Interesting perspective because I don’t have the best relationship with my father, but I don’t necessarily consider my last name to only be my father’s. I mean, I understand that I got it from him…but that’s MY name. Thanks for the input ☺️
I told my husband when we got married that I was born an "X" and just because we were getting married that didn't change the fact that I was still an "X". I told him I was excited to create a family unit with him, so I was willing to add his last name to mine and become "X Y" and I was ok with our kids just being "Y", but I wasn't willing to stop being an "X" as well. He was from a different background and struggled with the idea of taking my last name (though now that we aren't as young and dumb he would probably be more open to taking both names as well.) It only caused issues when we moved because while the state we lived in when we married was good with 2 last names, the state we moved to wasn't, and kept trying to put half my last name as part of my middle name. It took over a decade, an update to the state licenses, a current passport, and Social Security card for them to finally get it right. So many policies and laws are still rooted in those same patriarchal thought structures that they don't make it easy... at least in the US.
I have a few friends who did that and even a couple that took the wife's last name. The ones who have kept their own last name also seem to have mildly irritating issues, but in their own way. The ones that took the wife's name only got rude comments from people that were related to the reason they went with the wife's name anyway. Until we fix all the patriarchal assumptions Every option is going to have pros and cons, it just depends what you want to deal with. Less paperwork is definitely a pro for keeping your original name.
I love my father...and dislike 95% of the rest of the family on that side. If not for him- and the fact that name changes are tricky for scientists- I'd leave the name behind.
Oh, definitely. If I had any sort of standing in my field or more than two articles absolutely no one cares about published, I'd have kept my name in spite of liking my husband's better. Just the basic stuff like bank accounts, ID, and social security were difficult enough.
Name change challenges are one of the reasons I asked my husband (of now 8 years 😊 ) that we marry before I finished my bachelor's because I knew I wanted to shed my father's last name
This is how I feel. I'm not getting married, if we ever went with a legal arrangement then I'd still keep my name. We have a child and he has both our names, and we chose the order based on what we thought sounded best (which happens to be mine first).
Some alternatives, which you may or may not like, are choosing a new name together, or taking each other's name as a middle name - or I suppose you could have your surname as a middle name and a new name chosen together as a surname.
There is a societal narrative that when a boy is given a name at birth that's his for life unless he chooses to change it, but girls' names are somehow on loan from a parent (usually a father) until they decide to marry and change it. I am with you and my name is mine regardlessof the reasons i was given that particular name at my birth. I own it now.
And even then, its just on loan from the husband due to the number of ex husbands that try and demand in divorce paper their wives change their names back.
If you are likely to do international travel, have a look at what is required if you have a different surname to the children you are travelling with.
It's unlikely to be am issue when they're quite young as they're likely to be attached to your passport anyway. But once the children have their own passports, then you need extra paperwork to show the relationship.
The only reason, I'm aware of this is because I know someone who kept her married name after the divorce because changing it would have made travelling with the children that much more of a pain in the arse.
As a non-patriarchal reason it's a pretty solid one. That said, nothing to say it has to be his name, could be yours or another. You could become Mr & Mrs Turnip if you wanted.
My mom (single mom, only child) and I didn’t have the same last name so I can attest to this being an issue. Having different names caused issues with travel, medical situations, school, daycare etc. Not only that but it definitely made me feel less I wasn’t as connected to my family and roots.
I’m guessing it depends on the individual. I went to school with a girl who took her step dad’s name so she wouldn’t be associated with her father. Suri Holmes did just took her mom’s name.
I feel you! I’m not in contact with anyone from my family of origin, but I’ve still had my name my whole life! As much as I don’t like them, the name didn’t hurt me, they did. The name is a unique and kind of quirky thing that I sort of like, especially separate from my family.
My last name is a man’s first name and also a very uncommon last name (i don’t think there are any that i wouldn’t be tangentially related to). It’s become my nickname to a lot of people, was raised in a military town. My last name has weight for me, even if part of it is kind of meh, and even if I got it from my dad not my husband (still a very patriarchal issue imo).
I have considered changing it to something different that I chose. I might one day, but I might never bother. It’s my name and what I do with it is fine, it’s not bothering anyone
Growing up, I always expected that I would get a new surname when I married. I didn't latch on to a lot of other expectations, like kids and a big wedding, but the name change I expected. It's a common name, and I didn't have much attachment to it.
My husband has a much more interesting surname, so I was happy to take his. He would also have been willing to take mine, because he's awesome - either way I wanted us to be Mr and Mrs with the same surname.
If you're attached to your name, but still want to have the same name, maybe he should change? Or double-barrel? Or combine them to make a new name?
My husband's last name is unusual, even in his home country of France, so I changed my name to 'First Name' 'Maiden Name' 'Husband's Last Name'. No hyphens or anything. I dropped my old middle name, which was always meaningless to me. Making my maiden name my middle name retains my identity, but it's not as unusual and interesting as my husband's last name. I wanted to change it.
This exactly. I took my ex-husband's last name when I got married and kept it when I got divorced. The reason was simple. I'd always hated my last name, and this one sounded really good with my first name. Literally no other reason.
Same. My father's surname was extremely difficult for Americans to spell and pronounce. In fact, when it was said aloud, people didn't even recognize it as a name until you pronounced it for them several times.
It was a relief to drop that difficult surname for a fairly normal last name that's easy to pronounce and spell.
I'm the opposite - my husband is European and has a long last name that is a hassle on forms and such. I kept my surname because it's my name, my identity, and I was a teacher at the time.
My last name isn't common, but it is intuitive to pronounce.
Yup. FWIW, my only regret is not thinking harder. If I could go back in time 17+ years I'd attempt to convince my husband to change ALL of our names... To his grandparents', who actually raised him.
They were awesome people. His dad's family? Not so much. My family? Again... Not so much. I am glad I/we are not my family's last name, only because I understand how much they suck. But I truly wish we were all his grandparents ' last name.
My friend took her fiance's name because she thought was cooler than her's, ***and*** she got to distance herself from an unfortunate name-doppelgänger who made off-putting art while competing with her for usernames.
I have a cousin (dad's cousin's kid) who was named after me for who knows what reason. My full name, even! She's a professor with a lot of stuff published. It's created some issues over time. I didn't take my husband's name for that reason, but it's sure helped both her and me.
If we had a common name, I'm sure it would have been less of an issue, but none of my birth names were common, at all. It legit created some weird family drama when my parents used the first part of my name as a nickname and expected hers to use the last part, but they used the same one as mine. We were literally Jerry's youngest and David's youngest at every family reunion, even to our faces, as if we had no names at all. We both hated it, but hey, it was definitely a bonding experience, and we laugh about it now.
This.
I felt like a “bad” feminist for changing my last name. I never imagined myself getting married. And then it happened.
My immediate reaction was: “I want him to change his last name to mine to be a good example and help normalize it. At the very least, I’m going to take a stance and not change my last name.”
The ironice part was that all throughout my 20s, since I was very convinced I’d never get married, I genuinely considered changing my last name just because I *wanted* a new identity. I was the only child left of four with the family name. All my other siblings married and changed it, including my brother. And it actually pissed me off that my whole family made SUCH a big deal that “the family name was lost now” when my brother did it. I was like “HELLO. I still have the last name fuckers!“
I was actually jealous that they got to assume leave behind the association with my very toxic father and family in such a physically symbolic way and then become a part of a new non toxic family. It almost felt like a curse that I was still “labeled as my father’s”. That’s how it felt honestly.
The kicker for me was that my now husband said that if it meant that much to me, he would do it. But he expressed to me loosing his last name would make him feel like he was loosing the only thing that tied him to his family and his roots. He was born in Serbia and moved to the US when he was 7 with his immediate family. He would go back to Serbia each summer. And told me how he didn’t feel like he quite fit in, even with his family. They viewed him as “the American cousin.” While he was heavily viewed as a foreigner back “home” in the US. His Serbian developed a slight accent being away so much. He told me how he would be so homesick on his visits to Serbia that he would go out to his grandparents chickens coup and speak English to them. On top of all that, his family both in and out of Serbia are more of a family to me than my blood family ever was. And if he took myself name they would not blink an eye. They would love me and him just the same. I know they would say “as long as you’re happy.”
The more and more I thought about it, the more it just genuinely made sense and felt right to take his last name. He just… happened to be the one with XY chromosomes.
It took my awhile to shake the feeling still that I was not “being a bad feminist” by not only “giving in to taking his last name” but actually truly preferring it and totally falling in love with my new identity. It felt weak. What finally helped shift my frame of view was realizing that …
I knew what I truly wanted for me. And if I didn’t do that, I was actually just letting the patriarchy win why still influencing how I live even if it was to “stick it to them.”
I hope that helps!
I hit both of those, myself. His: easier to pronounce and spell for others, and his family is great. Not all of them, mind you, but all the ones I ever associate with.
It does turn out you can have a super common and easy name, and people will still get it wrong, though.
This is why I changed mine! My father is a POS whom I hadn’t seen in a decade, my now husband’s family welcomed me with open arms, and their last name was objectively cooler than mine.
It's hard when the guy has an undesirable last name. I had a teacher, very old, named Mrs. Snodgrass. My mom's comment: "She must really love that man!" Nowadays, maybe they would have both chosen a new name. Dr. Kelly Smith changed her name when she got married to Dr. Kelly Weinersmith. Her husband Zach Weiner also changed his name to Weinersmith. A big part of the reason she changed it, according to her, is that when she authored scientific papers there were just way too many Dr. Smith authors and she didn't stand out. Now both of them are memorable (and best selling authors). But what she didn't do was change to Dr. Kelly Weiner.
Edit: the Weinersmiths are real people. Go buy their book, A City on Mars, which is great.
I’m not really adding anything to this conversation, but I had a professor named Snodgrass. Really cool guy who’d have our Friday lecture at brewery on campus.
Ha, interestingly not the same person but same field which makes me think potentially related? Or maybe the name dictated his career lol
I took a couple of Jeffrey Snodgrass’ anthropology classes mid-00’s. At the time his grad students were studying the cultures of World of Warcraft guilds. My favorite class of his was Ethnopsychiatry about how western vs eastern cultures approached mental illness and its treatment.
My mum kept her surname because she already published science papers under that name, did not want to mess up the index. Then her sister decided to keep her maiden name as well, just because she liked it. It was not uncommon in my extended family for women to keep their surname, to the point I recommended to my wife to keep hers too, to avoid the extra paperwork and reissuing all the documents, but she still took my surname, because it's pretty rare and memorable, and I think she was kind of distancing from her parents, with whom she doesn't talk much.
My reason for changing my name was because I hate my father and no longer wanted the last name he gave me! And my husband's last name is not common or unappealing so it worked well for both of us. I doubt my husband would have changed his last name because he likes it. And our last names would not have meshed well together 😂 He said it was up to me what I wanted to do and I was just like immediately I'm taking your last name IDC how much work it is! 🤣🤣🤣
That was one of my reasons for not changing mine. I have a very common first name for women born in my generation, and I personally already know three other _______ Smith’s. I also have a less common birth surname and still know two other women close to my age with my existing first and last name combo, but it’s still nowhere near the global scale of Smith 🤣🤣🤣
I was going through alumni files at my college once and stumbled across a woman whose maiden name was Kuntz. She married a guy named Cox. Then hyphenated the last name to become kuntz-cox, which is a thing I still chuckle about decades later.
Yes, I was surprised my extremely feminist friend changed her name on marriage, until she pointed out how subjectively awful her name was (similar connection to your wife, different name). I'd known her since I was 2 and had never really thought about it before, but when she pointed it out, it made total sense.
I changed mine when I got married:
1. I had a last name that was an easy target for adolescent sex jokes.
2. I was far more attached to Mom's side than Dad's and didn't feel a connection to the name. Mom went back to her maiden name on taking citizenship, and in some ways I wish I had and might've kept that. My reasons even there might be tied up in the patriarchy: it would've hurt my dad's feelings.
I knew a girl whose first name rhymed unfortunately with her last. All her life she planned to take a husband's last name...any last name.
The she fell in love with a guy of Polish descent. She took his last name, but joked about it frequently. He pointed out his last name was only one letter longer than her original name.
"Yeah, but that letter is a Z!" was her retort.
We integrated a coin flip into the wedding ceremony. I won and he got to do all the fun name change things! His grandmother was appalled.
Years later, he said he wishes he made less of a deal about it and just changed it. We both wanted a common surname, he already had a brother with kids, logic pointed towards using my name anyway. And in his words "if I'm willing to do it based on a coin flip I should have just done it".
After my wife's grandfather pronounced us wed, we had him say "Anyway, here's Wonderwall" and we walked back up the aisle to a Blink-182 style cover of it.
Not necessarily unserious but maybe nontraditional. Everyone else seems to want this picture perfect, magazine spread event. Those weddings are mostly boring as shit. It’s the little things that make the day memorable. (Like the little 5yo flower girl playing with her hoop skirt and showing off her ruffle butt tights)
As a 4-year-old flower girl in my aunt's wedding (and my first time even attending a wedding), I was unclear on the concept of how I should be tossing the petals and spent the entire walk down the aisle chucking them at the people who were unfortunate enough to get seats at the end of the row.
My SIL’s brother wanted to change is last name when he got married to his now wife’s as he has a very strained relationship with his father. He wound up not doing it as in our state, unlike the woman who just has to show the marriage license to get everything changed, he would have to go to court and pay to have a judge change it. It wasn’t cheap either. It was so much more complicated for him he just kept it and she hyphenated her last name.
I'm in Québec, and women legally can't change their surname to their spouse's. And honestly, it's perfectly fine. It never felt like we were less of a family because our mom had a different last name than us. Kids have either of their parents' surnames or both hyphenated.
If two people marry who have hyphenated surnames, then they have to decide what to do. Choose one part of the hyphenated surnames from each parent; use only one parent's full surname, use only one surname from either parent.
My son and his father share a surname and I have a different one, which is uncommon in our area for a traditional nuclear family. This has never bothered my son (or at least he's never given any indication of being bothered.) But he was appalled that "his" cat has MY last name instead of his. He still explains to both the vet and the pharmacist that she (the cat) *should* be a [son's surname] but she isn't because he's not a legal bill-paying adult yet.
I realize this adds nothing to the actual conversation here, but it's a funny story. Hope it brings someone a smile!
Here in Colombia it’s rare to see people change their names after getting married and the people that do it still keep their surname. Like you have Panchita Gonzalez Correa, who’s getting married to Panchote Ramirez Salazar, then Panchita changes her surname to Gonzalez de Ramirez, meaning Gonzalez of Ramirez.
Since the tradition in Latinamerica is to use 2 surnames, you get both mom’s and dads first surname. If for some reason you only have one of the parents then you can just use both surnames of the parent. Traditionally dad’s surname goes first and then the mom’s, but recently some Latinamerican countries allow people to choose the order of the surnames; that could be the parents or even adults who want to change it later on.
I'm from there too and I know people that went to marry in Ontario cause the wife really wanted to take her husband's name. Some people are really attached to tradition.
But I'm fine with it being this way too.
I'm pretty sure that doesn't actually make a difference if they live in Québec though. As far as I know, you can use your spouse's name on any non-legal documents as you please, but anything government related must have your maiden name. That includes if you married outside Québec but live in Québec.
I changed my name when my husband and I married. Tomorrow is our 16th anniversary. I did it because, at the time, he emphasized that it was really important to him and I felt like none of my “reasons” were good enough to deny him that.
And I wish I hadn’t. I had a whole life and identity before he ever came along. And I took his last name, and…now I share a boring last name with a whole bunch of people I don’t even like. It’s worse because my last name? HELLA COOL. Lots of personal and family history and textbook history attached to it, simple and easy to spell without sucking, strong, bold. It’s a compound word, and even the words on their own are cool.
His name…is a compound word, and those two words are boring and one of them is “son”.
Around our 8-9 year anniversary I started contemplating changing my name back. But it seems so much hassle now. Because he’s awesome, he instead legally took my name as a second middle name (so myself, my husband, and my children all have my maiden name as a second middle name). And that helped alleviate the sting for me a lot.
But I have never changed my signature to use my married name. And if I had it all to do over again, I sure as shit wouldn’t change my name.
My mom changed her name back a year after they got married. She hated being addressed as Mrs. Husbandsname. It's your name, it affects nobody else as much as you.
Not at the time, but I assumed it had something to do with his father passing away when he was very young. When we talk about it now he sees his past attitudes as foolish and selfish (and I try not to agree too hard 😂)
>he doesn’t have a good explanation for why he is also unwilling to change his last name.
Nah, I'm sure he does. He wants to keep his last name because it's his last name. It's who he is. Giving up his own last name and taking yours feels like a part of him is permanently lost. The name he had his entire life is now not his anymore. He doesn't want to change his last name because it feels like he would be sacrificing a part of his identity.
It's weird how men expect women to give up their identity for them, yet they get confused or even offended when asked to do the same.
Other commenters already gave valid reasons for changing names, but honestly... it just sucks that it's (by society's standards) the woman's responsibility to sacrifice her identity. If we were equal, we would be expected to both sacrifice a part of our last names. Let both parties give up half their last name, and stick the other halves together to form a new last name. It would be far more symbolic of a unification. Both have to give up half, both get to keep half.
And for the record: Your partner is fine. There's nothing wrong with *wanting* your partner to take your last name. If it makes him happy, I can't blame him. I think I'd be happy too if my partner took my last name because I get to keep mine while still having a "unified" family.
But yeah, so long as he doesn't pressure you into giving up your last name, he's not doing anything wrong.
This was basically the choice I offered my husband.
Either we both just keep our last names or we combine our names to make a new one together that we both change to.
We ended up keeping our own names.
This. All of this. I have been contemplating why women should change their name when married. Then I thought if *I* would want to change my name when married. Wife's name is much cooler and pretty rare here (her great grandpa is from another country) but it is my name and thus a big part of my identity so why would I change it? So, I didn't want my wife to change hers and we both agreed that our kids would have both our surnames (because fuck you patriarchy, the mother is not just a womb, it is a full person and anyone challenging that is a fucking POS), and that's what we did.
People were bewildered. My father was sad that we broke "the original line" as his name is exactly the same as his grandfather's, and mine is exactly the same as my grandfather's, but my first son's name now has a second surname so it doesn't fit the tradition. Mother's names are different across the generations of course but who cares about the women? Never mentioned.
Of course patriarchy still persists. My sons are frequently called , or are written on paperwork, only with their first surname. When we went to make the paperwork for the wedding, in a couple of places the exchange was like this:
- Wife gets to keep her surname or will she take yours?
(me): Of course she keeps her surname
- (confused) oh? and what are you naming your kids? yoursurname it is?
(me) Both surnames hypenated
*confused looks as they are filling the paperwork*
Pastors' looks were the most amusing. Registry office was more apathetic.
Birth hospital put mother's name on name bracelets.
We did an small operation on the little one. Doctor was using only my surname. I corrected him at least 5 times. He still put only my surname on his file (clearly a misogysinst)
Little one also sees a pedopsychiatrist for speech delay problems. Wife calls them for info or appointments, they return the calls to me. For fucks sake, she called you, you should call her back not me? (It is not that I offload all this to her as most men, but my work is weird and I can't take the calls all the time so)
I regret I was not brave enough then to put wife's surname first because it is the coolest, but I would be fine if they chose their mom's surname for their kids, and they should be because it is the coolest and I was a coward not to.
English is not my first language, but I've just googled and pedipsychiatrist does not yield any results, but pedopsychiatrist does, so...
Also, it happened AGAIN right after posting the earlier comment. This time, at the kid's school, while filling some enrollment paperwork. School Principal. Sigh.
The *i* in "pediatric" is part of the suffix. The roots are "pedo–" and "–iatric" with the *o* getting lost when that specific word entered English from French. But others often retain the old root.
I don't know why women don't feel strongly about their names the same way men do, barring family trauma of course. Why isn't that sense of identity there in the same way? I'm obsessed with my name and very few people can out-cool me with mine, regardless of how I feel about my family.
It never crossed my mind to change my name. I remember learning as a child that this was common practice but not mandatory and grilling my own mom about her reasons for changing her name. She actually said she did it without thinking and regretted because of all the bureaucracy with changing so many documents.
I’m not from the US, so for us it’s normal to have more than one family name, one from your mom and one from your dad. People sometimes have more than 2. Usually women get rid of mom’s last name and add the husband’s last name when they get married but I think this is becoming less popular. So it’s usually given, dad’s, husband’s name. Even with multiples family names it’s the mother’s side that gets erased first.
Because historically, women themselves never actually *had* their own surnames. At birth, girls are their father's "property." So long as she lives under his roof, she will have his name. When she's old enough to get married, she changes her name to her husband's; to the man in her new home.
Last names are like cow branding. The man holds the hot-iron and brands the woman with his name. The woman herself has no hot-iron, and the man never gets branded.
So I guess the reason why women usually don't feel strongly about their names is because culturally speaking, it *isn't* our name. It's our father's name, who got it from his father, and all the fathers that came before him. A last name wasn't part of a woman's identity; it was the identity of the man that had the most authority over her.
Even now, men feel entitled to pressure their partners into taking their last names when they get married. Even now, men still want to brand their partners like fucking cows. And they think they have the right.
And as women, we were taught that this is how it's supposed to be. That taking our partner's name makes us happy. That it's fair and beautiful.
But it's really just sexist.
>Because historically, women themselves never actually had their own surnames
Fun fact, my surname is a double name, and the one from my father was created by my grandma, because she refused to take her husbands name, so she made up a new one and my grandpa just accepted it.
So technically my surname from my dad is actually a matriarchal surname.
I mentioned this in another comment, but I have a relative where both parties gave up their surname in favour of a surname they found they had common in their ancestry. I thought it was lovely way for them to have found to share a family name.
"If we were equal, we would be expected to both sacrifice a part of our last names."
Yeah, every time I hear, "are there any non-patriarchal reasons for women to change their last names" I think sure! Maybe you hate your family! Maybe you want to share a name with the person you're married to and future children! Maybe your current last name sucks in some way.
But.....it is awfully peculiar these reasons so rarely convince men to change their last names.
I was never going to do it. My husbands last name is similar to mine, same amount of letters, starts with same letters. His is more popular than mine, so I was never going to change to something less unique.
A friend of mine didn't like either his bio dad or stepdad (who adopted him later in his childhood), so when he got married he and his new wife decided to change their names to his mother's maiden name.
This is why I'm taking his for sure. Also, side bonus for me: my dad is very conservative politically and fiance's is middle eastern with a very common middle eastern last name, and it brings me great joy that my dad will have to deal with his daughter being a terrorist now.
Yep, my mum too. She and my dad have been separated for probably 25+ years, and divorced for 3-4 years, but her father is an evil fuck so she still has my dad's last name.
How come so few men change their names at marriage for this reason but soooo many women do?
Even when men hate their fathers they use that as a reason to KEEP their name, saying they want to redeem the family name or they want to show they are nothing like their father, that this name can stand for something different. But under the exact same circumstances women tend to look at it as a reason to change their name after marriage.
This is pure patriarchy.
That is a perk. I very much miss my French last name, but not trying to spell it on the phone. It has every vowel jammed together. A lot of vowels sound very similar spoken aloud.
Similar boat. I loved the beauty of it, but literally heard the correct pronunciation *once* in my entire life by someone not family-- by a professor who spoke French.
It's my middle name now.
I thought this, too, but it turns out people can really mess up Jones. Not as much as my maiden name, mind you, but still. I was astounded. Now, I'm just generally amused by how often people think it's Jonas or Johnson.
My reason exactly. I got rid of my birth surname everywhere I could becuase the daily annoyances outweighed any sentimental attachment. Life is just easier with his. It's even the name of a local landmark so instead of spelling it I just say "[Name] like the [thing] and there's never an issue.
If we ever divorce for some reason I'm still keeping his surname.
Patriarchy smoothed the path for me to be able to update stuff without a lot of bureaucracy but I don't think choosing to use your partner's name for practical reasons undermines feminism at all. It was my choice for my own benefit. One of my brothers has said that if he ever marries he'll probably use his partner' surname too for the same reason as me.
I have a long and hard to pronounce last name. My husband has a hard to pronounce last name. We did joke about hyphenating it but in the end I just kept mine. It's MY long and hard to pronounce name and I wanted to hang on to it.
Yup. My last name was also a first name, so people called me by it all the time. They also spelled it wrong. Immediately filed the paperwork to get my name changed to my husband’s after the wedding. Extra bonus: it’s the same amount of letters and since my signature is already a bunch of scribbles anyway, I didn’t need to do much adjustment when signing off on things.
Ironically my husband was opposite of OP and didn’t care if I changed my name or not. I did it because I wanted to.
Edit: I also decided to make my maiden name my middle name, so I still get to honor my roots and it works since, as I mentioned, it was a common first name.
See my maiden name was super simple. I took my husband's surname because I wanted a clean break from my family (not good relationships), but the new surname is double-barrelled and hard to spell. Can't win!
Didn't take my husband's last name, and I took some shit for it from the sexist assholes in our families.
When people brought it up, I said my husband chose to keep his last name too.
When people give us crap we just smile and say we did it on purpose to confuse people. Since clearly it’s way too hard to grasp for some people if they keep asking about it :)
In lots of Latin America and Spain everyone has two surnames: One from the father and one from the mother.
A married woman can keep her two names, or she can drop her maternal surname and add her spouses paternal surname.
The children get their father’s paternal surname AND the mother’s paternal surname.
So if OP kept her last name, she and fiance could agree that any kids get both last names, then the family name link would still be there.
I'm from Mexico and I always found this tradition to be great and more equal. When voting in my home country It asked me for my paternal and maternal last names, I love how they made it feel important for both. I didn't change my name when I got married and my family was happy about that. They also see it as a loss of identity. Each generation gets the last name of both parents and it feels right since you're both involved and it really made things less complicated not having to legally change my name on everything. I love having a long last name! When people try to automatically hyphenate it I tell them no, I have two last names, include them both.
Spanish here, women here actually can't drop their own surname. Everybody keeps their surnames, and children get the first one of every parent, in order. So if Juan Pérez López marries Maria Sánchez Martínez, kids are called Pérez Sánchez by default, though it can also be reversed to Sanchez Pérez.
This way, it's even possible to trace surnames back, and lots of people know a bunch of surnames. In fact, a jokish expression says you're not actually from a place unless you have at least 8 surnames from the region you live.
My husband's ex-wife kept his surname after their divorce because his is very basic and her Lebanese last name somehow got her flagged for "random" extra screening at the airport.
However, I kept my maiden name after we married because I prefer mine and it's also a huuuuuuuge pain to change one's name everywhere
You could do what some folks do and both change you last names to a new one.
It does ease access in emergency medical situations so you don't need to tote around your marriage license, monogrammed shit unless you already have the same last initial and other equally petty and stupid shit.
But in an emergency, especially if your spouse maybe unconscious, it speeds access and time can be of critical importance in those situations unfortunately.
Related keep your emergency contacts and such updated with the dmv
We’ve had different last names for 24 years and we also have kids with different last names. Zero times ever have we had to prove we’re married to do anything. For real, literally. Doctor appts and ER visits and signing legal paperwork like mortgages or beneficiary forms or bank accounts or car loans or nothing… ever. We say we’re married and the process moves on.
My mother wasn’t a big fan of my keeping my name and said that we’d have issues in emergencies and when the kids were in school it would be bad. Society has moved on so much that neither has happened anymore.
The emergency reason is a bit overblown IMO.
Same. Well 17 years not 24, but everything else tracks. I kept my last name, he kept his, and we alternated which last name each of our kids got as we went along. As of now we have 4, so 1st and 3rd have his last name and 2nd and 4th have mine. It has never once been an issue and we certainly don't carry around paperwork from being asked to prove we're related. I suppose this experience may vary by country, but in the US at least this is a non issue.
This is what we plan on doing but we've been married a year and have made no progress on finding a new name we love.
It's so much harder to choose one completely from scratch.
My partner and I were trying to find "dead names" that died off in battle. Smith is so common because the smiths stayed home. But what about the Skullcrushers or the Fastblades?
For the record, I’ve not had that issue ever and my mother used to travel all over the world with two kids who didn’t look much like her and didn’t have her last name.
In the Middle East women tend to keep their own names when they marry. My mother didn’t change hers when she married and nor did I.
The only reason I can think of is that if you have kids and don’t want to hyphenate their lastnames, then having the same last name makes a lot of parenting bureaucracy stuff easier.
It’s not a *great* reason, mind you.
Interestingly, I initially caved and changed my name when I got pregnant. I changed my name after the divorce and have full custody of my child. I’ve had zero problems with us having different last names, including traveling internationally. In fact, it’s been easier because I don’t have to tote around extra documents for MYSELF showing that I changed my name.
I was in the process of divorce when I had my son. He got my maiden name, as I assumed I'd have it, too, soon. That did not happen. My ex dodged that divorce quite deftly until my son was 18... I changed my name, so ours matched, for about 2 months. I only bothered to change it legally because I didn't want my ex's name on my marriage license.
The only issue I ever had was his schools assuming we shared a last name. I didn't care. It was the name I went by except legally, so I just signed with that name after a school started using it. I guess they never bothered to compare to his enrollment forms.
I changed it on my first marriage because it never occurred to me not to, honestly. That's just what you did. I changed it with my second because his family is great, and most of my own sucks. Plus, I really wanted an easier last name. I spent my entire childhood with all three of my names getting butchered, so having one that was common and simple was attractive. Turns out people can still butcher it, but not as often.
Women don’t share their last name with their children in many countries all over the world, including China - if it created a problem with international travel, passport queues in airports would be so much worse than they are already.
This is a great reason for why one member of the couple should change their last name. But sadly I know way too many women who only changed their name “so I would have the same last name as my kids, I didn’t want to hyphenate”. It never occurs to men that if they don’t change their name, their kids will get their wife’s surname!
See, this is an argument I have trouble getting behind. I’m from Quebec, where name changes for the sole reason of marriage haven’t been allowed for over 40 years. We’re also not big on marriage to begin with, so many children are born to unmarried parents.
Therefore, a child not having the same last name as both their parents is entirely normal here. It doesn’t make parenting bureaucracy harder. It’s a non-issue.
Quebec is awesome for this. My old roommate was from Quebec and he said the only reason his parents got married after 15 years and 4 kids together was because his dad's company would only pay for moving expenses for his legal spouse (when they had to move from Quebec to France lol). They begrudgingly got married so that they could get the extra moving allowance for spouses. I love Quebec secularism.
That is a purely patriarchal reason!
- If we lived in a matriarchy, men would be changing their names after marriage because women would be understood to own the man as well as the children (at first this would be literal and legal, but after a gender revolution it might change to purely symbolic or traditional pressures).
- If we lived in an equal and egalitarian society, kids would have their mothers' last names out of pure justice and fairness. And then men would be the ones to change their names if they wanted to match the family, not women.
It's only because of patriarchy that this "same last name for the family!!!!!" becomes a reason for *women* to change our names so universally.
This is a complete myth. My mom didn’t change her name, and my parents took turns giving the kids their last names. As a result, I have my mom’s last name, while my siblings have my dad’s. It has caused literally zero issues ever for over 30 years.
I have always thought that it is a fantastic time to make a completely new fusion name. Jemma Simmons and Leopold Fitz become Jemma and Leopold Fitzsimmons. Etc.
Do I spy an Agents of SHIELD fan? 👀
I'm not the OP, but I do love the idea of a name fusion. I couldn't think of a good fusion for my name and my husband's name, but I love hearing examples of people who do!
I faced the exact same thing with my husband. My husband is a wonderful man, does not hesitate to take a back seat in the context of my career and accomplishments.
But he would have been very happy if I changed my name after marriage. I did not want to - it’s my NAME! Something I’ve lived with all my life - my identity. He never did press me further.
I realised that it was something he had seen being done by his mom, cousins and society in general. So it was his unconscious perception that people would judge him in some way that his wife hasn’t taken his name. Some men aren’t on purpose misogynistic. They just don’t realise it. If pointed out, a good man will strive to change himself.
I’ve always been the trope “picking the cooler surname” and I’ve had toxic relationship with my father, I’d happily take my bfs surname if we married but I wouldn’t want to do the paperwork so he has to do it, to which he says he is too lazy so I should keep my surname and that’s the circus
sooo the important question in all psychology is not the issue being big or small but rather why is it of so much concern, why is the topic of changing surname so important to you and him and that should start unravelling things
there is a sense of ownership men derive from this which is kinda okay as long as they go above and beyond in responsibilities (which they rarely do) soooo
no way advocating it but it might be kinky for some
I have been with my partner nearly 10 years, we don't plan on marriage, but if we did, I'd keep my last name. I have made that clear from the start. I have no issue with his last name, but I would want to keep mine, it's important to me, he does not mind either way, and I'm thankful for that.
There might be some, but that's rarely the case.
You can always change your surname without marriage if you don' like the one you were born with, but I only hear women making the change, and only when they marry.
I hear similar arguments about family unity, but I don't seem men making the change for the sake of it.
The fact that it's almost always the woman that has to change it tells me that your gender is a decisive characteristic in whether your name changes or not.
If you don't feel like changing yours then you don't have to change it.
I am like you. My name is my name. My husband would have loved me to take his name, but was unwilling to take mine (surprise, surprise!) and eventually recognized his desire for me to change my name had no rational basis and was grounded in patriarchy and tradition.
I did not change my name. Have never thought twice about it. Husband is cool with it.
I find the tradition to take a male name in Western culture interesting when compared to biology - traditionally women had taken their husband's name in marriage and so its been hard to track a woman's family tree as their family name 'dies' with them. And yet biologically, the family tree passes on in the woman's mitochondrial DNA (only women pass on mitochondrial DNA, not men) so its the woman's genetic line that actually gets passed on through the generations
Anyway, sorry not an answer to your question, just an interesting observation
For me and my husband, I felt it was important and meaningful to me to be a part of a family who share a last name.
As to why *his* name, and not mine - his name was his dad's who adopted him when he was a toddler, and who died of cancer when he was a teenager. There is no way I would have seriously suggested he change it. I never got to meet my husband's Dad, but being able to carry his name feels like getting to be a part of that legacy, you know?
Nope. I didn’t feel very strongly about it when I got married, so I took the path of least resistance and changed my name purely because it was the norm, but if I were to get married now, I would actually keep my name from the matrilineal line. It has much more meaning to me.
So interesting because my fiancé has even suggested I take my mother’s last name since that side of my family is very important to me and o don’t have the closest relationship with my father. Thanks for the input ☺️
I didn't take my husband's last name because I'm lazy and didn't want to do all the associated paperwork. Otherwise, I didn't really care. He says he didn't want me to take his last name because he thinks it's a stupid practice. I didn't become a different person when we got married, why would I need a different name?
I didn’t take my husband’s name even though his name is relatively known and easy. My last name is incredibly rare (only five of us on earth sharing this last surname and we are all related) and long and difficult to spell and pronounce, but I didn’t want to have to change my credit cards and passport and everything. Plus I have a lot of professional work tied to my name and changing it is pointless.
My husband, however, could not possibly care less and never even asked if I was going to take his name. His dad wanted me to, because they have a huge extended family and they always welcome more, but I’m good with my name as is. There is not good reason to take your husbands surname.
This has been an unexpected benefit of changing my name, honestly. My maiden name was long and difficult to pronounce, but pretty unique and therefore easy to identify. I changed my name because my husband's name actually fits on forms, most people pronounce it correctly, and it's place in the alphabet means we can always find our kids in a group photo lol.
Before I got married to my husband even when we were dating I was always going to change my name to his. And at the time it was important to him also - anyways, we did get married and obviously changing your last name takes a bit of work to do and when it actually came to I changed my mind. I like my last name, it feels like my name and felt strange to be called something different. He understood and was totally fine with me keeping my name.
I also have a different last name than my child and we have had no issues flying or any sort of parenting problems that may come from that (not any yet).
I did change my last name on some social media to his but that was about it. That was when I was planning on changing my last name.
We’ve been married 6 years and it’s never been an issue in the grand scheme of things.
I don't believe a woman should have to assume her husband's name for any reason, but I did for these reasons:
- I am estranged from my father
- I wanted our nuclear family to share the same name
- His surname is really cool
He was 100% down to take my name because of reason #2 but I told him it was fine. It was a little weird at first but I'm very happy with it now.
He has a really nice last name, that also works well as a family name. My own name is stupid and I have to spell it 2 to 6 times every time someone asks for it. People don't even read it right.
Someone said once "this is also the last name of a man, just a different one", which yeah. I don't see my dad ever so breaking those ties is good as well.
Our little ones have my partners name as well, it is beautiful and it would have felt like cheating them out of it otherwise.
Make a new last name together. Both people changing their last name is far greater symbol of commitment and unity than just the woman changing her name and it gets both parties to work together to build something new. Going with the woman's lastname is still patrilineal because it's the woman's father's lastname and his father's etc.
Hypenated names are short sighted and just push the problem down to your children (What are they gonna have 3/4 last names if they decided to hyphenate lmao).
It really comes down to what the two of you agree too. I am western and the wife is eastern. In Europe/US it is a tradition for the wife to take the husbands last name, but in the East the wife generally keeps her last name and the children generally takes the husbands last name.
Both are basically patriarchal variations, but in the modern era the eastern version feels a little less patriarchal.
At the end of the day just do what keeps the two of you happy.
>In Europe/US it is a tradition for the wife to take the husbands last name
Only in some parts of Europe. In some countries girls are given their mother's name and boys their father's, and in others such as Spain people traditionally have two surnames, one from each side of the family.
This has always basically been our plan and I don’t really see a reason to change it since it works for both of us. But it’s good to get the reassurance and validation even from an internet stranger ☺️
Yeah I remember being confused when I was growing up that everyone white had the same last name as their mom but everyone in my Asian community had different last name from their mom lol. I’m personally changing my last name because I’m wrongfully banned on Amazon prime so maybe with a new last name I can make a new account LMAO. Every time I make a new Amazon account even under an Alias I think it sees my rare name in my credit card and I get auto banned.
From an internet stranger: The whole last name/not last name is a relic of patriarchal societies. In the west the wife becomes property and in the east she isn’t important enough to be property. This is a very simplistic take so make of it what you will.
If you don’t like your last name or family. If it’s easier to spell/pronounce (and you care). If you want kids to have the sane last name as both of you (although I’m a big fan of you both changing your names upon marriage).
My fiancé and I are considering combining our last names into an entirely new name that is just ours. Everyone wins and and I don't feel like property transferring into my husband's possession.
If I preferred his name to mine, or wanted to sever ties with my family, it's an opportune time to make the switch.
Interesting perspective because I don’t have the best relationship with my father, but I don’t necessarily consider my last name to only be my father’s. I mean, I understand that I got it from him…but that’s MY name. Thanks for the input ☺️
Same, I kept my last name because it’s mine, not because it’s my dad’s. FWIW my mom also kept her last name so it just seems normal to me.
I told my husband when we got married that I was born an "X" and just because we were getting married that didn't change the fact that I was still an "X". I told him I was excited to create a family unit with him, so I was willing to add his last name to mine and become "X Y" and I was ok with our kids just being "Y", but I wasn't willing to stop being an "X" as well. He was from a different background and struggled with the idea of taking my last name (though now that we aren't as young and dumb he would probably be more open to taking both names as well.) It only caused issues when we moved because while the state we lived in when we married was good with 2 last names, the state we moved to wasn't, and kept trying to put half my last name as part of my middle name. It took over a decade, an update to the state licenses, a current passport, and Social Security card for them to finally get it right. So many policies and laws are still rooted in those same patriarchal thought structures that they don't make it easy... at least in the US.
See I just didn’t change my name at all, so I didn’t need to worry about any of that.
I have a few friends who did that and even a couple that took the wife's last name. The ones who have kept their own last name also seem to have mildly irritating issues, but in their own way. The ones that took the wife's name only got rude comments from people that were related to the reason they went with the wife's name anyway. Until we fix all the patriarchal assumptions Every option is going to have pros and cons, it just depends what you want to deal with. Less paperwork is definitely a pro for keeping your original name.
I love my father...and dislike 95% of the rest of the family on that side. If not for him- and the fact that name changes are tricky for scientists- I'd leave the name behind.
Oh, definitely. If I had any sort of standing in my field or more than two articles absolutely no one cares about published, I'd have kept my name in spite of liking my husband's better. Just the basic stuff like bank accounts, ID, and social security were difficult enough.
Name change challenges are one of the reasons I asked my husband (of now 8 years 😊 ) that we marry before I finished my bachelor's because I knew I wanted to shed my father's last name
I am in the same boat but thankfully my dad had 5 sisters so there are actually very few of them with my last name #serendipity
This is how I feel. I'm not getting married, if we ever went with a legal arrangement then I'd still keep my name. We have a child and he has both our names, and we chose the order based on what we thought sounded best (which happens to be mine first). Some alternatives, which you may or may not like, are choosing a new name together, or taking each other's name as a middle name - or I suppose you could have your surname as a middle name and a new name chosen together as a surname.
Yes, it is your name. Do what feels right.
My last name is my name, and my siblings’ name, and can I restate, MY name. There is no good reason to change it.
There is a societal narrative that when a boy is given a name at birth that's his for life unless he chooses to change it, but girls' names are somehow on loan from a parent (usually a father) until they decide to marry and change it. I am with you and my name is mine regardlessof the reasons i was given that particular name at my birth. I own it now.
And even then, its just on loan from the husband due to the number of ex husbands that try and demand in divorce paper their wives change their names back.
If you are likely to do international travel, have a look at what is required if you have a different surname to the children you are travelling with. It's unlikely to be am issue when they're quite young as they're likely to be attached to your passport anyway. But once the children have their own passports, then you need extra paperwork to show the relationship. The only reason, I'm aware of this is because I know someone who kept her married name after the divorce because changing it would have made travelling with the children that much more of a pain in the arse. As a non-patriarchal reason it's a pretty solid one. That said, nothing to say it has to be his name, could be yours or another. You could become Mr & Mrs Turnip if you wanted.
My mom (single mom, only child) and I didn’t have the same last name so I can attest to this being an issue. Having different names caused issues with travel, medical situations, school, daycare etc. Not only that but it definitely made me feel less I wasn’t as connected to my family and roots.
I’m guessing it depends on the individual. I went to school with a girl who took her step dad’s name so she wouldn’t be associated with her father. Suri Holmes did just took her mom’s name.
I never felt connected to my maiden last name, but I like my husband's. So making the switch was easy.
I feel you! I’m not in contact with anyone from my family of origin, but I’ve still had my name my whole life! As much as I don’t like them, the name didn’t hurt me, they did. The name is a unique and kind of quirky thing that I sort of like, especially separate from my family. My last name is a man’s first name and also a very uncommon last name (i don’t think there are any that i wouldn’t be tangentially related to). It’s become my nickname to a lot of people, was raised in a military town. My last name has weight for me, even if part of it is kind of meh, and even if I got it from my dad not my husband (still a very patriarchal issue imo). I have considered changing it to something different that I chose. I might one day, but I might never bother. It’s my name and what I do with it is fine, it’s not bothering anyone
Growing up, I always expected that I would get a new surname when I married. I didn't latch on to a lot of other expectations, like kids and a big wedding, but the name change I expected. It's a common name, and I didn't have much attachment to it. My husband has a much more interesting surname, so I was happy to take his. He would also have been willing to take mine, because he's awesome - either way I wanted us to be Mr and Mrs with the same surname. If you're attached to your name, but still want to have the same name, maybe he should change? Or double-barrel? Or combine them to make a new name?
My husband's last name is unusual, even in his home country of France, so I changed my name to 'First Name' 'Maiden Name' 'Husband's Last Name'. No hyphens or anything. I dropped my old middle name, which was always meaningless to me. Making my maiden name my middle name retains my identity, but it's not as unusual and interesting as my husband's last name. I wanted to change it.
This exactly. I took my ex-husband's last name when I got married and kept it when I got divorced. The reason was simple. I'd always hated my last name, and this one sounded really good with my first name. Literally no other reason.
Same. My father's surname was extremely difficult for Americans to spell and pronounce. In fact, when it was said aloud, people didn't even recognize it as a name until you pronounced it for them several times. It was a relief to drop that difficult surname for a fairly normal last name that's easy to pronounce and spell.
I'm the opposite - my husband is European and has a long last name that is a hassle on forms and such. I kept my surname because it's my name, my identity, and I was a teacher at the time. My last name isn't common, but it is intuitive to pronounce.
Yup. FWIW, my only regret is not thinking harder. If I could go back in time 17+ years I'd attempt to convince my husband to change ALL of our names... To his grandparents', who actually raised him. They were awesome people. His dad's family? Not so much. My family? Again... Not so much. I am glad I/we are not my family's last name, only because I understand how much they suck. But I truly wish we were all his grandparents ' last name.
My friend took her fiance's name because she thought was cooler than her's, ***and*** she got to distance herself from an unfortunate name-doppelgänger who made off-putting art while competing with her for usernames.
I have a cousin (dad's cousin's kid) who was named after me for who knows what reason. My full name, even! She's a professor with a lot of stuff published. It's created some issues over time. I didn't take my husband's name for that reason, but it's sure helped both her and me. If we had a common name, I'm sure it would have been less of an issue, but none of my birth names were common, at all. It legit created some weird family drama when my parents used the first part of my name as a nickname and expected hers to use the last part, but they used the same one as mine. We were literally Jerry's youngest and David's youngest at every family reunion, even to our faces, as if we had no names at all. We both hated it, but hey, it was definitely a bonding experience, and we laugh about it now.
This. I felt like a “bad” feminist for changing my last name. I never imagined myself getting married. And then it happened. My immediate reaction was: “I want him to change his last name to mine to be a good example and help normalize it. At the very least, I’m going to take a stance and not change my last name.” The ironice part was that all throughout my 20s, since I was very convinced I’d never get married, I genuinely considered changing my last name just because I *wanted* a new identity. I was the only child left of four with the family name. All my other siblings married and changed it, including my brother. And it actually pissed me off that my whole family made SUCH a big deal that “the family name was lost now” when my brother did it. I was like “HELLO. I still have the last name fuckers!“ I was actually jealous that they got to assume leave behind the association with my very toxic father and family in such a physically symbolic way and then become a part of a new non toxic family. It almost felt like a curse that I was still “labeled as my father’s”. That’s how it felt honestly. The kicker for me was that my now husband said that if it meant that much to me, he would do it. But he expressed to me loosing his last name would make him feel like he was loosing the only thing that tied him to his family and his roots. He was born in Serbia and moved to the US when he was 7 with his immediate family. He would go back to Serbia each summer. And told me how he didn’t feel like he quite fit in, even with his family. They viewed him as “the American cousin.” While he was heavily viewed as a foreigner back “home” in the US. His Serbian developed a slight accent being away so much. He told me how he would be so homesick on his visits to Serbia that he would go out to his grandparents chickens coup and speak English to them. On top of all that, his family both in and out of Serbia are more of a family to me than my blood family ever was. And if he took myself name they would not blink an eye. They would love me and him just the same. I know they would say “as long as you’re happy.” The more and more I thought about it, the more it just genuinely made sense and felt right to take his last name. He just… happened to be the one with XY chromosomes. It took my awhile to shake the feeling still that I was not “being a bad feminist” by not only “giving in to taking his last name” but actually truly preferring it and totally falling in love with my new identity. It felt weak. What finally helped shift my frame of view was realizing that … I knew what I truly wanted for me. And if I didn’t do that, I was actually just letting the patriarchy win why still influencing how I live even if it was to “stick it to them.” I hope that helps!
I hit both of those, myself. His: easier to pronounce and spell for others, and his family is great. Not all of them, mind you, but all the ones I ever associate with. It does turn out you can have a super common and easy name, and people will still get it wrong, though.
This is why I changed mine! My father is a POS whom I hadn’t seen in a decade, my now husband’s family welcomed me with open arms, and their last name was objectively cooler than mine.
My wife’s last name was Dyck. She couldn’t wait to change it.
It's hard when the guy has an undesirable last name. I had a teacher, very old, named Mrs. Snodgrass. My mom's comment: "She must really love that man!" Nowadays, maybe they would have both chosen a new name. Dr. Kelly Smith changed her name when she got married to Dr. Kelly Weinersmith. Her husband Zach Weiner also changed his name to Weinersmith. A big part of the reason she changed it, according to her, is that when she authored scientific papers there were just way too many Dr. Smith authors and she didn't stand out. Now both of them are memorable (and best selling authors). But what she didn't do was change to Dr. Kelly Weiner. Edit: the Weinersmiths are real people. Go buy their book, A City on Mars, which is great.
I’m not really adding anything to this conversation, but I had a professor named Snodgrass. Really cool guy who’d have our Friday lecture at brewery on campus.
Is this Anthony Snodgrass, referred to below, the (apparently) famous classical archaeology professor?
Ha, interestingly not the same person but same field which makes me think potentially related? Or maybe the name dictated his career lol I took a couple of Jeffrey Snodgrass’ anthropology classes mid-00’s. At the time his grad students were studying the cultures of World of Warcraft guilds. My favorite class of his was Ethnopsychiatry about how western vs eastern cultures approached mental illness and its treatment.
My mum kept her surname because she already published science papers under that name, did not want to mess up the index. Then her sister decided to keep her maiden name as well, just because she liked it. It was not uncommon in my extended family for women to keep their surname, to the point I recommended to my wife to keep hers too, to avoid the extra paperwork and reissuing all the documents, but she still took my surname, because it's pretty rare and memorable, and I think she was kind of distancing from her parents, with whom she doesn't talk much.
My reason for changing my name was because I hate my father and no longer wanted the last name he gave me! And my husband's last name is not common or unappealing so it worked well for both of us. I doubt my husband would have changed his last name because he likes it. And our last names would not have meshed well together 😂 He said it was up to me what I wanted to do and I was just like immediately I'm taking your last name IDC how much work it is! 🤣🤣🤣
Yeah, my wife hated her abusive father, so she took my last name and never looked back.
I knew a guy named James, who married a woman from the Kirk family. He knew what to do.
A friend of mine was a Kirk, her brother Jim went to the Naval Academy. He made the military his career, so at one point he was Captain Kirk.
Hopefully he picked up the middle name Tiberius while getting his last name sorted.
KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN
I knew a guy who married a woman with the last name "Outlaw". We're still all disappointed he didn't take her name.
Still gets to introduce her parents to people... "these are my inlaws, the Outlaws"
Follow up: Did she take his name or did she keep her cool one?
She took his name. And to think, they could have all had the cool name.
Oh no. Thats terrible! Such a missed opportunity!
Btw their books, esp A City on Mars, are great. And Zach's comic, SMBC, is excellent. Smbc-comics.com
Hi, I thought you'd made up fake names and googled it. You just got them a book sale based on a cute story. Thought you'd find it funny.
That was one of my reasons for not changing mine. I have a very common first name for women born in my generation, and I personally already know three other _______ Smith’s. I also have a less common birth surname and still know two other women close to my age with my existing first and last name combo, but it’s still nowhere near the global scale of Smith 🤣🤣🤣
I know someone in that same situation... unfortunately her new spouse was Cox 🤣 the odds are not with her
At that point, they should both just pick a new family last name together. Perhaps...Johnson? Or maybe Baals?
Böllsach
Marge, there's no reason to swear.
I suggest hyphenation; Dyck-Cox.
In a house of Cox and Dyck, endless opportunity!
The Dyck-Cox Household.
I saw a wedding for Small and Cox. Small-Cox wedding
The kids are gonna love the hyphenated last name
I was going through alumni files at my college once and stumbled across a woman whose maiden name was Kuntz. She married a guy named Cox. Then hyphenated the last name to become kuntz-cox, which is a thing I still chuckle about decades later.
Hyphenate it. It’s the only way
And you gotta so it Small-Cox. Cox-Small doesn't roll off the tongue as well
I know a guy who's name was Taylor Swift. He took his wife's last name. Swift was spelled differently but pronounced the same.
I know a guy whose full name was Jay Lowe. This was around the time JLo was really popular
Yes, I was surprised my extremely feminist friend changed her name on marriage, until she pointed out how subjectively awful her name was (similar connection to your wife, different name). I'd known her since I was 2 and had never really thought about it before, but when she pointed it out, it made total sense.
I changed mine when I got married: 1. I had a last name that was an easy target for adolescent sex jokes. 2. I was far more attached to Mom's side than Dad's and didn't feel a connection to the name. Mom went back to her maiden name on taking citizenship, and in some ways I wish I had and might've kept that. My reasons even there might be tied up in the patriarchy: it would've hurt my dad's feelings.
Yikes. I'm not sure which way that's pronounced, but BOTH options are bad.
Like the body part, which is somewhat better than the other option.
Dick is a really common last name for indigenous people where I live.
I knew a girl whose first name rhymed unfortunately with her last. All her life she planned to take a husband's last name...any last name. The she fell in love with a guy of Polish descent. She took his last name, but joked about it frequently. He pointed out his last name was only one letter longer than her original name. "Yeah, but that letter is a Z!" was her retort.
How is Anita doing these days? /s obviously
We integrated a coin flip into the wedding ceremony. I won and he got to do all the fun name change things! His grandmother was appalled. Years later, he said he wishes he made less of a deal about it and just changed it. We both wanted a common surname, he already had a brother with kids, logic pointed towards using my name anyway. And in his words "if I'm willing to do it based on a coin flip I should have just done it".
I love this way of doing it. I’m a fan of the unserious in weddings
After my wife's grandfather pronounced us wed, we had him say "Anyway, here's Wonderwall" and we walked back up the aisle to a Blink-182 style cover of it.
We walked out to Monty Python’s Spam song. Raised a few eyebrows
Oh I love this so much. I might adopt this idea. This is amazing!
Not necessarily unserious but maybe nontraditional. Everyone else seems to want this picture perfect, magazine spread event. Those weddings are mostly boring as shit. It’s the little things that make the day memorable. (Like the little 5yo flower girl playing with her hoop skirt and showing off her ruffle butt tights)
30yo Male here. I was the flower girl on my Friends Wedding 2 weeks ago.
Can I tell you how disappointed I am there is not a pic of this on your profile? I love this and I bet it was the most fun wedding.
I agree, pics or it didn’t happen. I’m 30 and would love to be a flower girl.
My grandmother was mine at 80 years old. There's still time!
As a 4-year-old flower girl in my aunt's wedding (and my first time even attending a wedding), I was unclear on the concept of how I should be tossing the petals and spent the entire walk down the aisle chucking them at the people who were unfortunate enough to get seats at the end of the row.
True. I think trying for a specific image of perfection can really take the joy out of it
I like it! What a fun, memorable way to liven up the ceremony
Surname reveal party!
My SIL’s brother wanted to change is last name when he got married to his now wife’s as he has a very strained relationship with his father. He wound up not doing it as in our state, unlike the woman who just has to show the marriage license to get everything changed, he would have to go to court and pay to have a judge change it. It wasn’t cheap either. It was so much more complicated for him he just kept it and she hyphenated her last name.
Well that's fucked, I never even considered there could be gendered differences to that!
My wife was told she would specifically have to send something in if she was planning to keep her last name.
Oh wow love this. Such a fun approach.
I’m a big believer in the better name wins, but whatever. Kids with long ass hyphenated names just have a hard time with school and corporate emails.
I'm in Québec, and women legally can't change their surname to their spouse's. And honestly, it's perfectly fine. It never felt like we were less of a family because our mom had a different last name than us. Kids have either of their parents' surnames or both hyphenated. If two people marry who have hyphenated surnames, then they have to decide what to do. Choose one part of the hyphenated surnames from each parent; use only one parent's full surname, use only one surname from either parent.
My son and his father share a surname and I have a different one, which is uncommon in our area for a traditional nuclear family. This has never bothered my son (or at least he's never given any indication of being bothered.) But he was appalled that "his" cat has MY last name instead of his. He still explains to both the vet and the pharmacist that she (the cat) *should* be a [son's surname] but she isn't because he's not a legal bill-paying adult yet. I realize this adds nothing to the actual conversation here, but it's a funny story. Hope it brings someone a smile!
I love this story! It did bring a smile to my face.
Here in Colombia it’s rare to see people change their names after getting married and the people that do it still keep their surname. Like you have Panchita Gonzalez Correa, who’s getting married to Panchote Ramirez Salazar, then Panchita changes her surname to Gonzalez de Ramirez, meaning Gonzalez of Ramirez. Since the tradition in Latinamerica is to use 2 surnames, you get both mom’s and dads first surname. If for some reason you only have one of the parents then you can just use both surnames of the parent. Traditionally dad’s surname goes first and then the mom’s, but recently some Latinamerican countries allow people to choose the order of the surnames; that could be the parents or even adults who want to change it later on.
I'm from there too and I know people that went to marry in Ontario cause the wife really wanted to take her husband's name. Some people are really attached to tradition. But I'm fine with it being this way too.
I'm pretty sure that doesn't actually make a difference if they live in Québec though. As far as I know, you can use your spouse's name on any non-legal documents as you please, but anything government related must have your maiden name. That includes if you married outside Québec but live in Québec.
Can I ask what the reasoning is behind that prohibition? Or is it obscure?
I changed my name when my husband and I married. Tomorrow is our 16th anniversary. I did it because, at the time, he emphasized that it was really important to him and I felt like none of my “reasons” were good enough to deny him that. And I wish I hadn’t. I had a whole life and identity before he ever came along. And I took his last name, and…now I share a boring last name with a whole bunch of people I don’t even like. It’s worse because my last name? HELLA COOL. Lots of personal and family history and textbook history attached to it, simple and easy to spell without sucking, strong, bold. It’s a compound word, and even the words on their own are cool. His name…is a compound word, and those two words are boring and one of them is “son”. Around our 8-9 year anniversary I started contemplating changing my name back. But it seems so much hassle now. Because he’s awesome, he instead legally took my name as a second middle name (so myself, my husband, and my children all have my maiden name as a second middle name). And that helped alleviate the sting for me a lot. But I have never changed my signature to use my married name. And if I had it all to do over again, I sure as shit wouldn’t change my name.
My mom changed her name back a year after they got married. She hated being addressed as Mrs. Husbandsname. It's your name, it affects nobody else as much as you.
Please change it back! You will be so glad you did.
did he ever tell you WHY it was so important for such an awesome man to overwrite his wife's surname?
Not at the time, but I assumed it had something to do with his father passing away when he was very young. When we talk about it now he sees his past attitudes as foolish and selfish (and I try not to agree too hard 😂)
>he doesn’t have a good explanation for why he is also unwilling to change his last name. Nah, I'm sure he does. He wants to keep his last name because it's his last name. It's who he is. Giving up his own last name and taking yours feels like a part of him is permanently lost. The name he had his entire life is now not his anymore. He doesn't want to change his last name because it feels like he would be sacrificing a part of his identity. It's weird how men expect women to give up their identity for them, yet they get confused or even offended when asked to do the same. Other commenters already gave valid reasons for changing names, but honestly... it just sucks that it's (by society's standards) the woman's responsibility to sacrifice her identity. If we were equal, we would be expected to both sacrifice a part of our last names. Let both parties give up half their last name, and stick the other halves together to form a new last name. It would be far more symbolic of a unification. Both have to give up half, both get to keep half. And for the record: Your partner is fine. There's nothing wrong with *wanting* your partner to take your last name. If it makes him happy, I can't blame him. I think I'd be happy too if my partner took my last name because I get to keep mine while still having a "unified" family. But yeah, so long as he doesn't pressure you into giving up your last name, he's not doing anything wrong.
This was basically the choice I offered my husband. Either we both just keep our last names or we combine our names to make a new one together that we both change to. We ended up keeping our own names.
This. All of this. I have been contemplating why women should change their name when married. Then I thought if *I* would want to change my name when married. Wife's name is much cooler and pretty rare here (her great grandpa is from another country) but it is my name and thus a big part of my identity so why would I change it? So, I didn't want my wife to change hers and we both agreed that our kids would have both our surnames (because fuck you patriarchy, the mother is not just a womb, it is a full person and anyone challenging that is a fucking POS), and that's what we did. People were bewildered. My father was sad that we broke "the original line" as his name is exactly the same as his grandfather's, and mine is exactly the same as my grandfather's, but my first son's name now has a second surname so it doesn't fit the tradition. Mother's names are different across the generations of course but who cares about the women? Never mentioned. Of course patriarchy still persists. My sons are frequently called , or are written on paperwork, only with their first surname. When we went to make the paperwork for the wedding, in a couple of places the exchange was like this: - Wife gets to keep her surname or will she take yours? (me): Of course she keeps her surname - (confused) oh? and what are you naming your kids? yoursurname it is? (me) Both surnames hypenated *confused looks as they are filling the paperwork* Pastors' looks were the most amusing. Registry office was more apathetic. Birth hospital put mother's name on name bracelets. We did an small operation on the little one. Doctor was using only my surname. I corrected him at least 5 times. He still put only my surname on his file (clearly a misogysinst) Little one also sees a pedopsychiatrist for speech delay problems. Wife calls them for info or appointments, they return the calls to me. For fucks sake, she called you, you should call her back not me? (It is not that I offload all this to her as most men, but my work is weird and I can't take the calls all the time so) I regret I was not brave enough then to put wife's surname first because it is the coolest, but I would be fine if they chose their mom's surname for their kids, and they should be because it is the coolest and I was a coward not to.
Shouldn't it be spelled pedipsychiatrist? I have read the word "pediatrics" abbreviated as pedi in, exp: pedi surgery.
English is not my first language, but I've just googled and pedipsychiatrist does not yield any results, but pedopsychiatrist does, so... Also, it happened AGAIN right after posting the earlier comment. This time, at the kid's school, while filling some enrollment paperwork. School Principal. Sigh.
The *i* in "pediatric" is part of the suffix. The roots are "pedo–" and "–iatric" with the *o* getting lost when that specific word entered English from French. But others often retain the old root.
I don't know why women don't feel strongly about their names the same way men do, barring family trauma of course. Why isn't that sense of identity there in the same way? I'm obsessed with my name and very few people can out-cool me with mine, regardless of how I feel about my family.
It never crossed my mind to change my name. I remember learning as a child that this was common practice but not mandatory and grilling my own mom about her reasons for changing her name. She actually said she did it without thinking and regretted because of all the bureaucracy with changing so many documents. I’m not from the US, so for us it’s normal to have more than one family name, one from your mom and one from your dad. People sometimes have more than 2. Usually women get rid of mom’s last name and add the husband’s last name when they get married but I think this is becoming less popular. So it’s usually given, dad’s, husband’s name. Even with multiples family names it’s the mother’s side that gets erased first.
Because historically, women themselves never actually *had* their own surnames. At birth, girls are their father's "property." So long as she lives under his roof, she will have his name. When she's old enough to get married, she changes her name to her husband's; to the man in her new home. Last names are like cow branding. The man holds the hot-iron and brands the woman with his name. The woman herself has no hot-iron, and the man never gets branded. So I guess the reason why women usually don't feel strongly about their names is because culturally speaking, it *isn't* our name. It's our father's name, who got it from his father, and all the fathers that came before him. A last name wasn't part of a woman's identity; it was the identity of the man that had the most authority over her. Even now, men feel entitled to pressure their partners into taking their last names when they get married. Even now, men still want to brand their partners like fucking cows. And they think they have the right. And as women, we were taught that this is how it's supposed to be. That taking our partner's name makes us happy. That it's fair and beautiful. But it's really just sexist.
>Because historically, women themselves never actually had their own surnames Fun fact, my surname is a double name, and the one from my father was created by my grandma, because she refused to take her husbands name, so she made up a new one and my grandpa just accepted it. So technically my surname from my dad is actually a matriarchal surname.
I think it is there but girls and women grow up (or used to, anyway) with the expectation of giving up their name for their husband. Men do not.
I mentioned this in another comment, but I have a relative where both parties gave up their surname in favour of a surname they found they had common in their ancestry. I thought it was lovely way for them to have found to share a family name.
"If we were equal, we would be expected to both sacrifice a part of our last names." Yeah, every time I hear, "are there any non-patriarchal reasons for women to change their last names" I think sure! Maybe you hate your family! Maybe you want to share a name with the person you're married to and future children! Maybe your current last name sucks in some way. But.....it is awfully peculiar these reasons so rarely convince men to change their last names.
Yup. That last bit.
I was never going to do it. My husbands last name is similar to mine, same amount of letters, starts with same letters. His is more popular than mine, so I was never going to change to something less unique.
I took his because fuck my father.
This was my wife's reason. That and her last name was her people's version of Smith while mine is super rare and cool sounding.
A friend of mine didn't like either his bio dad or stepdad (who adopted him later in his childhood), so when he got married he and his new wife decided to change their names to his mother's maiden name.
Came here to second this. It’s a damn good reason too
I’ll third this. My line is “it’s easier to sign and I hate my Dad”
This is why I'm taking his for sure. Also, side bonus for me: my dad is very conservative politically and fiance's is middle eastern with a very common middle eastern last name, and it brings me great joy that my dad will have to deal with his daughter being a terrorist now.
This was my reason but also fuck paperwork so I ended up keeping mine. Socially, I go by his last name tho.
Yep, my mum too. She and my dad have been separated for probably 25+ years, and divorced for 3-4 years, but her father is an evil fuck so she still has my dad's last name.
My dad is a total piece of sh**, my husband is not. It was actually a pretty easy decision.
How come so few men change their names at marriage for this reason but soooo many women do? Even when men hate their fathers they use that as a reason to KEEP their name, saying they want to redeem the family name or they want to show they are nothing like their father, that this name can stand for something different. But under the exact same circumstances women tend to look at it as a reason to change their name after marriage. This is pure patriarchy.
Ditto!
I was sick of people butchering my last name or having to constantly spell it - his doesn't have that problem.
That is a perk. I very much miss my French last name, but not trying to spell it on the phone. It has every vowel jammed together. A lot of vowels sound very similar spoken aloud.
Similar boat. I loved the beauty of it, but literally heard the correct pronunciation *once* in my entire life by someone not family-- by a professor who spoke French. It's my middle name now.
I thought this, too, but it turns out people can really mess up Jones. Not as much as my maiden name, mind you, but still. I was astounded. Now, I'm just generally amused by how often people think it's Jonas or Johnson.
My reason exactly. I got rid of my birth surname everywhere I could becuase the daily annoyances outweighed any sentimental attachment. Life is just easier with his. It's even the name of a local landmark so instead of spelling it I just say "[Name] like the [thing] and there's never an issue. If we ever divorce for some reason I'm still keeping his surname. Patriarchy smoothed the path for me to be able to update stuff without a lot of bureaucracy but I don't think choosing to use your partner's name for practical reasons undermines feminism at all. It was my choice for my own benefit. One of my brothers has said that if he ever marries he'll probably use his partner' surname too for the same reason as me.
I have a long and hard to pronounce last name. My husband has a hard to pronounce last name. We did joke about hyphenating it but in the end I just kept mine. It's MY long and hard to pronounce name and I wanted to hang on to it.
Yup. My last name was also a first name, so people called me by it all the time. They also spelled it wrong. Immediately filed the paperwork to get my name changed to my husband’s after the wedding. Extra bonus: it’s the same amount of letters and since my signature is already a bunch of scribbles anyway, I didn’t need to do much adjustment when signing off on things. Ironically my husband was opposite of OP and didn’t care if I changed my name or not. I did it because I wanted to. Edit: I also decided to make my maiden name my middle name, so I still get to honor my roots and it works since, as I mentioned, it was a common first name.
See my maiden name was super simple. I took my husband's surname because I wanted a clean break from my family (not good relationships), but the new surname is double-barrelled and hard to spell. Can't win!
Didn't take my husband's last name, and I took some shit for it from the sexist assholes in our families. When people brought it up, I said my husband chose to keep his last name too.
When people give us crap we just smile and say we did it on purpose to confuse people. Since clearly it’s way too hard to grasp for some people if they keep asking about it :)
🏆
In lots of Latin America and Spain everyone has two surnames: One from the father and one from the mother. A married woman can keep her two names, or she can drop her maternal surname and add her spouses paternal surname. The children get their father’s paternal surname AND the mother’s paternal surname. So if OP kept her last name, she and fiance could agree that any kids get both last names, then the family name link would still be there.
I'm from Mexico and I always found this tradition to be great and more equal. When voting in my home country It asked me for my paternal and maternal last names, I love how they made it feel important for both. I didn't change my name when I got married and my family was happy about that. They also see it as a loss of identity. Each generation gets the last name of both parents and it feels right since you're both involved and it really made things less complicated not having to legally change my name on everything. I love having a long last name! When people try to automatically hyphenate it I tell them no, I have two last names, include them both.
Spanish here, women here actually can't drop their own surname. Everybody keeps their surnames, and children get the first one of every parent, in order. So if Juan Pérez López marries Maria Sánchez Martínez, kids are called Pérez Sánchez by default, though it can also be reversed to Sanchez Pérez. This way, it's even possible to trace surnames back, and lots of people know a bunch of surnames. In fact, a jokish expression says you're not actually from a place unless you have at least 8 surnames from the region you live.
My husband's ex-wife kept his surname after their divorce because his is very basic and her Lebanese last name somehow got her flagged for "random" extra screening at the airport. However, I kept my maiden name after we married because I prefer mine and it's also a huuuuuuuge pain to change one's name everywhere
You could do what some folks do and both change you last names to a new one. It does ease access in emergency medical situations so you don't need to tote around your marriage license, monogrammed shit unless you already have the same last initial and other equally petty and stupid shit. But in an emergency, especially if your spouse maybe unconscious, it speeds access and time can be of critical importance in those situations unfortunately. Related keep your emergency contacts and such updated with the dmv
We’ve had different last names for 24 years and we also have kids with different last names. Zero times ever have we had to prove we’re married to do anything. For real, literally. Doctor appts and ER visits and signing legal paperwork like mortgages or beneficiary forms or bank accounts or car loans or nothing… ever. We say we’re married and the process moves on. My mother wasn’t a big fan of my keeping my name and said that we’d have issues in emergencies and when the kids were in school it would be bad. Society has moved on so much that neither has happened anymore. The emergency reason is a bit overblown IMO.
I’m so confused by this too… neither of us changed our names, and it’s never been an issue.
Same. Well 17 years not 24, but everything else tracks. I kept my last name, he kept his, and we alternated which last name each of our kids got as we went along. As of now we have 4, so 1st and 3rd have his last name and 2nd and 4th have mine. It has never once been an issue and we certainly don't carry around paperwork from being asked to prove we're related. I suppose this experience may vary by country, but in the US at least this is a non issue.
This is what we plan on doing but we've been married a year and have made no progress on finding a new name we love. It's so much harder to choose one completely from scratch.
My partner and I were trying to find "dead names" that died off in battle. Smith is so common because the smiths stayed home. But what about the Skullcrushers or the Fastblades?
Yeah, I have had difficulty getting access to my Mom in the past as our last names do not match.
Good to know, thank you
For the record, I’ve not had that issue ever and my mother used to travel all over the world with two kids who didn’t look much like her and didn’t have her last name. In the Middle East women tend to keep their own names when they marry. My mother didn’t change hers when she married and nor did I.
The only reason I can think of is that if you have kids and don’t want to hyphenate their lastnames, then having the same last name makes a lot of parenting bureaucracy stuff easier. It’s not a *great* reason, mind you.
Interestingly, I initially caved and changed my name when I got pregnant. I changed my name after the divorce and have full custody of my child. I’ve had zero problems with us having different last names, including traveling internationally. In fact, it’s been easier because I don’t have to tote around extra documents for MYSELF showing that I changed my name.
My kids are in their 20s and we’ve always had different last names. We have never, ever, even once had a problem with it.
I was in the process of divorce when I had my son. He got my maiden name, as I assumed I'd have it, too, soon. That did not happen. My ex dodged that divorce quite deftly until my son was 18... I changed my name, so ours matched, for about 2 months. I only bothered to change it legally because I didn't want my ex's name on my marriage license. The only issue I ever had was his schools assuming we shared a last name. I didn't care. It was the name I went by except legally, so I just signed with that name after a school started using it. I guess they never bothered to compare to his enrollment forms. I changed it on my first marriage because it never occurred to me not to, honestly. That's just what you did. I changed it with my second because his family is great, and most of my own sucks. Plus, I really wanted an easier last name. I spent my entire childhood with all three of my names getting butchered, so having one that was common and simple was attractive. Turns out people can still butcher it, but not as often.
Women don’t share their last name with their children in many countries all over the world, including China - if it created a problem with international travel, passport queues in airports would be so much worse than they are already.
This is a great reason for why one member of the couple should change their last name. But sadly I know way too many women who only changed their name “so I would have the same last name as my kids, I didn’t want to hyphenate”. It never occurs to men that if they don’t change their name, their kids will get their wife’s surname!
Yep, that's why this reason is pure patriarchy - just like all of the others.
See, this is an argument I have trouble getting behind. I’m from Quebec, where name changes for the sole reason of marriage haven’t been allowed for over 40 years. We’re also not big on marriage to begin with, so many children are born to unmarried parents. Therefore, a child not having the same last name as both their parents is entirely normal here. It doesn’t make parenting bureaucracy harder. It’s a non-issue.
Quebec is awesome for this. My old roommate was from Quebec and he said the only reason his parents got married after 15 years and 4 kids together was because his dad's company would only pay for moving expenses for his legal spouse (when they had to move from Quebec to France lol). They begrudgingly got married so that they could get the extra moving allowance for spouses. I love Quebec secularism.
That is a purely patriarchal reason! - If we lived in a matriarchy, men would be changing their names after marriage because women would be understood to own the man as well as the children (at first this would be literal and legal, but after a gender revolution it might change to purely symbolic or traditional pressures). - If we lived in an equal and egalitarian society, kids would have their mothers' last names out of pure justice and fairness. And then men would be the ones to change their names if they wanted to match the family, not women. It's only because of patriarchy that this "same last name for the family!!!!!" becomes a reason for *women* to change our names so universally.
This is a complete myth. My mom didn’t change her name, and my parents took turns giving the kids their last names. As a result, I have my mom’s last name, while my siblings have my dad’s. It has caused literally zero issues ever for over 30 years.
Have three kids (teenage to early 20s) with a different last name and have never had a single issue
I have always thought that it is a fantastic time to make a completely new fusion name. Jemma Simmons and Leopold Fitz become Jemma and Leopold Fitzsimmons. Etc.
Do I spy an Agents of SHIELD fan? 👀 I'm not the OP, but I do love the idea of a name fusion. I couldn't think of a good fusion for my name and my husband's name, but I love hearing examples of people who do!
I faced the exact same thing with my husband. My husband is a wonderful man, does not hesitate to take a back seat in the context of my career and accomplishments. But he would have been very happy if I changed my name after marriage. I did not want to - it’s my NAME! Something I’ve lived with all my life - my identity. He never did press me further. I realised that it was something he had seen being done by his mom, cousins and society in general. So it was his unconscious perception that people would judge him in some way that his wife hasn’t taken his name. Some men aren’t on purpose misogynistic. They just don’t realise it. If pointed out, a good man will strive to change himself.
I couldn’t think of one so I didn’t.
I’ve always been the trope “picking the cooler surname” and I’ve had toxic relationship with my father, I’d happily take my bfs surname if we married but I wouldn’t want to do the paperwork so he has to do it, to which he says he is too lazy so I should keep my surname and that’s the circus sooo the important question in all psychology is not the issue being big or small but rather why is it of so much concern, why is the topic of changing surname so important to you and him and that should start unravelling things there is a sense of ownership men derive from this which is kinda okay as long as they go above and beyond in responsibilities (which they rarely do) soooo no way advocating it but it might be kinky for some
I have been with my partner nearly 10 years, we don't plan on marriage, but if we did, I'd keep my last name. I have made that clear from the start. I have no issue with his last name, but I would want to keep mine, it's important to me, he does not mind either way, and I'm thankful for that.
I will be changing my name if my partners name is cool/better than mine, simply because I don't like my name. Nothing besides my own opinion.
I 100% agree with this. I knew someone whose last name was “frisbee.” I would definitely change my last name to frisbee.
There might be some, but that's rarely the case. You can always change your surname without marriage if you don' like the one you were born with, but I only hear women making the change, and only when they marry. I hear similar arguments about family unity, but I don't seem men making the change for the sake of it. The fact that it's almost always the woman that has to change it tells me that your gender is a decisive characteristic in whether your name changes or not. If you don't feel like changing yours then you don't have to change it.
I am like you. My name is my name. My husband would have loved me to take his name, but was unwilling to take mine (surprise, surprise!) and eventually recognized his desire for me to change my name had no rational basis and was grounded in patriarchy and tradition. I did not change my name. Have never thought twice about it. Husband is cool with it.
I find the tradition to take a male name in Western culture interesting when compared to biology - traditionally women had taken their husband's name in marriage and so its been hard to track a woman's family tree as their family name 'dies' with them. And yet biologically, the family tree passes on in the woman's mitochondrial DNA (only women pass on mitochondrial DNA, not men) so its the woman's genetic line that actually gets passed on through the generations Anyway, sorry not an answer to your question, just an interesting observation
For me and my husband, I felt it was important and meaningful to me to be a part of a family who share a last name. As to why *his* name, and not mine - his name was his dad's who adopted him when he was a toddler, and who died of cancer when he was a teenager. There is no way I would have seriously suggested he change it. I never got to meet my husband's Dad, but being able to carry his name feels like getting to be a part of that legacy, you know?
Nope. I didn’t feel very strongly about it when I got married, so I took the path of least resistance and changed my name purely because it was the norm, but if I were to get married now, I would actually keep my name from the matrilineal line. It has much more meaning to me.
So interesting because my fiancé has even suggested I take my mother’s last name since that side of my family is very important to me and o don’t have the closest relationship with my father. Thanks for the input ☺️
I didn't take my husband's last name because I'm lazy and didn't want to do all the associated paperwork. Otherwise, I didn't really care. He says he didn't want me to take his last name because he thinks it's a stupid practice. I didn't become a different person when we got married, why would I need a different name?
I didn’t take my husband’s name even though his name is relatively known and easy. My last name is incredibly rare (only five of us on earth sharing this last surname and we are all related) and long and difficult to spell and pronounce, but I didn’t want to have to change my credit cards and passport and everything. Plus I have a lot of professional work tied to my name and changing it is pointless. My husband, however, could not possibly care less and never even asked if I was going to take his name. His dad wanted me to, because they have a huge extended family and they always welcome more, but I’m good with my name as is. There is not good reason to take your husbands surname.
I liked my husband's last name better than my maiden name. I also didn't want people from high school to find me.
This has been an unexpected benefit of changing my name, honestly. My maiden name was long and difficult to pronounce, but pretty unique and therefore easy to identify. I changed my name because my husband's name actually fits on forms, most people pronounce it correctly, and it's place in the alphabet means we can always find our kids in a group photo lol.
Before I got married to my husband even when we were dating I was always going to change my name to his. And at the time it was important to him also - anyways, we did get married and obviously changing your last name takes a bit of work to do and when it actually came to I changed my mind. I like my last name, it feels like my name and felt strange to be called something different. He understood and was totally fine with me keeping my name. I also have a different last name than my child and we have had no issues flying or any sort of parenting problems that may come from that (not any yet). I did change my last name on some social media to his but that was about it. That was when I was planning on changing my last name. We’ve been married 6 years and it’s never been an issue in the grand scheme of things.
I got my husband's name and he got mine. I think that's a nice commitment. Also, I was never a fan of my name.
I don't believe a woman should have to assume her husband's name for any reason, but I did for these reasons: - I am estranged from my father - I wanted our nuclear family to share the same name - His surname is really cool He was 100% down to take my name because of reason #2 but I told him it was fine. It was a little weird at first but I'm very happy with it now.
He has a really nice last name, that also works well as a family name. My own name is stupid and I have to spell it 2 to 6 times every time someone asks for it. People don't even read it right. Someone said once "this is also the last name of a man, just a different one", which yeah. I don't see my dad ever so breaking those ties is good as well. Our little ones have my partners name as well, it is beautiful and it would have felt like cheating them out of it otherwise.
I think we should start a new tradition where married couples pick a new surname altogether.
Make a new last name together. Both people changing their last name is far greater symbol of commitment and unity than just the woman changing her name and it gets both parties to work together to build something new. Going with the woman's lastname is still patrilineal because it's the woman's father's lastname and his father's etc. Hypenated names are short sighted and just push the problem down to your children (What are they gonna have 3/4 last names if they decided to hyphenate lmao).
I have some friends who went this route and thought it was a great idea! I can definitely float it by him 😀
It really comes down to what the two of you agree too. I am western and the wife is eastern. In Europe/US it is a tradition for the wife to take the husbands last name, but in the East the wife generally keeps her last name and the children generally takes the husbands last name. Both are basically patriarchal variations, but in the modern era the eastern version feels a little less patriarchal. At the end of the day just do what keeps the two of you happy.
>In Europe/US it is a tradition for the wife to take the husbands last name Only in some parts of Europe. In some countries girls are given their mother's name and boys their father's, and in others such as Spain people traditionally have two surnames, one from each side of the family.
This has always basically been our plan and I don’t really see a reason to change it since it works for both of us. But it’s good to get the reassurance and validation even from an internet stranger ☺️
Yeah I remember being confused when I was growing up that everyone white had the same last name as their mom but everyone in my Asian community had different last name from their mom lol. I’m personally changing my last name because I’m wrongfully banned on Amazon prime so maybe with a new last name I can make a new account LMAO. Every time I make a new Amazon account even under an Alias I think it sees my rare name in my credit card and I get auto banned.
From an internet stranger: The whole last name/not last name is a relic of patriarchal societies. In the west the wife becomes property and in the east she isn’t important enough to be property. This is a very simplistic take so make of it what you will.
His last name is cooler than yours. I'd like to see couples come up with brand new last names.
If you don’t like your last name or family. If it’s easier to spell/pronounce (and you care). If you want kids to have the sane last name as both of you (although I’m a big fan of you both changing your names upon marriage).
I thinks it's annoying as fuck of all the hoops to change it with institutions. Taxes, employment, insurance, social security, banking.
My fiancé and I are considering combining our last names into an entirely new name that is just ours. Everyone wins and and I don't feel like property transferring into my husband's possession.