A guy I used to know took his wife’s name whn they got married. Basiaclly because he had one of those 18 letter no-vowel Czech names and was just tired of it.
One notable medieval example – when Hamelin, the illegitimate half-brother of King Henry II of England, married Isabella de Warenne, heiress to the earldom of Surrey, both he and their offspring adopted her surname.
It’s not generally known, but in the UK you can call yourself whatever you want as long as it isn’t obscene or “blasphemous” (whatever that means these days).
There’s no requirement for wives to take their husbands’ names, or vice versa. Even the procedure of “changing your name by deed poll” only exists because in practice it’s easier to have an official document to show to your employer, bank manager, etc. But you don’t need it legally. If you want to change your name to Humpty Dumpty, all you have to do is… well, you don’t have to do anything. Just let people know that’s what you want to be called.
Or, more importantly, for fraudulent purposes. But yes, you can call yourself whatever you want and give/fill out your name to people however you please, although you can’t fill out official documents (i.e. passport, driving licence) with anything other than your registered name. Saying that as changing your name by deed pole is so easy and costs about £50 in total I don’t know why you wouldn’t just go ahead and do it.
In Japan a man can take his wife’s name, and it happens fairly often. In fact people change their names in a variety of circumstances.
Usually a first son would find it socially impossible change his name as he’d be the one counted on by HIS family to preserve the family line. (Which is still very important in Japan, hence the relatively common practice of men changing names here.)
Many second sons will change their names to their wife’s name if she comes from a socially higher, all-daughter family. My husband’s subordinate did that and got a BMW out of the deal from daddy-in-law.
My friend’s husband is a second son and was asked by his maternal grandmother to change his name to her surname, as they had had no sons to take on the line. He did, and then inherited all her stuff when she died (are you seeing a pattern here?)
My own husband’s family is called, say Tanaka, but there is not a drop of Tanaka blood running in their veins. Husband’s grandfather was a second son by the name of, say, Kohara, who was asked by Mr Tanaka senior to marry his eldest daughter. He was offered the farm to inherit if he agreed to change his name from Kohara to Tanaka.
He agreed because he was a temple son, so stood to inherit nothing from his own family, and married the girl.Then they didn’t have kids. So Tanaka senior ordered his second daughter and her husband to give two of her children to the elder daughter and Mr ex-Kohara to adopt.
Things went along ok for a while with this totally manufactured family, until the wife and the two kids got sick and they all died, leaving Mr ex-Kohara all on his own again.
Tanaka senior, now in a right tizzy because the succession still wasn’t guaranteed, ordered Mr ex-Kohara to marry again, and gave him the choice of two women that he’d selected. Mr ex-Kohara chose the one with the same name as his dead wife because it was easier to remember (really!) and she went on to have ten children, the eldest of which is my father in law.
So the family name is Tanaka but there is absolutely NO connection to the Tanaka family at all.
To get back to the OP, in Japan it is the law that either name can be used but that both must have the same name, so someone has to change names, whatever.
(Unless you are my friends Kaoru Saito and Kaoru Saito who got married…)
I’ve never known a man who took his wife’s name after marriage. My brother-in-law and sister hyphenated both their names and both use the hyphenate, as did their three children.
Their oldest son dropped the hyphenate and started using just his father’s name when he joined the Marines. He got married 2 years ago and his wife took his name.
Middle daughter is unmarried and still uses the hyphenate.
Youngest daughter got married last year and she added her new husband’s name onto her hyphenated last name. So she has three last names joined by hyphens. Her husband uses the three name hyphenate also.
I was using my husband’s last name for credit purposes (just on the card…my real name was on the documentation) before we were married. I didn’t take his last name when we married and have since switched the credit and all important stuff like the mortgage to my real name.
I’ve never understood giving up one’s birth name. My son is a hyphen (his dad and I never married). He uses one, the other or both, depending on his mood.
This could easily fall into the “Who Cares” category, but when I was in college I had a job delivering blueprints in Nashville. One of the customers included an “Al Kerr” whose real last name I used to know but have since forgotten. What I do remember is that he changed his name to Kerr because he was married to Anita Kerr of the then-famed Anita Kerr Singers who were instrumental (pun intended) in the creation of RCA Victor’s “Nashville Sound” under the guidance of Chet Atkins and others.
He was a personable enough fellow but it wasn’t all that hard to figure why he probably got tired of being called Mr. Kerr at parties or what-not.
Not quite on topic with the OP, but how many female stars have lived to regret taking their husbands’ names? Joanne Whalley-Kilmer comes to mind.
A friend of mine was adopted at the age of thirteen. He took his wife’s last name when they got married. I asked him about this and he said, “I’ve only had mine for a few years, so Its not a big deal”.
A guy I know did the same. He went from something Polish beginning with four consecutive consonants to plain vanilla Scots-Irish (which probably helped him fit in better in his wife’s Baptist church).
Neat. Did their names use the same kanji? I ask because R25 magazine was looking for couples with the exact same pre-marriage names (pronunciation and kanji) as part of their review of Freakonomics.
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When Lady Lacha & myself got married (both of us 22), I was too poor to buy her a ring, so I took her name, hyphenated, as a show of solidarity. The process was simple: when we filled out our marriage application at town hall (State of New York), there was a space for both of us to state our unmarried names and then our married names. So I just put “Raven-Lacha” as my married name, and Bob’s your uncle. it has succeded to variable degrees: my Social Security, the IRS and my bank know me as C-L, but the DMV & passport office know me by my familial name only.
At work, my system log-on name is hers only, but my ID badge has mine only. It’s kind of handy sometimes – when people come looking for “Raven,” I look confused & tell them my name is “Lacha,” and they go elsewhere.
Eventually, they come back, dammit.
Should read “R-L.”
One of my good friends, a guy I knew from college who I played in a ska band with, took his wife’s last name when they married. They’re both strong-willed, liberal, nontraditional, feminist people and it just seemed like the thing to do. Plus, he wasn’t terribly fond of his last name.
The husband of another former co-worker of mine changed his last name to hers. (He is a cop and she is an attorney.) In that case, he was very close with her parents and not too close with his own family, and her parents are the only family in the United States with that particular spelling of a traditional Swedish family name. He thought it would honor them by choosing to carry on their name rather than his own, which is pretty neat if you think about it.