Use of the terms “given name” and “family name” don’t require explanation.
Technically, a “Christian” name is a given name taken or granted in connection with a Christian ceremony. And a “surname” is an honorific or descriptive like “the Great.”
Aspidistra, could you explain this for me, I think I’m amazingly dense on the topic.
How exactly does no married woman have a legal name ?
What is the process if Jane Smith married Joe Blow and chose to become (the usual change in Australia today) Jane Blow ? Does she not have to register this ? I thought women who changed their surname to their husbandds had to go through an awful lot of document changing, converting things over (with the aid of a marriage certificate) to Maiden HisLastName. Is this not the case ?
And how is my name not my legal name ? My legal name pre-marriage was MyFirst MyMiddle MyLast. Post-marriage it is MyFirst MyMiddle MyLast, so what about the marriage certificate invalidated my legal name ?
Colour me confused.
Virtually all the women I know (U.S.) have dropped their original middle names and replaced it with their maiden name. It’s certainly the norm.
That doesn’t mean they actually USE all three names. Hillary Clinton has gone back and forth between “Hillary Clinton” and “Hillary Rodham Clinton” over the years, for example. This is not a name change, just a choice to use the middle name or not.
Apparently I am one of the few American women who chose to keep their middle name and drop the maiden name entirely. So here’s a vote for “First - Middle - Husband’s Name”. (and yes, my maiden name was that horrid.)
Primaflora, why is it costing your husband $300 to get a deed poll?
I’m a fellow QLD citizen and mine cost all of $40.
Goo, apparently the law in this country allows a marriage certificate to work in lieu of a deed poll for changing your surname at marriage if you are a woman, and you can present it (for that purpose only) instead of a deed poll to change documents such as a driving licence. If you change any other name when you get married, or the guy changes his name, you have to do a deed poll.
IANAL.
And Aspidistra, you have my extreme sympathy with the evil passport people. I have been trying to work out how i can get them to change a few details on my passport unsuccessfully for over a year now, and I have a deed poll. sigh.
Well, what I mean is that after getting married, if you want to change your name in the records of whatever institutions have your name details (Banks, Medicare, Uni, whatever…) then you run around to them all with your birth certificate and marriage certificate and say “I’m going to be so-and-so now” and they do it.
But there’s no central registry to make sure that you’ve picked one particular variant and stuck with it. There’s nothing, practically speaking, stopping you from changing some of your cards/bills etc over to “HusbandsSurname only” format, and some to be hyphenated, and not bother to change others. You could, if you were trying not-too-hard, end up with 100 points of ID in three different combinations of your maiden name and your husbands name, and no-one would be the wiser.
Of course, most women do end up with something more-or-less consistent. But there isn’t any actual legal force behind it, and as far as I can see there’s nothing stopping you from shuttling backwards and forwards between Maidenname / Husbandsname every other week. Apart, of course, from the enourmous pain in the butt that it would be.
Aha. That clears it up. Thanks, phraser.
So you can use your marriage certificate to change your name to Maiden HisLast or Maiden YourLast-HisLast, but any other changes require a deed poll and a hefty fee ?
I reckon it should be a $20 fee and some paperwork for anyone to change their name to anything for any reason. But that’s not going to happen 
Interesting point, Aspidistra about there being no checks and balances on what names you can use. You’d think they’d make you pick one and stick to it, or register it somewhere, wouldn’t you ? Very odd.
I’ve seem something of this. My ex-boss’s wife had a different name on her SS card from her drivers lisence. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but there it was.
I tried to look this up and couldn’t get to any information, but I was told that in Louisiana your legal married name, no matter what you go by, is FirstName MaidenName Husband’sLastName. The laws here are really wacky, though, not being based on English common law like most states’.
I don’t think it’s more common than just changing the last name in most of the country, though. In my experience most women either change their last names or keep their maiden name. I personally loathe hyphenated names, so I’ll never do that, but I’ve seen it a lot.
I did this as well. Not because I hated my maiden name, I actually kind of prefer it to my married, but just because my maiden and married names both start with the same letter, and first middle husband’s flowed much better than first maiden husband’s.
I’m pretty sure that anywhere in the United States your name is whatever you say your name is. You can change it with no legal maneuvers whatsoever, just start using the new name, and it becomes your legal name, period. The only hanging point is “without intent to deceive”.
In practice, you need to acquire some new paperwork/ID cards in the new name and then use those most easily obtained to establish yet more bills and accounts and cards and keep cascading. I have a friend on Long Island who decided that since her birth name was FirstName HerDadsName (not HerMomsName except insofar as her mom had acquired it relatively late in life) and on marriage she had become FirstName HusbandsLastName, it meant that neither one was really a woman’s name so she changed her entire name to ModifiedFirstName InventedFromScratchLastName.
She got phone and electric bills in the new name, opened a new bank account in the new name and obtained a credit card, took it in to DMV and got her drivers’ license changed, got a passport, changed her school records, and finished up with a reissued Social Security card and modified birth certificate. All without an attorney, appearance before judge, or legal filing.
That’s not to say you’d never run into some obstructionist people arguing that you can’t do this (I think she did have to speak to some senior supervisors regarding the credit card and the school records) but legal precedent is on your side. Regarding Louisiana, I’d be astonished if there were no legally binding decisions supporting a woman’s right to not take her husband’s last name. The law as you’re describing it would have to be a gender-specific law and there are very few gender-specific laws restricting what one sex can do but not the other remaining in force in the US.
That’s what I was told, by my mom who was very surprised when she learned it. She also had to sign some important legal-type paper second, because the husband must sign first. Louisiana law is its own thing, being a mishmash of the old Napoleonic code and other stuff. I wish I was kidding about the signing second requirement!
Whiterabbit, I find that really dreadful! If anyone had tried to make me change my name I think I would have had a Supreme Court level meltdown. Obviously, I never changed my name (either time I got married). Socially, we just answer to the last name of whichever one of us is the social contact (here he would answer to Mr. Bugnorton and at the fishing club I would answer to Mrs. AncientMariner). I and Mr. Bugnorton are blessed that we are both cool with that arrangement.
Virtually all the women I know (U.S.) have kept their original middle names and changed only their family names, dropping their maiden names altogether. It’s certainly the norm.
Virtually all the women I know (U.S.) have kept their original middle names and changed only their family names, dropping their maiden names altogether. It’s certainly the norm.
I can’t help you with point 3, but I can give you a few more American examples of your preferred construction (although, as others have said, I’m not sure how helpful it will be). A number of American actresses have used that form. Currently, the only one I can think of is Courtney Cox Arquette, but there are surely more. Also, Farrah Fawcett used Farrah Fawcett Majors when she was married to Lee Majors and Pamela Anderson used Pamela Anderson Lee when she was married to Tommy Lee. If you prefer to avoid the examples set by skinny sitcom actresses and former or current sex kittens, I offer two Supreme Court Justices. Both Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Sandra Day O’Conner use your preferred construction. So do I, BTW.
The Wifestrocity dropped her middle name when I married her. She took her maiden name as her middle name. Through lovely happenstance, I have a daughter. When she arrived, we gave HER the Wifestrocity’s old middle name as her middle name, thusly and forsoothingly preserving that little bit of familial history.
Cartooniverse
Her LEGAL name is not different. She didn’t have to get it changed or anything. She just has to substitute her maiden name for her middle name on some documents. I guess it’s kind of like using one name socially and the other in business.
I wouldn’t want my current name to be my middle name. But I like the idea in general. It’s better than hyphenating.
This is what I did…
I got married 10 years ago and changed my name to First Middle HusbandsLast. Then we promply moved out of the state and I never thought anything of it until I moved back to Oregon… because that’s just what every woman around me did at the time.
When we moved back to my home town around 5 years ago I couldn’t seem to make connections with anyone I knew before. Most had moved or married and I couldn’t find them. Then I talked with my Mom who said something to the affect of “You’ve been MaidenName for 23 years and HusbandsLast for 5 years… maybe no one recognizes you by that name.”
Not only that, I am PROUD of my family and our heritage. I am the 6th generation (…and it goes back farther than that if you count the Native American side who was here before that but didn’t record anything on paper.) of a founding family of our town.
So with those 2 things in mind, I went to my friendly neigborhood bank, stores, and changed my accounts to First Middle Maiden-HusbandsLast… and I started sending out resume’s with that name… and sure enough the circle of “small town chatter” got around to people I knew before and I got calls from more than a few people.
My husband doesn’t like the change… he feels slighted because of it for some reason. And he never has given me a reason he feels bad about it. Unfortunately, the deed was already done before he objected… but, well, it is MY name and I don’t feel bad at all.