Married gals who've kept your name...

In My Humble Opinion
61

Where I live, they are both pronounced the same. But pretty much every married woman, no matter what her last name, goes by Mrs. in casual writing, and Ms. in more formal writing. Until I came to these boards, I didn’t realize there was any other way to do it.

Then again, I was unaware there were actually people who cared so much about it either way.

ETA: As for Broomstick’s thing: Why are these relatives needing to use the formal titles in the first place? I can’t imagine my relatives calling me Mr. T any more than I could my (hypothetical) wife Mrs. Big T.

62

Funny that the OP should appear on my 20th wedding anniversary. :slight_smile:

And for those 20 years, I have been Ms. Scarlett O’Hara (shall we say). That’s the name I was born with. My husband did likewise and kept the name HE was born with. I have NEVER used his last name as my own. No “Mrs.” for me, in any context.

Yet I have a friend (actually I don’t see her much anymore, but not because of this) who INSISTS (there’s that ugly word again) that I am PROPERLY called “Mrs. Scarlett O’Hara.” Wanna talk about tradition, that’s just wrong.

Calling someone by the name they prefer to use is just common courtesy and respect. You cannot use the excuse of “tradition” or any other nonsense to force a name upon them, unless YOU want to look like a douche. This goes for other naming situations as well. When someone introduces himself to you as “Andrew,” say “Hello, Andrew, it’s nice to meet you.” Call him Andrew! Not Andy or Drew or whatever nickname you think is best. Unless he tells you otherwise.

And it amazes me how many people have no clue how to address mail to us. We have two names. Use them! People try to shoehorn us into “Mr. & Mrs.” format:

Mr./Mrs. Rhett and Scarlett O’Hara/Butler (with the last names sort of scribbled on as an afterthought)

Then there’s the completely wrong “Mr. & Mrs. Rhett Butler.” I’m not Mrs. and not Butler. And I have my own first name.

Then there are those who give up completely and just do this:
Scarlett & Rhett (no last names at all!)

I mean really. What if we weren’t married, or were roommates? Our name situation would be exactly the same. To address mail to two people use their names!

Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler

Or you could put them on two lines:

Scarlett O’Hara
Rhett Butler
[address]

It’s not rocket science.

I believe that it’s very disrespectful to call someone by a name other than the one that you KNOW they prefer. This also goes for unwanted childhood nicknames, diminutives of first names, and yes, “Mrs. Husband’sLastName.”

63

Exactly! So many people will go on about “tradition” or “etiquette” but completely ignore the fact that the entire point of etiquette is to make others feel comfortable and welcome. Intentionally choosing to call them by a non-preferred name goes against etiquette.

I just got married this past Halloween and it was really interesting how people reacted to me keeping my own name (which my husband doesn’t care about. In fact, he said he didn’t understand why women should change their names. Bless 'im!). Responses were all over the map:

  • automatically assuming I took his name (“So what’s your name now?”)
    ---- I usually would answer with just my name (aka the one they’ve always known me to have) and I’d get either, “Oh, (that’s) cool(!)”, “Really??? Wow!”, “Haha, I thought so!”
  • asking if I took his name
  • asking if I kept my name
    ---- asking WHY I kept my name, with the attitude I was being really rude by doing so
  • assuming I kept my name
  • charming questions, like from my own damn manager, such as “so, still not going to change your name, huh?”, or “still keeping your own name?”, “still haven’t changed your mind?”
  • some women who would say, “girl, I wish I did that! Good for you!”. :slight_smile:
    And then my mom, who still doesn’t “approve”. I said I didn’t care if she wrote Myfirstname Hislastname on cards or whatever if she wanted to, but just don’t write it on checks I have to cash. She hmphed a bit, but whatever. And then my grandma, being 87, of course puts his last name for me and that’s totally fine. I know how freaking excited she was to do that and I think it’s just adorable. :slight_smile:
64

Well, with a name like that, it only makes sense to do so.

65

I wouldn’t mind doing away with all non-professional prefixes completely. A wedding invitation to Bill Smith and his wife Sue Jones could be addressed to “Bill Smith and Sue Jones” or “Sue Jones and Bill Smith.” If Sue is a bishop, then “The Right Reverend Sue Jones and Bill Smith” or if she has an EdD and lets everyone know it, “Bill Smith and Dr. Sue Jones” If she changed her name then it’s “Sue and Bill Smith” and if he changed it, “Bill and Sue Jones.” Or whatever they want.

If we can’t get rid of them, though, there is still a gap in courtesy prefixes. The Victorians had prefixes for male and female children (Master and Miss), one for adult males individually (Mister), and one that referred to a female by relation to her spouse (Mrs.). They used Miss for unmarried adult females. They had no prefix for married females individually – Sue could be called Mrs. Bill Smith or Sue Smith (if she changed her name) or Sue Jones (if not), in the traditional usage.

When “Ms.” was rediscovered, it solved the problem of referring to unmarried adult females with the same prefix used for children. It also provided a way to refer to married females with a prefix individually – Mrs. Bill Smith could also be called Ms. Sue Smith or Ms. Sue Jones. But many use “Mrs.” to refer to themselves individually, (in preference to the childish “Miss” or “Ms,” which comes across as militant to some).

What’s still missing is a distinct prefix to refer to a male by relation to his spouse – a male “Mrs.” Mister is sometimes used this way – “Mr. Sue Jones” would be understood in Sue’s circles to mean Bill Smith, but would be confusing everywhere else. Especially with same-sex marriage, if we’re going to use these prefixes at all we need a prefix that means “the man married to __” to go along with “Mrs.” which means “the woman married to ___.” Let’s call that prefix “Mx” for now.

If Bill Smith were sometimes called “Mx. Sue Jones,” I think it would make the experience less offensive for Sue when she is occasionally called “Mrs. Bill Smith.” And if Bill married John Davis and kept his name we could call Bill either “Mr. Bill Smith” or “Mx. John Davis.” Calling Bill Smith “Mr. John Davis” would be confusing. (A problem Sue wouldn’t have – if she married Tina Williams and kept her name, she could be called Ms. Sue Jones or Mrs. Tina Williams.)

Or we could just forget the whole thing and not use any of them.

66

Am I the only one who just ignored this game? I mean completely ignored. Everyone got one reply to something sent to Mrs. His Name signed with my name. One. After that, he got all the letters sent to Mr. & Mrs. and I just threw out anything addressed to Mrs. His Name.

True, we did miss out on driving for several hours for children’s birthday parties and other gift-giving opportunities when we were first married, and our Christmas card list has never recovered, but we all must suffer for our principles.

Honestly, after a few 'Sorry, I never received it"'s and mentioning at other times that I assumed anything addressed that way was junk mail, most people caught on. I imagine that others cut me out of their lives for being rude.

67

I’ve had that happen. People who know me and my husband well enough to know we married, but not well enough to know I didn’t change names, who change it “for” me on some mailing list. That bugs me far more than people I know who slip up. I’ll admit among my dozen girlfirends I’ve known for years I have a hard time remembering who became Hislastname, who kept Herlastname and who decided that Herlastname-Histlastname was the way to go. Now that most of us have been married for years, I have it pretty straight, but during the spate of weddings it really was “Did Cathy switch or keep? How about Ann?”

And I never get high handed about people who know my kid’s last name’s (his last name) who decide I must be Mrs. or Ms. Theirlastname. Or my husband’s aunts - all in their 70s - who have never known my last name and really don’t have any reason to other than to address Christmas cards - I can cope with a few Christmas cards.

My favorite though is people who have known us both slightly for years, who don’t realize we married (we’ve been married fifteen years and have known each other almost 30). Different last names. We still run into people who don’t realize we are married until we both start yelling at the same kids.