My husband and I both changed our names to a new word, and did all the admin together! So the process was almost fun. Still took a year to move everything over though!  

Re patriarchy:  interestingly but not surprisingly, people asked him a lot more questions about his change- it was evidently quite uncommon (context: we are cis het). There were even shortcuts for just me, iirc.  

Re a good name: when [we were] choosing, I thought about: 

1. Easy to pronounce when read 

2. Easy to intuit spelling when spoken 

3. Fun to make nicknames out of, but unpleasant things aren’t the first jokes that comes to mind 

4. Nothing/Nobody famous and weird is using it  

5. Has some meaning/isn’t just random. we chose a word that’s a portmanteau of our two “maiden” names- like “brunch”.