I have a male student who applied for admission to our university using his original last name, then decided to change his last name to his wife’s last name after getting married.
This causes some annoying but not insurmountable administrative problems which I was describing to some colleagues the other day, and during the course of the conversation I referred to the fact that the student no longer uses his “maiden name”.
This got a fairly big laugh from my colleagues even though I wasn’t trying to be funny.
So how do you refer to the original name of a male person who takes his wife’s last name?
Seriously, they are going to get divorced anyway. It doesn’t matter. The only exceptions would be if his given last name is something like: Hitler-Symp.
There is nothing wrong with a wife keeping her last name. Mine did for some purposes. There is something really screwed up about him taking hers. The hassles based on convention alone are enough to stop that in most cases. All you can do is accept his name as whatever he says it is. That works for everyone but it does cause problems in contexts like these.
Male here.
I don’t know the answer. Just would like to add that I wouldn’t mind changing my last name for the woman I love. I don’t think my parents would care that their, (my father’s), name would pretty much die… neither my brother or I want kids, so that’s something that’s just going to happen anyay.
It means nothing to me, and if my future wife want’s to keep her name that much, fine. Mine isn’t exactly easy to pronounce anyway.
But I hope she cooks… cuz I WILL burn the place down. I’ll help, but I suck at multitasking.
My last name isn’t offensive, but it is hyphenated, and nobody ever fucking gets it right. When I get married, I’m taking my wife’s name, unless it’s even worse than mine. That meet with your approval?
And that statement doesn’t strike you as blatantly sexist?
I know a couple in which the husband took the wife’s name. His name had unpleasant connotations (let’s say it was something like “Slob”), and he happily took her name, which is quite “normal” and plain. I might add that none of his brothers’ wives took the name for themselves.
I know another married couple that for various reasons chose a new surname to use in their married life.
What the hell is wrong with either of these scenarios, I have no idea, unless it is the person who judges them for it.
I say “birth name”. Same as if he had been adopted or changed his name for any other personal reason. It doesn’t really communicate that the name switch was made for marriage, but it’s such a rare event that I don’t think you can communicate that concisely anyhow.
No, it is just pragmatic. I have no problem with a wife keeping her last name for some or all purposes. However, taking the wife’s last name is so unconventional that it create some problems in the future and nobody needs that. Unless a male has an extremely undesirable last name, he should keep it. Males have enough problems from everything to not peeing on the toilet seat to divorce and child custody agreements. There is no reason to complicate matters further. If I ever had a new potential spouse, I would cancel the whole thing if she insisted on such a thing. I have known females that have done it and that does not bode well for a marital relationship unless you are seriously into BDSM 24/7 which I am not.
Even putting aside the various sexist assumptions in your posts, I think your perspective is a little provincial. Perhaps in some regions of the country a man changing his last name really throws a wrench in the works of local society, but in many places in the country it is no problem. I know several happily married men in different cities who have changed their surnames and have not encountered any difficulties beyond what women who change their names encounter.
Hey look, I’m not one to even argue that there has been, (growing up in the 90’s), a lack of attention considering male rights as far as custody cases. And I used to hate how men were represented on TV as being an idiot or a clown. I felt ashamed to be a male after my mother got me to get haircuts, because all the women at Fantastic Sam’s would bash men in a way that would no way be acceptable if it were men speaking about women. But I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t say two consenting adult can’t do whatever the hell they want to. It’s all about give and take. Which is why I added a “traditional” trait that I may look for in a female.
To find a balance, and I wouldn’t mind giving up my last name because I don’t care.
You may say it will creat confussion but What about same sex marriages? And their last names?
It’s not all that uncommon here. The term for the pre-marriage name (for both sexes) is “kyuusei” (旧姓) which just translates as “former name” or “old name”.
Original name, birth name, bachelor name … they all work for me.
Shagnasty, if you’d never want to take your wife’s name, I respect that. But why should it matter to you if someone else makes a different choice?
I just got scolded myself on this very issue in another thread, because a poster thought I was being condescending in the way I presented my opinion. Though I retract none of my opinions or observations, I do agree that it is an entirely personal decision and calling someone “screwed up” because their choice is different from your own is indefensible.
We went to a wedding a few years ago. We were quite confused when we arrived because an usher handed us a program which had the first names of the bride and groom but had a last name which belonged to neither of them. The groom hated his father so he changed his name to his mother’s maiden name and his wife took that name also. He had no problem doing so. A judge approved it without question and he did all the same paperwork that he wife did to get the name changed on everything from bank accounts to licenses.
I told mty wife that I would take her last name because she is 100% Irish and I’m half Italian. Our kids are 50% Irish so I thought that giving them an Irish surname would be nice. Besides, nobody pronounces or spells my last name correctly and there is no danger of it dying out since my family is so big. But my wife refused. She thought that everyone would make fun of me. I didn’t think they would and I didn’t care anyway, but she wouldn’t do it. She took my name instead. So now the lot of us have an unpronouncable, unspellable name.
I’m struggling between the snarky response of “No. Let’s get married.” and the serious response of “I thought you’d already tied the knot.”
Besides, my username has nothing to do with carrots. It’s the name of a fictional character, Carrot Ironfoundersson, whom everybody calls Captain Carrot, because he’s a captain.
There was recently a discrimination suit resolved in… California?.. because a man took his wife’s name when they married. There is no charge for a woman to change her name within a specified time after she marries, but they were charging him all sorts of fees.