should a spouse change their name after marriage?

Great Debates
1

OK, this is prompted by something in my personal life, and also a comment I read in an MPSIMS thread.

I am getting married next year.

Here’s what I think should happen:

My fiancee keeps my last name, I keep my last name, when we have children (we’re planning on two), one of them takes her last name, one of them takes my last name. Problem solved.

My fiancee agrees with the first part (we keep our last names), but she thinks the children should both have the same last name, and she doesn’t want to have a different last name than everybody else in the family.

The hyphenated name idea seems cumbersome to me. (My daughter Smith-Jones married a boy Rakowski-Skowronski, so what is their child called?)

So far, I’ve heard the following criticisms of my scheme:
[ul][li]When I changed my name, that’s when I really felt married.[/li][li]Why don’t you use your maiden name as your middle name?[/li][li]If the kids have different last names, it won’t seem like a family.[/ul][/li]
My answer to those objections is ppbbbb. Lots of divorced and remarried parents have children with different names. Does that mean those aren’t real families? Why should my wife have to give up her name. To indicate that she’s my property? And I’m not changing my name.

Quand les talons claquent, l’esprit se vide.
Maréchal Lyautey

2

D’oh!

Please correct the appropriate sentence above to read:

Quand les talons claquent, l’esprit se vide.
Maréchal Lyautey

3

My wife changed her name to mine. She was going to change it anyway (she never went by her first name, so wanted it legally dropped for convenience), but it was her decision. She didn’t feel like it made her my chattel or any of the other paranoid responses. She just decided it would be easy and handy for both of us to have the same name.

Names are good identifiers. (“Sonja Winkelried? Hey I know your father!”) It might be awkward for the kids to have two different last names, but divorce and remarriage are common enough (and adoption getting there) that names are less and less seen as a family label.

Heck, I’ve known two different couples who dropped both last names and made a new one up. Go fig.

-andros-

4

I am in favor of spouses keeping their own names after marriage, if they so choose. I like the name my parents gave me, and I would hate to think that someone would feel compelled to change away from a name about which they felt similarly. But, some folks don’t like their names, and look forward to changing.

One argument you sometimes hear is “won’t it be confusing?” If society survived having William Johnson being the son of John Anderson and the father of John Williamson, 'way back when, it won’t fall apart if members of a family unit aren’t immediately identifiable by surname. The people who are close enough to know the couple and the family aren’t going to be confused, and if it’s less than crystal-clear to bureaucrats and advertisers, well, who cares?

However, one handy thing is that I married a woman whose surname shares the same initial letter as mine, as did many of our forebears apparently, so all the inherited silverware and crystal from the Stuarts, Schoenfelds, Spiros, Stanfields and Sheils mesh well.

5

I come from two Jewish families, Shoenhauers and Shoenbergs, who located to the South and called themselves the “Shoenuffs.”
Sorry.

6

OOOH! I was just discussing this today. My son’s father and I never married. I hyphenated my son, which really pissed his dad off, but, I have never understood the purpose of changing a name, and since my son was the product of two last names, he should have both.

Well, he turned out to be a real dick and a lousy father. My son uses the long name for “official business” and MY last name for his personal identity and casual use.

I am now married and I didn’t take my husband’s name. He thinks it would be more convenient for us to share one name, but he’s cool with it. I was 40 when I married for the first time, and DAMNIT! I like my family and my name and I have no intention of changing it. I identify with it and so it shall stay. It may be confusing to others, but that’s not my problem. On the other hand, my sister, unmarried, changed her FIRST and LAST name. Just felt like it. It killed my parents. They considered it a slap in the face. But everyone is cozy, so WTF. If that’s what makes her happy, cool.

7

I changed my name to my husband’s in 1984 when we got married – really I felt that going from Weidenborner to Ebelhar (yes yes, I really AM Irish Catholic!) was a spelling and pronounciation improvement. But if I had it to do again, I’d keep my own name, I think. I had no brothers, and my sister also changed her name, so our branch of the family name has died out.

-Melin

8

Some people might roll their eyes a little bit when a woman “insists on” keeping her maiden name after marriage, but the concept of a man changing his surname upon marriage is almost unheard of. As enlightended as we are, we still tend to believe that surnames “belong” to the male members of the family.

On the other hand, my sister-in-law has four kids with three different surnames. One of her daughters uses one surname one year, another surname the next. Sis-in-law herself has recently changed her surname to her boyfriend’s surname, so she doesn’t share a surname with any of her own kids, but does share the name with all four of her boyfriend’s kids.

Their mailman is perpetually confused.

9

I don’t think each of you giving one kid your name is a good idea. The way we name things says a lot about the way we classify things, and that is a two way street–the way we classify things can evolve out of how they are named. You would be running the risk of the children being in some way associated more with their eponymous parent, if not by y’all than by other people. It is not a big deal, but it would be a reaccuring issue throughout their lives. Plus, how would you decide which kid got which name? Do you want to be faced with “Daddy, why did Jenny get your name and not me?” (Or vice-versa for your wife) I like the idea of createing a new name by blending, or just one that you like. Is there a third person you both admire whose last name you could steal?

10

There are obvious acceptability problems with what I’ma gonna suggest, but I recently saw that someone has been suggesting the same thing in academic circles (I’ve previously kept my idea to myself for future use). I also think something similar came up on a previous thread.

Anyway, the following assumes that lineage is important:

Girls follow a matrilineal nomenclature, boys the patrilineal. Each person then has another family name (middle or hyphenated, or in the case of the Chinese maybe one at the beginning, one at the end) which indicates the union of the two lineages. When you enter a new nuclear family, you (plural) change your name to indicate that.

Thus, Sue Adams-Johnson marries Harry Biggs-Smith and the two become Sue and Harry Adams-Smith. Their kids are Doreen and Skip Adams-Smith.

When Doreen marries William Washington-Hurt they become Doreen and William, the Adams-Hurts. When Skip marries Lulubelle Liston-Sagan they are the Liston-Smiths.

Hey, at least it puts the squeeze on patriarchy.

If things really get awkward, you can always just use your Social Security Numbers.

11

Why hasn’t anyone suggested that he take her name? I’m surprised at the lot of you! :slight_smile:

12

(I hope another certain post didn’t show up before this one!) I do know a man who got married and took his wife’s name. He just shrugged his shoulders when asked why he did that.

MaryAnn
No, stupid, it’s a boat!

13

MaryAnnQ: I know a man who took his wife’s last name, too. He did it because she was a last-of-her-clan Native American and they wanted to keep the family name of “Cloud” going.
Incidentally, the topic of this thread brings up another important issue: Should “they” be used in the singular to avoid gender?

14

Hmm. Sonja Winkelreid isn’t married? Sonja didn’t change her name when she married? Or “Sonja Winkelreid? Hey, I know your father, Ivan Finkelstein!” [how’d ya know???]

Names are good identifiers, which is a good argument for keeping yours. (Just try locating some of the girls who attended Junior High with you by perusing the phone book!)

Designated Optional Signature at Bottom of Post

15

I think any given couple should do whatever the hell they want and makes them happy. And if they can’t agree on something like this, whatever is their marriage going to be like?

The only place I have a real comment is in the naming of the kids. I think it would be quite weird to have kids with different last names. What, is one mom’s kid and one dad’s kid? That’s what it would look like. Hyphenate or pick one, but don’t use different ones. IMO.

Some women want to take their husband’s last name. It’s rather traditional. Some want to keep their own for a variety of reasons. The ones I know who kept their own names did so generally for professional reasons. For example, they got their degrees or law licenses in their maiden names, and so didn’t want to change it all around. Heck, I even know one woman who kept her previous husband’s name after getting divorced and remarried because of this reason!

My sister-in-law (wife’s sister) just got married and doesn’t particularly like her husband’s last name. She said she will probably hyphenate, and that will look quite odd (I’m not going to say what it is, but her name is quite Jewish and his is Mexican). So far, we’ve written her a couple checks (for things like wedding photos) and just used his last name, and she hasn’t complained. Of course, she hasn’t officially gone to change it yet (I told her she’d better do it before tax time) so we don’t really know what she’s gonna do.

16

Thank you for everyone’s comments so far.

Suggestions I’ve heard (I apologize for not crediting the original posters):

Some people will roll their eyes when a woman keeps her last name.
That’s good exercise, so I urge them to keep it up! Seriously, I get enough eye-rolling in my life that I don’t worry about a little extra.

Some women want to take their husband’s name.
Actually, that was my fiancées first idea, but I’m trying to talk her out of it. Why? See my response to the next point.

Some husbands take their wife’s last name. Also, I like the idea of createing a new name by blending, or just one that you like. Is there a third person you both admire whose last name you could steal?
I like my last name, I’m proud of it. In my home canton (in Switzerland) you can find references to it at least as early as the 16th century. The university/state library had a book written by a medieval churchman condemning heresy. That’s something I wouldn’t want to forget! So me changing my name is out. And I’m sure my fiancée’s name has an equal history. Why should her name die out?

{:-Df’s suggestion: Seems fair, but it makes my head hurt. :frowning: Plus I think hyphenated names are awkward.

So, assuming my (future) wife and I both keep our last names, the problem becomes: what last names should the kids use? My method was, give one kid one last name, and the other kid the other. (If you give all the children the last name of one of the parents, the other parent would feel left out, in my opinion.)

Objections to that:
What do you do when your child asks: Why do I have your last name and not mom’s?
I will answer: before having children, we decided that the first child would have mom’s name, and the second dad’s name.

That will seem weird.
Well, I already have that problem! :slight_smile: Seriously, I think that in today’s society there are enough divorced/remarried families that it won’t seem that unusual.

It makes one child seem like the father’s and the other like the mother’s.
True, but once again, that situation happens all the time in divorced/remarried couples. What if I married a widow and adopted her children? We just have to make sure that we treat each child fairly.

Give the chidren the hyphenated name.
As I mentioned above, I think hyphenated names are awkward. What do they do if/when they get married? Names will get longer and longer.

17

P.S. not that it’s important, but Winkelried is not my real last name.

18

Perhaps it sounds old-fashioned, but when my SO and I get married (if we get married), I’ll take his last name. To me, it’s something I am proud of - “belonging” (so to speak) to him.

“If there’s anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.”

19

Which reminds me, Jacques . . I know you’ve been asked before, but why “Arnold Winkelried?” Literary reference?

And how come no one got my Southern Jewish joke? I’ve been saving that up for years! Or are you all just a bunch of cluless goyim?

-andros-
feeling petulant . . .

20

If you give the first kid mom’s name and the second kid dad’s, what happens if you have an odd number of children? One parent would have more namesakes than the other. This could cause family strife when the Smiths team up against the Joneses in fighting over the remote control. (“We ounumber you three to two! Teletubbies it is!”)

Sure, you could say you’ll just plan to have two kids, but let me warn you. I only intended to have one, and ended up with three. My mom planned on three and ended up with five. (shudder.)

Or, what if you have kid #1 and name it after one parent, but your next pregnancy produces twins?

My head hurts, too. :slight_smile: