I also see his challenging her “commitment” as a big red flag. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s met someone else, wants to call the whole thing off, and needs to make it her fault. (Donald, is that you?)
FWIW, I got married when I was 40 and was already well-known around town (for my cashew fudge) as ThelmaLou Jones, but I wanted to take Barney’s name in some way (God knows, I waited long enough for him to propose!). So I became ThelmaLou Fife-Jones, so “Jones” would still be my very last name. Barney was perfectly fine with whatever I wanted to do.
Now that Barney has died, I still use both last names *most *of the time, but more and more, I’m back to Thelma-Lou Jones. Except for one thing: because I’m drawing Barney’s social security, Medicare knows me as ThelmaLou Fife, so that’s what my name is in medical settings.
A name is just a word we call something. That your fiancee is so insistent upon this detail means it symbolizes something very important to him, (as important as you, it sounds.) Since you care for this person and his family (and they for you), it’s unlikely he’s crazy irrational or wanting something utterly incompatible with your ideas and values. In other words, it should be possible (easy, even) for you to give him ‘the thing he expects to get from the name change’ in some other way that you’re more comfortable with.
OTOH, this could be the result of an ill-considered fear or idea, or old scar. You need to find out where this is coming from. Try asking him something like ‘what does changing my name mean to you?’ (rather than “Why should I …?”). Then talk about ways to achieve that result that are more acceptable to you. Since you’re on good terms with his family, check with them. There might be something in the family history about taking (or not) a spouses name.
full disclosure: I’ve never been married or even close to it.
I’m Spanish: if I’d gotten married to someone whose culture expects women to change names and his lastname was easier than mine (which is a doozy), I might have taken it socially when we were in his country. Never professionally (probability that I’d met such a guy before publishing: below zero), and never legally. You see, if I’d tried to change my name to take up my husband’s lastname, the courts would have been legally required to rejected the change as it would have led to people thinking we were blood relatives instead of husband and wife. It also would have meant that our children’s Spanish IDs (children of Spaniards inherit the nationality) would have had his lastname as a double whammy; so, the IDs most likely to be seen by people to whom that lastname would be unusual would get it squared. Not very practical.
Maybe my foremothers were never commited to their marriages, but I wouldn’t say that where they could hear you.
I once jokingly told my mother that if I ever had a son I would name him Groucho Bogart MyBirthName. “YOURBIRTHNAME??!!” Because that’s the shocking part.
Congratulations! Although I do find somewhat curious that two months ago, you had been together for over five years, and he was refusing to even discuss marriage.
All of my family and all my inlaws kept their professional name for professional reasons. And one of the advantages of married life is that it gieve you an opportunity to change your private name without changing your professional name.
Most of the people I know, including family, eventually changed professional name, when they moved job, city and country.
I don’t know what kind of job you have where you want to keep your professional name alligned to the name on your bank account, but for the medical and legal people I know, that wasn’t seen as a major plus.
On the other hand, when I got married, I wanted to have the same private name as my wife. She wasn’t enthusiatic about changing her private name, so I offered to change mine instead. In the end, for whatever reason, she chose to change her name instead of mine, but that was her choice not mine. If your husband wants to have the same name as you and as your kids, the choice is open to him.
There seems to be a social awkwardness of this, him changing his name to her’s. So it is not equivalent of her changing her name to his (as some have stated). Not saying that it can’t be done, but socially it is not the same, and equating these two is not being honest. Now if the couple can rise above the social stigma of this, more power to them, but in this case I can see that the extra challenge in society was noted, along with the sincerity of having a common name, and a loving decision was made for the best of the couple.
I have a doctor and she kept her last name and took her husband the two names are hyphenated . I know a woman who kept her own last name, this getting to be more common today .
If aliens were reading this thread to learn about modern humanity they would have to conclude that marriage between a man and a woman without the wife changing her surname name to that of the husband is absolutely the most common and logical social choice. Is that the case where you live?
Let’s be honest, the woman taking the man’s name has its roots in ownership, not commitment. There was a time when wives would be addressed as Mrs. John Smith, as though her entire identity vanished upon marriage.
My wife kept her name, and I don’t recall if we so much as had a discussion about it. Our child has my last name, and frankly I don’t recall a discussion about that either, it just happened that way and we’re both OK with it.
I’m a traditionalist at heart in some areas, so my default “assumption” is the woman changes her name in a marriage. My ex-wife wanted to hyphenate and after a discussion of the reasons why, I agreed and it was never an issue after that. My current wife kept her last name but that doesn’t count because her maiden name was the same as mine. Crisis avoided.
As such, I can somewhat understand his position on this but a relationship requires understanding and compromise. You need to talk this through and allow each side time to internalize and reconcile feelings on the matter. In the lead-up to a wedding with all the stress of planning, etc., sometimes it can be hard to step back and process feelings on issues each side feels strongly about. Speaking purely for myself, sometimes I just need time to myself to work through how she feels and how I feel before I come to changing my opinion or belief. Then again, I’m stubborn as all-get-out.
I wish you luck. I know for myself it would take some thought and consideration if my wife didn’t want to change her name. I would probably feel some emotional insecurity on some illogical level that it was a sign of lack of commitment. For you it may not have anything to do with your level of commitment, but it doesn’t mean that it isn’t a real emotion he feels and has to deal with.
Side note: Another couple we are friends with solved this by both changing their last names to a new last name that mixed their two last names. Honestly I only think it worked because of the actual names matched well together and would be problematic in a lot of scenarios.
I have mixed feelings about this. The woman doesn’t want to change her name, and that’s OK, but I personally wouldn’t want to marry a woman that wouldn’t change her name. It has nothing to do with power, and I admit it’s an outdated tradition, but the type of woman that would put up a stink about this would be the type of woman I’d butt heads with for the rest of my life.
