I don’t think most people would be offended by the use of “Ms.” as the default female honorific. But of course if you know a particular individual uses “Mrs.” or “Miss” instead, that’s how you address them.
I think the original offenderati about “Ms.” have all died of old age.
But in the USA, the new generation of them fomented by RW Xian propaganda are a growing force. Offending ignorant losers like them is a bit of a mission of mine, so please, do all you can to piss them off too.
Or, you know, maybe save your offenderizing for significant matters of principle? Deliberately refusing to address somebody by the conventional honorific they prefer just seems pointlessly rude (besides somewhat undermining the anti-transphobic ethos of addressing people according to their preference rather than by the modes of address you assign to them).
But you need a default for when you don’t know the person’s preference. I believe that right now, the best default is “Mr” for anyone who uses “he” pronouns and “Ms” for anyone who uses “she” pronouns. You may later learn that the person prefers “Dr” or “Rev” or “Mrs”, but you often need to start with a blind guess.
Yes, that’s what I said?
Heh, i completely agree with that post. But i can’t keep track of who said what, i guess.
While I’m not a huge fan of his writing, I like Isaac Asimov’s simple “M.” for everyone in the future (except for robots, of course - they’re “R”.)
Mildly off-topic, but anywhere I need to sign up for some online service (delivery pizza, Uber etc) I use as my first name Mister and my surname as my real surname.
I have had nothing but amusement from the various drivers.
My ex-wife uses Ms. MySurname, which really irritates me, she divorced me… She can use her own surname.
It’s really hard to change your name. Paperwork, tons of people to notify…
It costs R250 (USD 15.50) and a fairly lengthy wait at the Government Department of Home Affairs, but seeing as I paid (both my and her side*) for a divorce I did not want, and then had to sell our house because neither of us could buy out each other…
I feel she could just change her name back to her maiden name, out of what ever tiny empathy she still has with me. I would even pay the fee.
It is a sore point.
* yeah, that was literally shooting myself in the foot. I was hoping (foolishly) her lawyers might steer her back to me.)
It’s not the money, it’s all the people and companies you have to notify, and then deal with the errors they make… And for the rest of your life you need to keep that paperwork, because suddenly you find you need to prove that you are the same person as you were ages and ages ago… I changed my name once. I will never do it again. I don’t think she’s trying to spite you.
She uses her maiden name in business transactions, but her passport etc in in my surname.
It is really petty but, fuck, it irritates me. My children have my surname (born, obviously, before divorce) and I am happy for them to be MySurname. Just not my ex.
At least in the USA it’s a real PITA to name change as @puzzlegal says. Obtaining the legal blessing to formally change a name is trivial; it’s everything else and the ongoing consequences that are huge.
Given how much more of an online and administrative presence a modern young woman has than one e.g. 50 years ago, I’d be expecting women taking their husband’s last name to be a rapidly dying practice in the USA. At least among thinking people.
All the more so among the folks who’re marrying later. The woman / girl barely out of high school marrying at 17 is a lot smaller fraction of the total than it was 50 years ago too. However much effort it takes for a 2026 era 17yo to update all her official and online stuff, it’s much harder for an 2026 era e.g. 28yo to do the same.
Another of the many reasons for modern societies to let go of the expectation that married women by default will change their surnames to their husband’s name. (And likewise that the children of the marriage will bear the husband’s surname but not the wife’s. Many mothers, whatever their marital status, continue to find it way more convenient and acceptable to have the same surname their children have.)
How we’re going to handle the kid-naming thing in a more egalitarian way I’m not sure, although I know several examples of couples who
(a) gave the mother’s surname to the first child and the father’s surname to the second, and so on;
(b) chose a blended “portmanteau” version of husband’s and wife’s surnames upon marriage, and both spouses changed their names to that legally;
(c) used a hyphenated combination of surnames for the children;
(d) just gave all the kids the mother’s surname instead of the father’s, because why not?
The trouble with expecting people by default to change their name when they change their marital status is that they then get used to that name and identify with it as representing who they are. Even if the marital status subsequently changes again, that feeling of identification may not change.
Ultimately, (current and/or vestigial) patriarchal society can’t have it both ways:
Either a married woman’s new surname actually “belongs” only to her husband, and is merely “on loan” to her for the duration of the marriage, meaning that (as all the second-wave feminists used to complain) her legally recognized identity is subordinate to her husband’s.
Or else a married woman’s new surname is her choice to assume as part of her own, equally valid, identity, meaning that she now has just as much legal and moral right to bear it as her husband does, whether or not they remain married, and irrespective of who initiates the end of the marriage if they don’t.
At present, the (still pretty powerful) remnants of patriarchal structure in many societies are producing this weird hybrid where a married woman is still strongly expected to change her name, but it’s totally her own choice if she decides to do so, but if she gets divorced than she’s not really entitled to go on using the name she chose, etc. The cross-currents and undertows of the mixed messages are pretty substantial, and I’m not surprised @scudsucker and other divorced people have feelings of frustration about it.
[glances at thread title] Whoa, forgot what this discussion was nominally about, how did we get here?!? Never mind I guess.
This is a really interesting discussion and it reminds me of my situation. When we are in a environment that involves my wife’s cultural background, she use her maiden name, which means I am sometimes called Mr <wife’s maiden name>. It does not bother me, but it has made me slow to respond at times because I did not realize I was being addressed.
And back to the original topic, I did “ask” for permission, though this was after I had met her parents, and months after I had proposed to her. On the flight to their house, I spent the time doing my best to memorize the words and spoke them competently enough to my future father in law. It really was more of a ritual than anything else, not a thing that was going to determine if we got married. It made her parents happy, which is good since we did end up living with them for an extended time at one point.
//i\\
I agree. I would have happily married my wife without her changing her name, but we had a very mixed trad/modern wedding, and she wanted to change her name in the traditional way.
Now we are divorced, I want her to change it back, but she is unwilling to even enter that conversation.
I have given up on trying to convince her, though it still irritates me. It is minor irritation, in the grander scope of things that irritate me, but it is one.
A lot easier to change your name when your husbands is much better than yours.
I like my name, which is uncommon, but hers is more rare… I would have thought she would keep that one.
She is (supposedly) an offshoot of a family started by a mistress of the Belgian King Leopald (of Congo infamy)
There have been no genealogy checks, this is just family legend. It is mildly amusing to consider I was bonking a possible (distant) heir to the throne, no matter how unlikely that would have been.
But she should keep that surname. It is a very rare one, whereas, my British lineage means I have an uncommon, but not rare surname.
My mum’s surname before marriage was Eells, which appears to have died out after she changed her surname when she got married.
I know a lot of divorced women who kept the name. They got married young, and this is the name they built their professional reputation on. It’s the name of their kids. It’s a royal pita too change your name.
And it’s not a new thing. My MIL kept her husband’s last name when she was divorced.
It’s definitely not a new thing. In the olden days the divorced woman keeping her husband’s name got to keep calling herself “Mrs.” and also avoided askance looks when introducing children with a different name from hers.
My oldest daughter and her husband took a totally different surname when they got married. They wanted to share a surname, taking mine would have been odd, and she didn’t like his. Has worked out fine so far.