Well, for most people your “maiden name” is your dad’s name anyway; it’s not like it’s so feminist to keep your “slave name”. I used to say I’d never change my name, but the older I get the more appealing it would be to dump my frequently mispronounced and misspelled name for the alternative, which is “Johnson”. Just imagine just walking up to the maitre d’ and saying, “Non-smoking party of two, Johnson” and not having to spell it? And then when they call your name you actually hear and understand, because they didn’t mispronounce it?
So, in other words, the older I get the more convenience-oriented I have become.
I hate my name, all three parts, but I have never been able to find something I liked enough to change to, so if I get married, I will likely change to my spouse’s last name unless I consider it worse than my original one. I find either insistence on changing the name or incredulity at changing it both a bit silly.
I’m not married but my sister is, and kept our last name. She had established herself professionally with it and was proud of her accomplishments and proud of our family name (one with a certain history and reputation in the small community we grew up in). She has two daughters who have their father’s last name and, yes, occasionally – rarely, but more than once – she has had to explain that, yes, she is the mother of these children. She is also irritated by people who insist on calling her “Mrs. Husband’sLastName,” feeling (rightly, IMO) that they are either being stupid or disrespectful of her choice. The only person who gets a pass on that is her husband’s grandmother, who is 400 years old, and who also occasionally calls her “Lisa,” which is not her name either.
But if I were to marry, I would probably take my husband’s last name. I like the idea of forming a new family unit with a common name. I would want to have the last name as my husband, and as my children. I wouldn’t care if it was my name or his, but in our society it is much more common to take the husband’s name and I would probably be fine with that.
The important thing is that both my sister and I understand that it’s a personal choice that no one needs to be judgey about. Neither of us would ever say that we simply cannot imagine how on earth the other could have come to such a decision.
I plan to drop my middle name (I never use it anyways) and add my husband’s name as my third name. Part of it is it’s just easier, especially since my first and last names are relatively long, than to write ‘Owls Short and Jayn Newell’ all the time. We already have a few documents that use my married name, even though I haven’t taken it yet. I just didn’t when I got married because i wasn’t sure yet if I wanted to, and since then I’ve been in the middle of immigration processes and its easier to just wait until I apply for citizenship at this point to change it.
I’m also tempted to add my mother’s maiden name in there somewhere, but I’m not sure I want to go with four names. Either way though, I’m going to be named from three different cultures–French, Scottish, and German.
My Mother never changed her last name and I only can remember one time that it was an issue, and that was when my Father bought a plane ticket for my mom with his last name. The airline didn’t really like it, but this was about 15 years ago and they let her fly anyway, and it was across a border.
I was given both my Mother and Fathers last names. So all told my drivers license has first name, middle name, Mom’s last name, Dad’s last name. I think one more last name is just ridiculous. Three is too many.
I married for the first time at 20 and changed my name then – my maiden name led to a lot of teasing and was often spelled/pronounced incorrectly, so I was glad to be rid of it. I had 2 children then divorced that guy, but kept the name, as the kids had it and my whole professional career was under it.
I remarried 3 years ago and did not change my name then. It works fine most of the time: phone calls for Mrs.HisName or Mr.MyName are sure to be from telemarketers. The only concern is the schools call him Mr. My Last Name most of the time, though they are slowly catching on.
I thought about changing my name, but it’d be a pain to track down all my old references and say “btw, my name is now…”. Hyphenating would look kind of odd with 2 short names. So, I kept the name.
My parents hyphenated their last names, and I and my three siblings have always hated that. Nobody ever spells it right. When my brother got married, he took his wife’s last name; when my sister got married, she took her husband’s last name; I’m confident that my other sister and I will take our spouses’ names when we get married.
Well, repairmen and such typically call me by the last name of whoever originally called them, and I really don’t give a rat’s ass. They have no way to know we’ve got different last names, and it’s not like we’re going to be spending time together on a regular basis, so a lot of times I don’t even bother to correct them.
I got a little bit of shit from the guy setting up my IRA at my last job for naming DoctorJ as my beneficiary, as he seemed to think I was some nitwit handing over my retirement savings to the flavor of the month. Every time we change health insurance, we have to provide proof we’re married so he can add me on his policy. That’s about it for bureaucratic hassles, really.
My family, however…oy. Evidently, remembering the name you knew exclusively for the first 27 years you knew me is a terribly onerous burden. My grandma gets a little bit of slack for persisting in buying me magazine subscriptions addressed to Mychildhoodnickname Hislastname. She is, after all, quite old and labors under other misapprehensions about me, such as I’m perpetually 10 years old and would love another unicorn-and-fairy lamp for my bedroom, or that my name is Marilyn. And bless her heart, she means well.
Other relatives, they’re just making a statement (ie, being assholes.) There’s really not much other way to interpret someone saying, “I know you don’t use that name, but I’m a traditionalist.” These people do not get the same sort of slack Grandma gets.
I kind of like the tack the in-laws take, though: they conveniently forget we’ve ever had any discussion of the subject. They never mail us stuff anyway, so it’s really not an issue, but every so often the subject will come up, and it’s always news to them that I’m not changing my name. We’ve been married almost 6 years.
I had always assumed I would change it, and this was in large part because my last name is stupid to spell and all that, and I thought it would be more convenient to have a more straightforward name.
But, when the occasion came, I found I wanted to keep my own name. I was more attached to it than I realized. I had also underestimated the benefits of having an unusual name – it stands out, and there are never TWO of us anywhere unless we’re related.
I am a little bit of a sassypants about it, and if someone asks if it’s my married name, I say yes. Because as far as I’m concerned, it is.
I really don’t mind if people don’t know and call me Mrs. Not My Last Name, I’m content to roll with it.
I like that we are known as the ‘Autz Family’ It makes me feel more like part of a group.
Naming the kids was easier. I know women who kept their names who have different names as their children, or some of the kids have the mom’s name and some the dad’s, it’s just confusing.
I never liked my maiden name and feel no loyalty to my father.
I’m one of 4 girls, 2 of us kept their names and 2 changed. I felt pressure if anything to keep my name, but I never had any desire to do so.
And you share a last name with billions of other people so when your information gets looked up in a data base, it takes forever to find.
I went from a very unusual and short last name to Johnson. I told my husband if he had to have a common name, I sure wish it had at least been short. My first name has nine letters in it so put the two together and I potentially have a signature that lasts all day. I shortened my sig to my first initial and the last name.
To the OP, I think that it may depend in part on where you live. I’m in the DC suburbs - around here, it’s quite common to have multi-name families. I just introduce myself as Jane Smith, John Doe’s mother, and have never gotten a second look. There are a couple of my kids’ classmates who call me Mrs. Doe, but it’s more common around here to call adults by first names anyway, so I don’t worry too much about that one. I’ve noticed that places like doctor’s offices, where things are listed by the kids’ names, they just use “mom” or “John’s mother” to refer to me, thus avoiding the whole last name issue. Perhaps all this is different in different places.
I didn’t have a choice. When you get married in Québec, by law, you keep your own name (this actually applies to both spouses, for the rare husband who wants to change his name) for all official/legal purposes, including passport, driver’s licence, health card, etc. IIRC it’s been this way since the early 70s.
You are allowed to call yourself whatever you like “socially”, but anything legal and official has to have the name given to you at birth, or changed via the regular process of changing a name, which involves courts and a fee. No freebies just because you got married.
So I never had to choose, and I don’t know what I would have done had we lived somewhere else. I like my last name, but I also like his, although it is somewhat unusual and would take a lot of getting used to! Currently, the only people who call me Mrs. D----- are telemarketers, hotel receptionists on vacation, and people teasing me/doing it for fun. I’m still getting used to that even after 3 years of marriage; in my mind, Mme D----- is my husband’s grandmother! For that matter, Mrs. C— is my mom, AFAIAC, and so I often will select Ms. C— on forms and such!
Not that I’m picking on you specifically, but I’ve never really quite gotten that particular line of reasoning. I guess maybe it’s because my family is such a mishmash of steps and halfs and half-steps and step-steps that hardly any of us have the same name anyhow. We were and are very close-knit, but never had any sort of identifier for the group other than “our family” so it honestly never occurred to me that other people might consider a name as part of their group identity.
Then again, not sharing a name with very much of your family doesn’t strike me as being all that unusual. Most of the people I know grew up sharing a name with their parents, siblings, paternal grandparents if they were still alive, an uncle or two, and their wives and kids if applicable. All of the maternal side of the family had a different last name (or names, if your mom’s sisters were married), as did any married aunts on the paternal side (along with their husbands and kids.) Maybe if your dad had a big lot of brothers who were all married and had kids people with your last name were in the majority in your close family, but I don’t personally know anybody with that particular family makeup.
I have two last names now, sort of. I use both. But really, I’m just not that attached to my maiden name, so I leave it off a lot for everyday usage. I’m not sure I care all that much about what my last name is. It is nice to all have the same name in one family (not a lot of steps in my family).
My maiden name is Pitts. The name that I was going by when I was younger (my middle name, not the name I go by now–my first name) started with a P. So, imagine if you will, being a teen and having a name like Patsy Pitts or Petunia Pitts or Penny Pitts or even Pumpernickel Pitts. Not pretty. So, when I married (at age 17), I got the nice common last name of Hall. I jumped at it and have hung on every since. (I always said I got three wonderful things from my marriage–the two Hallgirls and my last name). I’ve been Hall for over 20 years (even though the marriage didn’t last four years). It’s MY name now, damn it.
When Hallboy was born (not to the same father as the Hallgirls), I gave him the last name of Hall because it is MY name, although legally, I could have given him any last name I wanted. (Smythheimer Weiss was pretty cool…)
I’ve always thought that if I ever get married again (yeah, right), then I’d keep Hall, at least until Hallboy was old enough to live on his own. But, that would also depend on what the new hubby’s last name was. If it were cooler than Hall, I might consider taking that as mine. But, a weird sounding last name (like Pitts) would be an absolute no go.
Of course, I’m not too hung up on names and would gladly change my own if I could find one I liked better.
Raise your hands if you took your last name from your Mom’s original born surname instead of your Dad’s.
Oh what’s that? Your Mom changed HER name to your Dad’s? Yeah, so of course it would not normally have occurred to you to use your Mom’s born (maiden) name as your last name. But that’s the point I’m trying to make: if you are female the name you are born with (for most people) already has less significance in some ways. It is not your Mom’s name and her Mom’s name and her Mom’s name before that. It is already culturally marked and lfagged as a name that female folk like you use until you get married. Whether you yourself do that or not, even the name you were born with was not “designed for you” as a permanent identity, not the way boyfolks’ last names are. (I am male, my last name is not just mine but my Dad’s Dad’s Dad’s Dad’s Dad’s etc…).
It may be a small, perhaps even annoying trivial distinction, but I think psychologically it makes a difference in how women regard their names. Adds in a little bit of “screw it all anyway” to their internal computations.
I recently got married and have not changed my name.
We thought about hyphenation - but it sounded ridculous.
I am known professionaly by my given name and given that I am here on a visa changing the paperwork was going to be a bitch.
My hubby and I don’t need to share the last name to know we are a family and I answer to Mrs Mylastname and Mrs Hislastname
When we stayed in hotel recently that was booked under my name he answered to Mr Mylastname…it is just a word
In addition to what AHunter3 said - My Dad had his mother’s last name which was a scandal back in the 40’s…and I didn’t realise this til I was 18 years old
