Question for the men: Would you consider taking your wife's last name and naming the kids after her?

This article got me wondering a bit.

Http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2011/11/24/fashion/babies-surnames-to-hyphenate-or-not.html

I’ve read of a few cases where the male partner takes the woman’s last name upon marriage, their kids also take her name.


My feelings are that of… revulsion, frankly speaking. I would NEVER take a woman’s last name and the kids would absolutely have to bear my surname. I’m all for equality and all that, but this is one area where there can be no compromise.

Frankly, I would be very suspicious of any woman who would even consider the possibility.

How about you?

Fo sho. And I wish my parents had done that so I could have had my mom’s last name instead.

It never even crossed my mind as a thing possible.

To add a little more:

The type of woman who’d insist on me changing my name is probably not the type is marry. Not that there is anything wrong with it, they just aren’t fo

I wouldn’t take my wife’s last name, and I would prefer if she keep hers. As for naming kids, I wonder if a “sons get the father’s last name, daughters get the mother’s last name” system would be practical.

My wife has a Chinese last name, so I would feel slightly odd adopting it for myself. If we had kids, I wouldn’t mind using my wife’s last name for them.

Maybe you should recount you definition of ‘equality’ for the Dope masses, because right now the only revulsion I’m feeling is towards your attitude

Female here.

I didn’t change my name when I got married, and honestly it bothers me that kids automatically have the fathers last name. My kids have first name, middle name, my last name, husbands last name.

The only reason kids have their fathers name is tradition, and I am not big on doing things just because that’s the way we always do it.

It wouldn’t bother me to take my girlfriend’s last name when/if we get married, nor would it bother me if our kids had her last name.

It might piss my family off since I’m the last male in my family, so if I don’t pass on the name it dies.

Though come to think of it, it’d suit me fine if we changed our last names to myname-hername or hername-myname, and have the kids take that combo.

Would I take my wife’s last name as my own, upon marriage?

No, because that’s not the family I was born into.

This might be slightly sexist of me, admittedly. But I don’t see any reason why the wife should have to take the husband’s name, either. (My wife kept her own surname, but added mine.) As for the kids? In our family our daughter carries only my surname, but I wouldn’t at all be opposed to a hyphenation. As it is, her middle name is my FIL’s first name.

Mainly, it would depend on my opinion of her last name. If I find it ugly or unpronounceable then no, if it sounds good then OK. I don’t care much about my name, it’s kind of generic; if she feels that strongly about it then I’d be open to the idea. My preference though would be for neither of us to change, I’ve never thought the woman changing her name was a good custom.

“Suspicious”? :dubious:

In the unlikely event that I married a woman…

Sure, why not? If her last name was more appealing than mine, it makes sense. Having everybody in the family sharing the same surname seems sensible and there’s no intrinsic worth in my own last name.

I would not, but I know of a low-life who did just that. He’s from Holland and has a police record. He hooked up with a much younger girl whose family does well in the restaurant business and everything else. This was his means of laundering his past.

I’ve got no intention of having kids but now that I think about it, I’d probably prefer it. I’ve got no real attachment to my last name other than inertia, so replacing it with something less prone to being misspelt wouldn’t be a bad thing.

I would love to- I offered to take her last name, and to have the kids named after her for the last name.

She said “HELL no!”

So, I don’t know. I can’t imagine a woman wanting to who I would want to be with, but I wouldn’t mind changing up my own name. It doesn’t mean that much to me.

I took my wifes name and my kids all have my wifes name - in China.

My wife has taken my last name as have the China bambinas - in the US

The type of man who’d insist on me changing my name is probably (certainly!) not the type I’d marry.

My husband didn’t care whether I took his name or not (though my provincial government did, at least legally) - I kept my name.

I probably wouldn’t take my wife’s name, but that’s only because i think that either party taking the other person’s name is a rather backwards and pointless exercise.

We don’t have kids, and aren’t planning on any, My wife kept her own name, and if we did want kids, i would have been quite happy for them to take her name. That is (partly, at least) because my own last name isn’t something i have a lot of historical attachment to. My parents divorced when i was young, and when my mother remarried she changed all our names to my stepfather’s last name. Then she and my stepfather divorced when i was in my late teens, and i was left with the name.

Since then, my mother remarried and took her third husband’s name, and my sister married and took her husband’s name, so i am literally the only person in my whole extended family with my surname. I’m fine with the name itself, and it serves me perfectly well, but i have no compelling desire to see it carried on, and if we had kids i would be quite happy with them taking my wife’s name.

I asked my husband to change his name to mine, he declined because he wanted to keep his last name. I think a married couple forming a new family should share the same name and since he also didn’t want a new name (not mine or his), I took the path of least resistance and took his.

(He wanted me to keep my last name, as well, but I think when you have kids, it gets confusing.)

He didn’t have any moral objections, nor did he think it was ‘yucky,’ he just liked his name.

(He is regretting it now, I believe. My name is easier to spell and he has basically been adopted by my parents.)

I believe because it is not the societal norm that it puts the male at a disadvantage, it automatically puts him in a submissive role in the minds of many , though a strong enough man can overcome that.

I also believe that is not the case for a woman because it is considered normal for her to take his name or keep her own.

Just like clothing, women have far more options in life, and if men try to do likewise they are considered ‘weird’