The New Year often brings a rethinking of one’s habits, future, and identity. For me this year my future identity is more important than it ever was.

Most of you don’t know that 2024 into 2025 was a deeply painful year for me. I wrote my 2024 Rails World keynote while my now ex-husband was moving out of the home we’d shared for 11 years. I put on a brave face and went to the conference. And even though it felt like my life was falling apart, I gave the best damn talk of my career. Being on stage reminded me that I’m strong, capable, and have a lot of support from the community. I’ll never forget the way my friends showed up for me that weekend.

Now that I’m divorced and through the most difficult challenges, I’m rebuilding my identity, starting with a new last name - “Alayce”. The future I’m stepping into feels wider, brighter, and entirely my own.

You may be wondering why I chose to create a new name instead of going back to my prior surname. After a lot of thought I decided I wanted a name that feels unique and exciting. I wanted a name to commemorate and represent my future life, the next chapter that I’ve entered. And most importantly I wanted a name that I will never ever be tempted to change again because this one is completely mine.

Coming up with this name was a fun journey of trying on different last names until one felt right. I developed a set of rules to follow to make the elimination process more straightforward.

The first last name I came up with was “Codes” because it’s already my identity online and professionally I’ve been “eileencodes” longer than I was married. It would be an easy shift that didn’t invite too many questions and wouldn’t give me an identity crisis. It fit into the criteria I set, but I tossed it out as an option because I didn’t want to tie my identity to my work. And while I love coding, I hope to have a long and happy life, and not feel like my entire life orbits solely around my work. “Ruby” was out for the same reason. I don’t think I need to explain why “Rails” was never in the running.

From there I tried on “Lovelace” after Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer. This also tied my identity to work, but in a more abstract way. I liked how it sounded with “Eileen” until I heard someone pronounce “Lovelace” as “Loveless”. The book “East of Eden” made me superstitious about names. I don’t want a loveless life and so I tossed this name out too.

Every time I thought of a name, I’d try it on, say it out loud, write it down, use the web inspector to see it in the browser next to my photo online. I thought about where I lived and what I loved. I imagined using “Hudson” (for the river), “York” (for the state), or even the city I live in. I explored the names of places I love to travel to like “Paris”, “Berlin”, and “Amsterdam”. I thought about the names of artists, poets, and musicians. Then the names of streets and colors and flowers. I thought of every word I have ever loved. I thought of “Arya”, my dog, and how I could incorporate her name. But while I love all these things, none of them felt like the name I should have always had.

I started looking back in my family tree for names I might like - Grogan, Peabody, Crawford - but none felt right. I started to wonder: who could I honor without fully taking their name? I always felt a closeness to my maternal grandfather who passed away when I was in 5th grade. He loved technology and photography. He worked on the Hubble telescope (yes I even tried out “Hubble” too) and in many ways we were similar. I often wonder if he’d be proud of me and the life I’ve built.

My grandfather’s original last name was “Sienkewicz”. This violated every single one of the rules I had set so that was obviously a no-go (I’m not even sure this is the correct spelling so it violated my “easy to spell over the phone” rule). After WW2 he changed his name to “Wallace”.

I contemplated “Wallace” but it didn’t feel right so I started dismantling it to make a new name. First I dropped the “W” to get “Allace”. It felt like I was getting closer to a name I could love. I wanted it to be pronounced “Ah-lay-ce” not “All-aace”, so I dropped an “L” and got “Alace”. This felt more right, but it would likely get pronounced as “Alice”. I then added a “y” to create “Alayce”. I played around with other spellings like “Alaice”, “Alasce”, “Alaece” but kept coming back to “Alayce”. I like the way it sounds, especially as “Eileen Alayce”. I enjoy writing it out, I appreciate the way it looks on paper and in print. And most importantly it meets all of the criteria I had set.

I knew I had finally found the name that was always meant to be mine. I’ve sat with this new name for a while to make sure I didn’t change my mind. It’s been months and it still feels right. So now that the court system has approved it, it’s time to introduce myself to all of you.

I want to take a moment to say how grateful I am for everyone who has supported me this past year. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to express how much you all mean to me and how appreciative I am that you showed up for me. Thank you to my friends and family, sincerely. See you around the internet and hopefully in real life soon as “Eileen Alayce”. Here’s to writing our own stories and building a life we’re proud to thrive in.