# should a spouse change their name after marriage? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 9, 1999, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-spouse-change-their-name-after-marriage/17095 "1999-12-09T23:24:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![David\_B](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/51bf81/32.png) [@David\_B](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_B)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 1999, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-spouse-change-their-name-after-marriage/17095/41 "1999-12-12T14:45:00Z")
For the record (and some people are going to consider this silly, but too bad), the middle name of one of my son’s is “Dawson,” which means “Son of David.” (Yes, I know, it’s a faddish name now, but that’s not why we chose it.) ---
**Author:** ![PunditLisa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/4af34b/32.png) [@PunditLisa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PunditLisa)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 1999, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-spouse-change-their-name-after-marriage/17095/42 "1999-12-12T21:08:00Z")
I’m one of those women that chose to use my maiden name as my middle name. It keeps the family connection, without obnoxious hyphens. I’m not sure men appreciate the small trauma that a woman experiences if she takes her husband’s last name. The first time I signed my married name, I felt like a fraud. One day you’re, say, Mary Elizabeth Jones, the next you’re Mary Jones Smith. You have to learn a whole new signature. It’s a very odd experience. I still feel more comfortable with my maiden name. ---
**Author:** ![Persephone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecc23a/32.png) [@Persephone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Persephone)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 1999, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-spouse-change-their-name-after-marriage/17095/43 "1999-12-12T22:36:00Z")
My stepfather adopted me when I was two, so I had his name most of my life. When I married the first time, I took my husband’s name, because I liked it better than the last name I had. When we divorced, I had originally wanted to change my last name to the name I was actually born with, which was my mother’s maiden name (my first husband strongly objected to me keeping his last name). Then I realized that changing my name to my mom’s name would be a horrible affront to my dad, whom I love dearly. So back to the adopted name. I took my second husband’s last name too. I don’t know why. It’s not the best, but oh well. When my sister and her husband married a few years ago, they decided to both do the hyphenation thing, her last name first, then his (it sounded better that way). I think it’s cool. When they had their daughter last year, they weren’t going to give her a middle name, due to the hyphenated last name. But after they saw her, they decided that she just looked like a kid who should have a middle name. Luckily it’s a short one. My point? Do what works for you. But give all the kids the same last name as at least one of you. Kids understand that their half-or step-brothers & sisters may have different last names, but say there’s two kids with the same mom & dad, and they have different last names, even though mom & dad are still married & living together. That may be a bit of a puzzlement for them. ---
**Author:** ![kawliga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ea666f/32.png) [@kawliga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kawliga)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 1999, 8:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-spouse-change-their-name-after-marriage/17095/44 "1999-12-13T08:56:00Z")
Any woman who would hyphenate her name or her children’s name needs to be slapped. This is a silly pretense, akin to adding an accent to one syllable of your name or affecting a British accent when you speak. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 1999, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-spouse-change-their-name-after-marriage/17095/45 "1999-12-13T14:23:00Z")
Years ago, when I was a young existentialist Marxist, I had wanted to name our son “Krizmo Bismark of Nazareth”, and our daughter “Coagulated Aluminum”. Thank God my wife had better sense than I. * * * “It is lucky for rulers that men do not think.” — Adolf Hitler ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 1999, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-spouse-change-their-name-after-marriage/17095/46 "1999-12-14T06:29:00Z")
Thank you, **DavidB**. > [@](#): > > I can certainly tell you that while he is generally considered pretty smart, he is universally considered very strange. I hope people find it appropriate to make this my epitaph also. Thank you everyone for your suggestions. I see several women here have said they would like to keep their “maiden” name when they get married, but I think that none of the people that said that mentioned what name they would choose for their children, if they had any from that marriage (except for the hyphenated name possibility.) * * * Quand les talons claquent, l’esprit se vide. Maréchal Lyautey ---
**Author:** ![cher3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/da6949/32.png) [@cher3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cher3)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 1999, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-spouse-change-their-name-after-marriage/17095/47 "1999-12-13T20:02:00Z")
“Any woman who would hyphenate her name or her children’s name needs to be slapped. This is a silly pretense, akin to adding an accent to one syllable of your name or affecting a British accent when you speak.” Oooh that was fun. Let me try: Anyone who presumes to tell a grown woman what to call herself, how to pronounce or punctuate her own name, or what to name her children needs to get over themselves. ---
**Author:** ![GirlFace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecd19e/32.png) [@GirlFace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GirlFace)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 1999, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-spouse-change-their-name-after-marriage/17095/48 "1999-12-13T20:30:00Z")
Right(hyphen)on! Bite me, Kawliga (if that’s spelled correctly). ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 1999, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-spouse-change-their-name-after-marriage/17095/49 "1999-12-13T20:46:00Z")
First my pet peeve: using the word MAIDEN name. Please, we are out of the dark ages. I like to say, " My Former Name." it gives an air of mystery. When I married, I really didn’t want my husbands last name (Arndt), but I really didn’t want my Former Name (Dei) either. Both are painfully one syllable. I had always wanted to change my last name to something like my mom’s or my Grandman’ FORMER name, but, well never got around to it before getting married.(Ok, I didn’t know how to do it.) Hubby pouted. He loves his name. Thinks it great & noble, etc. I think it blows chunks ( Although, it is great for one liners and jokes, none of which he ever thought of until I started using them.) I didn’t keep my name because Dei-Arndt doesn’t not flow and never will.Dei, which is Latin for God ( and Irish for ‘put it on his tab’ 🙂 ) will never be one of our childrens middle names.It’s like a speed bump. Also, we love to travel and to give our children one name or the other would just be a clusterfuck at passport control. We don’t want to look like we are kidnapping our own children. I changed over to his camp, but it was after I came up with the brilliant idea. " Honey, why don’t we combine our two names. We could be the DARN family." Oh the jokes I coulda had for years if he agreed, the stick in the mud. I did run into a woman whose FORMER name was Malarkey. She married a man with the name Bologna. I have to tell the masses, I am totally jealous of this woman and the one liners she will have for the rest of her marriage. She had a spectacular sense of humor. Hell,if I were her, I’d name my son Oscar Meyer. ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 1999, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-spouse-change-their-name-after-marriage/17095/50 "1999-12-13T20:48:00Z")
Oh, and if I should outlive my husband, I’m changing my last name to something that I shall never have to spell again and is two syllables. ---
**Author:** ![kawliga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ea666f/32.png) [@kawliga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kawliga)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 1999, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-spouse-change-their-name-after-marriage/17095/51 "1999-12-15T06:36:00Z")
Perhaps I should rephrase what I wrote previously. I see nothing wrong with a woman keeping her own name after marrying. It’s the hyphen I object to. Women who hyphenate their names will claim to be doing it under a pretext of gender equality or personal identity. But they really do it to impress. They think it looks classy. ---
**Author:** ![GirlFace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecd19e/32.png) [@GirlFace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GirlFace)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 1999, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-spouse-change-their-name-after-marriage/17095/52 "1999-12-15T13:48:00Z")
Kawliga, you don’t know why people hyphenate their names! I hyphenated my son’s name because I wanted it to be distinctly separate from his middle name. It had nothing to do with “classy.” Quit being so presumptious. ---
**Author:** ![techchick68](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ea5d25/32.png) [@techchick68](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/techchick68)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 1999, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-spouse-change-their-name-after-marriage/17095/53 "1999-12-15T17:31:00Z")
Personally, I plan on keeping my last name, IF I ever get married. Which for me is a long shot \< grin \> I know of a couple that combined their names, not just the woman using the hyphenated version, they both did it. That’s progressive 🙂 Her last name first, then his. I think it is pretty cool. Their children will have a sense of both families this way. However I wouldn’t recommend it if you have two funky last names (watch The Tonight Show and Leno’s wedding/engagement segment in Headlines) I think I saw one couple as Butts and Weiner…those poor kids would have a horrible time growing up! \< giggle \> Long-Johnson Small-Head Love-Rice Lamb-Hunter You get the idea, I actually went through our local phone book to come up with those names. You’d think I have work to do or something. ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 1999, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-spouse-change-their-name-after-marriage/17095/54 "1999-12-15T17:34:00Z")
OK, for all women that plan on keeping their last name after marriage: If you have children, what last name will you give them? Is there anybody that will do anything besides “hyphenating” the father and mother’s last name? ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 1999, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-spouse-change-their-name-after-marriage/17095/55 "1999-12-16T01:05:00Z")
techchick68 wrote: > [@](#): > > I know of a couple that combined their names, not just the woman using the hyphenated version, they both did it. That’s progressive 🙂 It’s progressive for us English-speakers, but Spanish-speakers have been doing it for a long time. (I think.) ---
**Author:** ![CatInHat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@CatInHat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CatInHat)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 1999, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-spouse-change-their-name-after-marriage/17095/56 "1999-12-22T22:22:00Z")
My husband and I had a big argument about this a few weeks ago (we’ve only been married about 6 months). I didn’t change my name, and he’s not especially happy about it. I do _answer_ to his last name, and I don’t get ticked off if someone calls me by it, but I didn’t change mine legally. We agreed from the outset that the kids will have his name. Hyphenating is out of the question (I have a 3-syllable WASP name, and he has a 3-syllable Italian name). On top of everything else, my first name rhymes with his last name. Anyway, he’s upset because he feels that we’re not “really” a family if we don’t have the same last name. I think this is bull cookies, and told him so; fortunately, I was able to point out several families where the wife had kept her name, and the kids seem none the worse for it. He’s got a coupla other peeves: he’s tired of being addressed as “Mr. Cat” by people (like the vet) who don’t know when we got married. My last name also comes before his in the alphabet, so I show up on alphabetized lists first (I think that one’s just silly, but it annoys him). I know that a lot of this is coming from his anxiety about other things, but it’s really annoying. I don’t think that I’m any less “married” for having a different name than my husband. Is parents having different last names really **that** confusing for school administrators these days? I mean, there are kids out there being raised by grandparents, or other relations who don’t have the same last name as the kid. In this day and age, you’d think that schools would be able to handle this kind of thing. * * * Never attribute to malice anything that can be attributed to stupidity. – Unknown ---
**Author:** ![GirlFace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecd19e/32.png) [@GirlFace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GirlFace)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 1999, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-spouse-change-their-name-after-marriage/17095/57 "1999-12-23T14:48:00Z")
My son is 23, and we’ve never had a problem with it in school. Our prescription insurance was a tough one, though. The insurance is under my husband’s name, and they get a little wierd when I order drugs under my name. Also, the cencus bureau. They had a stroke when they came to our house. Four people and four last names. It’s really not that hard, but they get all flustered. Their problem, not mine. ---
**Author:** ![bj0rn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a88e57/32.png) [@bj0rn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bj0rn)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 1999, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-spouse-change-their-name-after-marriage/17095/58 "1999-12-23T15:13:00Z")
just want to insert a word: here in iceland we have a different system, one that has been used for hundreds of years. ok, there is this guy Gunnar Bjarnason(His dads name is Bjarni). anyway if he has kids with his wife Guðrún Rúnarsdóttir(her dads name is Rúnar) then their kids would have their own name and be Gunnarsson(if it is a boy) or Gunnarsdóttir(if it is a girl). it is also known that kids take their mothers name, but its rare and so far i think it has only happened with a single parent. so we dont have “family names”, only our own names, and for further identification we also have our parents identity. bj0rn - Gunnarsson ---
**Author:** ![bj0rn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a88e57/32.png) [@bj0rn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bj0rn)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 1999, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-spouse-change-their-name-after-marriage/17095/59 "1999-12-23T15:16:00Z")
copied from encylopedia brittanica: Family names came into use in the later Middle Ages (beginning roughly in the 11th century); the process was completed by the end of the 16th century. The use of family names seems to have originated in aristocratic families and in big cities, where they developed from original individual surnames when the latter became hereditary. Whereas a surname varies from father to son, and can even be changed within the life span of a person, a hereditary surname that develops into a family name better preserves the continuation of the family, be it for prestige or for the easier handling of official property records and other matters. so originally it was like we are still using it in iceland, man are we old fashioned or what? bj0rn - oldfashionedson ---
**Author:** ![the\_first\_supraliminal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f475e1/32.png) [@the\_first\_supraliminal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_first_supraliminal)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 1999, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-spouse-change-their-name-after-marriage/17095/60 "1999-12-23T15:37:00Z")
Sheesh. A rose by any other name smells just as sweet. Who said that, Will Romeo Smith? On a more trivial note, for the sake of lineage, one of the sexes must keep its name. But this is arbitrary (not really, as I will explain). It’s funny that the male name is kept, perhaps since males have always held the power. But a man cannot be 100% certain that his offspring is his, while a woman can. Knowing biology, it is obvious which sex should keep the name if lineage is to be clear (the woman, for you speed readers). But it may be precisely this fact that would make a male want to keep his name. Without the biological control he has with his offspring, perhaps the name is all he has to keep him consoled. Once again, a rose by any other name, blah blah blah… * * * There’s always another beer. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-spouse-change-their-name-after-marriage/17095.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-spouse-change-their-name-after-marriage/17095.md?page=4)