It was honestly a relief to change my name. All of my life I’ve been known by my middle name, not my first. It was always a pain correcting people who called me by my first name. When I got married, I dropped my first name (whoohoo!) to become MiddleName-MaidenName-MarriedName. My new name feels much more like me than my old name ever did. Giving up my first name felt like shedding a burden rather than losing a part of myself.
Left Hand of Dorkness was more ambivalent than I was about me taking his name. His suggestion was that we combine our two last names into a new one. I thought the combination sounded a little too hobbit-ish and demurred.
It honestly wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. It did take me a while to get used to signing my new name, but I eventually became accustomed to it. Starting a new job where people only knew me by my married name helped. My friends who’ve known me for a long time will still refer to me by my maiden name, but I don’t mind at all.
I was on the fence during our entire engagement over whether or not I would take my husband’s name. My husband actually encouraged me not to do so if I didn’t want to since his name is virtually unpronounceable to people where we live. Still, my maiden name, though completely pronounceable is often butchered, too, so at least my husband’s name is legitimately hard to pronounce.
I decided to take his name as sort of a symbolic thing. His dad has a different last name than him (in South India where his dad is from, the male firstborn takes the dad’s first name as his last), so I took my husband’s last name because, while we’re a part of both our families still, we’re also our own family unit.
We toyed with the idea of making our own last name from portions of his dad’s name and my maiden name, but since my husband is still an Indian citizen, the paperwork was a lot less complicated if I just took his name.
Got married last year, and my wife never even contemplated taking my name, and nor would i have wanted her to. Hell, i still waver between calling her my partner and calling her my wife; not because i have any doubt about our relationship, but just because saying “my wife” still sounds sort of strange to me.
This is a moot point for us, as we’re not going to have kids. But if we were, they would definitely have her name. She likes her name, it’s somewhat unusual (in America, anyway), and it she can trace it back quite a way.
My last name, on the other hand, is the name of my mother’s second husband, who was something of a jackass, and who i haven’t even seen in 15 years. I like the name itself well enough, and it’s served me fine for about 20 years, but i have no particular attachment to either its past or its future.
I kept my name. Which is funny, because for YEARS, I thought about how nice it would be to junk my uncommon, hard to spell last name and pick up a nice, easy to spell last name. Mr. Del cooperated by having a nice, easy to spell last name of the Smith/Jones variety. However, when the time came, my heart just wasn’t in it. The idea of having a new name seemed too weird. Besides, I’m the kind of person who sorta likes to be long-suffering.
I’m pretty casual about the whole thing, people can call me whatever. Not a big deal.
No kids, so that’s not an issue for us. Should there be a surprise on that front, I’m fine with the offspring having his last name, it seems like the path of least resistance. It wouldn’t bother me to have different last names, chances are we would have different first names as well. Someone once asked if I would consider giving my last name as a middle name to any (unlikely) future children, and while I like the concept, the name itself is so unwieldy that I probably wouldn’t.
I’ve always just known that I will change my name if I marry. I can’t imagine having a different last name from the person that is my closest family. It surprises me that I’m not more attached to my name; those arguments make a lot of sense to me. However, I know that I will feel more out of sorts being married and not sharing my husband’s name than I would by not going by my maiden name.
The best reason I can find for keeping my name is for my career. I have publications and presentations in my maiden name. But, I figure that people are aware that women change their name when they marry and it shouldn’t be too big of a deal. Going by one name professionally and another socially would be much more of a nuisance to me than changing my name at work.
I changed my last name. My maiden name, while only four letters long, was almost never pronounced correctly, and, even when pronounced correctly, sounds horribile with a Chicago-area accent. His last name is common enough to be widely-known, and shouldn’t ever pose a pronunciation problem.
Also–I’m 21, and was 21 when I got married. I haven’t been published yet, and, therefore, do not have to worry about there being inconsistency in my work. The only thing that is in my maiden name is my B.A., and my alma mater has my married name on file. Ironically, the frontwoman of a fairly well-known (well enough known to get into Entertainment Weekly, anyway) indie band has the same first name as me and has my maiden name. Since the last name is not particularly common, this was somewhat freaky. There are no well-known personages with my first name/married name combo, though, which is ironic, since my new last name is pretty damn common.
I felt sort-of bad in dropping my last name. My dad’s an only child, so I know he might want to keep the line going, as it were. Still, though, he hasn’t posed any objections, and I’m much happier having a name that everyone can pronounce.
My practice husband had an easy-to-spell last name, and my maiden name is unusual, misspelled, and mispronounced. I took his name. Y’know what? People misspell and mispronounce the easy last names, too.
When we divorced, I happily took my own name back. (There are 109 of us in the world with this last name; I feel some ownership.)
By the time I married for realsies, I had advanced degrees, publications, and a career with “my” name – so I kept it. His name is as unusual as mine, so we only discussed hyphenation as a joke.
I will most definitely take my husband’s last name. Several reasons:
I didn’t choose my father. I’m choosing my husband.
My last name has five letters. Only five, and yet is constantly mis-spelled, and non-Indians have never pronounced it right. Oh, Spanish people can pronounce it correctly.
I hate my last name. My new name would be 3 letters, and together with my first name it makes me sound like an actress. My current name together is awkward and doesn’t rolll off the tongue smoothly.
So obviously, I am anxiously waiting the day I can officially change my name!
My wife took my last name when we got hitched. She’s from P.R. China and they don’t traditionally change names when getting married, though the kids use the father’s surname, not the mother’s. I never brought it up at the time, because, frankly I didn’t (and still don’t) care one way or the other. I guess it makes things easier in the end though.
I took my husbands for a few reasons.
I can’t stand my father’s side of the family, so I didn’t want to keep my maiden name.
If I hyphenated, I would sound like a branch of the army. :dubious:
Alliteration: my first name + his last name just flows.
I really only had to change the first letter and tack on two more at the end, so it’s not much different when writing it out.
I took my husband’s last name because I always hated mine. Oddly enough, his was hyphenated, so people always assume we combined our names. We didn’t, though.
Many Chinese women don’t change their name - or more accurately they can use their husband’s name in certain situations (as “Mrs”), if they want, and just their own in others (as “Miss” or “Ms”).
As for my kid, she’s got a Chinese name, wherein she takes her Mum’s surname, and an English name where she takes mine. This is actually not that common. Most mixed kids, if they have a weak Chinese cultural identity, will either have no Chinese name (at least, until they need one for some reason) or their Chinese surname will be that of their Western dad. Thus, for example, if he’s called ones, and has taken the Chinese surname Jung, she will be called Jung also.
I go by both, actually. After I married I never officially changed my name, but like aruvqan described, I began going by my husband’s last name. I intended to legally change it at some point but then the marriage nosedived and so there wasn’t much point. So now I go by my married name at work and through my bank and my maiden name on pretty much everything else. I’ll get the bank/work name changed someday, once I get the paperwork together, and be entirely back to my maiden name. My youngest son already has my maiden as his last name, and I plan to change his older brother’s to the same so we’ll all match. My father had 6 daughters, so his name would not have continued through his line. I like that it’s worked out that I’ve two sons now who will do it instead.
I know I’ve posted about this before, but here we go one more time…
Yes, I took my husband’s name because he’s very traditional and I knew it was important to him, because I think hyphenated surnames look pretentious and stupid and because I think it’s important for all the members of our family to share a surname. If I kept my name and he kept his and then we had kids, what name would they have? Either they’d take his name and not share mine, or they’d take my name and not share his, or they’d have a hyphenated surname and people like me would think we were pretentious wankers… it’s just too confusing and ridiculous. It makes so much more sense for one of us to take the other’s name and by tradition that person is the wife. I was happy to go along with it. Perhaps if I’d hated his surname it might have been a different story, but it’s a perfectly nice name. It took a while to adjust to a new name - say, six to nine months - but it’s not like it was horribly traumatic.
I got married at age 18, and took my husbands last name. It seemed exciting at the time. I was no longer Miss Lola MaidenName. I was now Mrs. Lola MarriedName. Looking back, it must have made me feel very grown-up, I suppose.
My ex and I split up six years later, and I still have the last name, nearly ten years after the split. I’ve had a few people question me on it - fair enough, especially with all the crap my ex has put me through over the years. I’m not keeping the last name out of loyalty to my children that still bear the name. I’m keeping it because it is MINE now! I earned it. For me, it’s like a line that clearly draws the distinction between everything I did as a child, and my adult life. Every job I’ve held as an adult has been with my married name. I went back to school with my married name. I went to hell and back with my married name. IT IS MINE NOW!!!
My SO and I have been together for nine years, and have had two children together. They took his last name. Two kids with my last name (from my marriage) and two with his. I figure we’re even.
If I do decide to get legally married again (you can also substitute that sentence with “If I ever decide to get a home lobotomy kit and experiment on myself”), I will keep my current last name. No question there at all. One name change per lifetime, I figure. If I won’t change my name back, then I won’t change it forward either.
The only concession I made was to put my maiden name on my ID as my middle name. I always hated my middle name. And the initial is the same, so what the heck!
The really strange part is that everyone who has divorced in my ex’s family has also retained the last name. It’s become a bit of a joke, with all the women unwilling to relinquish the name after the marriage. Considering the family’s track record with women, we could conceivably form an army.
