My wife isn’t famous, but she very much wanted to keep her maiden name as her middle name for professional reasons. She’s a professor now and already had a reputation in her field as a grad student when we met. Changing from
FirstName MaidenName
to
FirstName MaidenName Husbandname
on her professional publications meant that it was easier for other scholars who might not be aware of the details of her personal life to figure out that the two names in fact referred to the same person.
And curiously enough, one of my wife’s colleagues at UCLA is Ursula’s daughter, Elizabeth … .
I think it is nearly standard in the US. Anyway, the passport people will put any name you like on a passport if you can prove a) that you are that person and b) that is the name you habitually use. For a), they accept an affidavit from someone who knows you under both names. I forget what they accept for b), since it was 40 years ago that I got my first passport.
This may have all gotten harder in the last few years. But I am sure they would give no trouble over using maidenname in the middle.
In Quebec, on the other hand, it is not permitted that a woman use any name but the one on the birth certificate for legal purposes. So my wife is addressed as Mrs. Maidenname, which she finds awfully confusing. Miss Maidenname she could understand, but they don’t do that.
My mother did this, as she was born without a middle name. I’d say it’s fairly common. What good are middle names anyway? Tell whoever’s giving you trouble to get that stick removed.
Yeesh. Well, I started this post to tell Apidistra all about how complicated it is with Mr P and his various names and how when he applied for citizenship it was issued in the name on the deed poll.
This is because I assumed he would have taken the freaking deed poll into the office when he applied for citizenship and would have seen this as a problem. But, nooooooooooooo, I just checked his citizenship papers and they were issued in the name he uses, not his legal name. Which to my mind presents a problem. He just blithely went in there and applied and never said a thing.
I might ring the passport office and see what they say. I’m thinking this is going to be an issue. I’m thinking I won’t let my dear husband near a government department without supervision again 
I’d say it’s common but not a majority or even a purality <sp>, at least for anyone married that I know. I would say (from personal experence) that taking his name is most common, combining the 2 in a last is 2nd, keeping her name is 3rd and this is 4th. Anyone have a cite on this? This would make a great USA Today (aka McPaper) snapshot.
Ah, but that doesn’t take into account legal versus social names. I’d venture a guess that a majority of married women have first maiden hislast as their legal names. Most of that group, however, don’t use their full names socially, just as most unmarried people don’t use their middle names.
As far as social names go, though, you’re probably right.
The only reason my mother didn’t do exactly what you’re trying is that
She didn’t yet have a professional career to try to continue from her maiden name.
Her initialswould have been ASS. As it is, they’re ARS, but that’s not a combination too well known in the States.
This pattern is so prevalent in the States that it’s sort of assumed that women have gone “Name MaidenName Husband’sName”. I’m sort of surprised when it’s something different.
Just to add a bit. The pattern that most Americans recognise Firste Middle Initial(more than name) Last is far from common.
In Spanish you’d get something like this.
First Name (which may actually consist of more than one name, two is common) Dad’s surname Mum’s surname, legally in most Spanish speaking countries you need both. As to women it used to be the norm that when they married the changend it to:
First Last de Hubby’s last (Ana María Soriano de Bonilla) or just First de Hubby’s last
Nowadays however women are droppind the “de” (which means of) using Hubby’s last as their Mum’s last OR taking hubby’s last as thier own (dropping the “de”) or just forgetting about hubby and keeping her original name and to hell with it.
My wife uses a compromise version:
a) professionaly she is Dr. First Last (Mine if necessary)
b) for household things she is Mrs. My last
I hope that I didn’t confuse you more
And I didn’t even deal with First Names, where, especially women called María Rosa or María Soledad or María somethingelse, would use only the “second” first name
Apisdistra I found out yesterday that Mr P is going to have either have his citizenship papers changed which doesn’t sound like it will be easy or straightforward or spend $300 on a deed poll because they will not issue a passport in the name he uses. He can only get one in his legal name which is not the name his citizenship was issued in.
Three hundred dollars?
:boggle:
Mr P has my deepest, deepest sympathy.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking more about this issue, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t have a “legal name” … and neither does any other married woman.
Leaving aside the whole middle name issue for the moment - on getting married, I could either:
*stay “Aspidistra Maidenname”
without the Births and Deaths registry being involved in any way.
They certainly don’t have any entry in a file anywhere saying “yes, this person is now known as Aspidistra Husbandsname” - they don’t even have the facility to record this information. All they have is a birth certificate, a marriage certificate, and the presumption that I’m now known as one of the three variants above but they’ve no idea which one and no means of finding out.
Anyway, I’m currently in the process of writing a nice friendly email to DFAT asking is it true that my name is not an acceptable Married Name Format, and where exactly IS the list of acceptable Married Name Formats specified, and who do I have to sleep w… errm… convince to add another entry to it.
We’ll see what happens on Monday.
Another small point: Historically the hyphenated form was used when both the wife AND the husband both took the hyphenated name. It was reserved for situations where the wife’s family was so much more prestigious than the husbands that the thought of her giving up her maiden name entirely was offensive to general sensibilities.
For example, if daughter of Lord Blueblood married John Drudge the happy couple would be known as Mr. & Mrs. Blueblood-Drudge. It was not something that the wife would do by herself.
Of course, in contemporary usage people pretty much do whatever pops in their heads … .
And ranging even further afield … this use of the hyphenated form shed light on a very subtle joke in Lord of the Rings. Bilbo’s annoying relatives are the Sackville-Bagginses. The Sackville-Bagginses are social climbers and their name mirrors it. They’ve taken a perfectly good Anglo-Saxon-sounding surname – “Baggins” and attempted to gussy it up with a Norman-sounding surname – “Sackville”. The impression that they’re trying to create is that at some point in the distant past a common Baggins intermarried with a more noble Sackville, elevating the family. Of course this attempt at cheap puffery backfires and the Sackville-Bagginses come across as much more common than country squire Bilbo.
(Not that there were Anglo-Saxons and Normans in Middle Earth. But Tolkien was well away of the connotations of the different root words. That’s why Bilbo lives at “Bag End” and not a “cul-de-sac” even though the two terms mean the same thing … .)
According to this recent article in Salon:
Aspidistra -
Are you saying there’s no record of someone changing her name? I find that very hard to believe.
I’m in florida and the dipshits who designed the drivers license system can handle it your way (taking away your middle name and making your new middle name your old last name) but they can’t handle multiple last names (which is what I did) without forcing a ()#()#&%*@#*($)U@# hyphen in there.
The social security department handled it fine.
I dread re-upping my passport. I should have done it before they put the security tags in as I live in fear of covert government tracking (since the Patriot Act made the bill of rights mostly obselete).
I’m surprised at the woman’s surname replacing a (christian) middle name, I thought that it became a second surname, eg:
Mary Jane Brown Jones
FORENAME(s): Mary Jane
SURNAME: Brown Jones
It’s odd that you’d “lose” a (christian) name that you already. By “christian” I mean non-surname, hence the small “c”.
In the UK, you can’t legally change anything but your surname by deed poll, because christian names don’t really have legal status in the same way. You can legally call yourself whatever names you want though, without a deed poll or even a statutory declaration, as long as it is not for fraudulent purposes.
That said, to get the name recognised officially, you need at least the statutory declaration. The easiest way to do this is just to write out the deed poll form, but not bother to register it as a deed - it’s still a legal declaration. Banks, the DVLA and the passport office will accept this.
The only time that you would ever really legally need to register a deed poll is if under the inheritance terms of someone’s will you were required to change your name.
I have never ever heard of the deed poll requiring that one also change one’s birth certificate. I find this particularly odd as it is (or was) impossible for a transgendered person to change the gender on their birth certificate, even if gender was non-specific at birth, or erroneously recorded. Perhaps this is unique to Australian law?
Personally, I prefer the Arab tradition here, where no one changes their name at marriage. The name remains:
[Forenames] bin/bint [Father’s name] al [Family name]
Well, some people do keep all four names, istara, but (in the States, at least) forms just have spots for first name, last name, and middle initial. That means that for practical purposes, you have to dump a name, and many, many women dump their middle names since they only ever used them on forms anyway.
And of course married women have legal names. Your legal name is the one the federal government recognizes. Here in the States, it’s the one on your Social Security Card. You can use other names, socially and sometimes on things like bank accounts and medical records, as long as you’re not committing fraud, but those are pretty much aliases. Changing the name associated with your social security number is pretty easy, though. You just take a picture ID with the old name on it, your marriage certificate or the paperwork documenting your legal name change, and yourself down to the local office, fill out a few forms, and wait for them to send you an updated card.
Actually in the United States you can go by anything you want to, change your name to anything you want to (e.g, you could be Aspidistra MiddleName, with neither your Dad’s nor your husband’s last name if you so desired), as long as it is not “with intent to deceive”.