a­tives in line.

Those peo­ple hate gays and lib­er­als and peo­ple with scary health issues. I was always the Black Sheep in the fam­ily, accord­ing to them. Now with­out my adopted parental units, they got together and labeled me a dis­eased pariah. They came out of church and called my hus­band all kinds of deplorable things.

All that sounds like the rel­a­tives in BRENT: THE HEARTREADER. I humil­i­ated those abu­sive


 char­ac­ters in the book. I had some of them arrested and killed off one or two. It was great therapy.

Old say­ing: Don’t mess with an author because he can make the world laugh at you.

Now that my adopted par­ents are gone for more than a decade, I have no con­nec­tion with any of their rel­a­tives. In the­ory, I have a half-brother run­ning around some­where. He’d be a lit­tle older than me, but I’ve never heard any inkling

 that he even knows about me. My birth mother is dead, and I know almost noth­ing about the sperm donor. It was prob­a­bly a one night stand.

All I know about my per­sonal his­tory is that I am 100% Swedish. I remem­ber that they called me Sven before I was adopted.

So now, I’ve decided to fin­ish cut­ting the ties with all those peo­ple in my adopted fam­ily. They hate me, which is their loss. Peo­ple who know about atti­tudes say cut­ting the remain­ing ties will be therapeutic.

In the com­ing weeks, I’m going through the court sys­tem to get my name changed.

There won’t be a Win­field Wag­ner any more. My nick­name – Wynn Wag­ner – will become a nom de plume









 (or nom de guerre).

New name: Sven Andréas Wallin.

• First name is what my actual name was.  Sven means kid or young one.
• Mid­dle name – Andréas – is a form of Andrew. I really like Andréas.
• Last name will be Wallin because my hus­band likes it. The name means val­ley or pasture.

My ini­tials will be SAW, which is a lit­tle snarky (cut­ting device, not the ocu­lar pro­ce­dure). The e-acute in my mid­dle name is on the edge of snooty, so that’ll be fun.

What I’m not used to is that the world is full of peo­ple named Sven Wallin. I am used to hav­ing free access for user names because nobody claims “wyn­nwag­ner” or “win­field­wag­ner”. Sadly “sven­wallin” is already in use at all the major web ser­vices. The world is crawl­ing with Sven Wallin peeps. On a recent check, I was lit­er­ally trip­ping over “sven­wallin” user names, so I will have to get used to being part of a crowd.

The name every­body knows – Wynn Wag­ner – will be my pen name. Sven Andréas Wallin will be my legal name.

The coolest part is that my hus­band is chang­ing his name too, so we will con­tinue shar­ing our fam­ily name. This time, It is OUR fam­ily name. Awwwww.….