Sure “bostonlovesjohnnydamon” might seem like a great Facebook URL to show your undying devotion to the team, but life happens to the best of us and sometimes things change. The tough part of the new Facebook URL…it doesn’t. As the FAQ portion of Usernames on Facebook states: Once you have claimed a username by clicking the “Confirm” button after checking for a username’s availability, it is not possible to edit it, or to transfer your username to a different account on Facebook. Makes sense, in addition to the A.D.D.ness of today’s society, there’s also the confusion of ever-changing URL’s and the mere server space it would take up.

I didn’t really think too much about the permanancy of Vanity URL’s until I logged onto the page to claim mine. I did have a slight twinge as I decided between /opheliaswebb and /elisadoucette but decided in the end that I would just go with my “given” name. Facebook is a place reserved for my more personal online relationships, in fact out of my close to 300 friends I have less than 5 that I don’t know “IRL.” I’ve even gotten used to people having some challenges finding me post-high school (Elisa is a nickname of sorts.)

So name changes don’t really have THAT much of an impact on me. Add to the fact that more pounds and a different hairstyle are really the only things that make me look any different than I did in high schoo,l and most people can figure out pretty quickly who I actually am. But a recent post by Tiffany Monhollon regarding the internal dilemma of changing of a woman’s name when she is married made me stop and think before I hit “Confirm” on that page.

/elisadoucette would most definitely direct who I am as the hip and trendy single gal in the city that I am. However, should the day come where I meet that special someone and we go out a bunch, we fall in love, birds and woodland creatures follow me around while I break out in song (ok, maybe not that part,) and eventually he proposes on top of a mountain or by a lake and we get married … well, then I’m one of those girls who will most likely adopt her husband’s name. The feminism of this whole act can be discussed another time, but for me (at least at this time) it feels like the right decision.

Many of my friends who have signed up for Facebook really struggled at first connecting with old friends with their shiny new married names. I don’t remember when the shift happened, but you definitely didn’t use to be able to search by “maiden” names nor put a middle “maiden” name in your Facebook account. That was really hard for these folks trying desperately to let the world know that they were, in fact, still here. It wasn’t like they changed, they merely changed their name. I saw a lot of wall posts saying, “Hey, is this the same Jane Doe that went to Gotham High School in the early 90′s?”

I also have friends who have been married for awhile referred to by their “maiden” name. People look at them like they have 6 heads. For one friend, it wasn’t until she updated her Facebook account that I even knew what her maiden name was. If I had tried finding her with her “single gal” name, I would have been completely done in.

The latter are the types of people I am friends with on Facebook, though. While some I’ve known since I was yaaaaay-tall, most are people I meet now. If my now is after I’m married, how will I be found at /elisadoucette? More importantly, if I do decide to go through with the name change as a marriage newbie, will I rue the fact that I was silly enough to claim /elisadoucette? Already anticpating the change and knowing that Facebook is my inner-most circle of online peeps, is /elisadoucette no more than a /MatthewMcConaugheyIsAGod branding move?

How are you other single girls handling your vanity URL? Am I the only one torn on this one?

Note: I was going to post this to the (not so simple) life, but then it got crazy long. So after you get done perusing around The Webb, you should meander over there!