Taking Your Husband's Last Name, or, The Name Game: Paging Married Dopers.

[LouisB]

My darling Marcie kept her name when we married. We married kind of late in life and she didn’t want the hassle of changing all her records, credit cards, drivers license, etc., etc. My parents didn’t care for her decision, but there wasn’t much they liked anyway. Her father hyphenates her name with mine when sending her birthday cards. Most people just assume we are living together.

[Caprese]

I teach preschool and some of the hyphenated names are not only a mouthful, but can be confusing as well. It just becomes a bit ridiculous trying to figure out who belongs to who, etc.

Noting this, planning on having kids, and being a bit old-fashioned, I took my husband’s name when we married back in '82.

To my eternal regret! I loved my name and did not care for husband’s last name.

I did keep my last name as a middle name; had never had a middle name.
Been happily married for almost 23 years and I still don’t care for that last name. Ah well. What’s in a name?

[Little_Lioness]

@Anne Neville

Hyphenating wasn’t an option for me. The problem I saw with it was:

Suppose I hyphenate my name, and everyone else who gets married does the same.
Husband and I get married, and each have two last names, as do our kids.
Our kids grow up and get married (for the sake of argument, to someone else with a hyphenated last name), and each have 4 last names.
Their kids have 8 last names
…
and so on and so forth, with the number of names growing by 2^n. If they don’t want this to happen, they have to pick which parent’s name they’ll use. So you avoid choosing which name you want to have, but your kids have to choose between their parents’ names (and thus, between their parents) when they want to get married.

This argument is brought up at some point in every discussion on names. It’s sort of like the rule that if an online debate goes on long enough, somebody will at some point mention Hitler. If any discussion about surnames goes on long enough, these arguments will be brought in at some point:

1. It’s really only your father’s name, you’re only choosing between two men’s names.
2. Someday your great-grandchildren will have eight surnames.
3. What on earth will future genealogists do, they’ll be so confused! (this one hasn’t come up in this thread yet, but it eventually would have).
4. "I struggled with the issue a lot, and then I did something very unusual; I kept my maiden name as my middle name, and added my husband’s name at the end. "

The responses to all of them are easy:

1. If you want to use that logic, the groom’s name is also only his father’s. The surname originally might have come from a woman (Baxter and other such surnames are based on the profession of a long ago women in the family tree, Fitz- means the name probably originally came from a single mother) or been assigned to a whole family at once and so come from both a great-grandmother as well as a great-grandfather.
2. They’ll drop a name or several along the way and end up with a one or two surname last name, at least with hyphenated names they have a choice. You really have no control over what your kids do after they turn 18 anyway, and there’s no reason to get your feelings hurt if the kids choose one surname over the other. My father and a maternal great aunt both changed their surnames in ther twenties.
3. The genealogist will be swimming in masses of paper and computer records, they’ll have no trouble.
4. Um, you might have struggled with the issue, but you eventually did what about half of other women in America do.

Sometimes I dream about finding one of these threads in time to make the first reply, because I wonder what everyone would talk about if these four arguments were dealt with quickly.

[Dangerosa]

@Unintentionally Blank

That said: I’ve found that the women I’ve run into with hypenated names seem to have a large militant-something-to-prove chip on their shoulder. I’m not saying that’s a blanket case 100% occurrence, it’s just the people I’ve have the ‘pleasure’ of dealing with.

(Ducks to avoid the volleys of napalm)

I’m about the easiest going “didn’t change my name feminist” I can imagine…with the expection of several of my easy going girlfriends who didn’t change their names either. I really don’t care what I’m called, long as it isn’t Bitch to my face.

And I’ve overheard people say something about “having kept my name. being really picky about it. something to prove…”

Look at your expectations. You may discover that you perceive what you expect from people.

(Though there are certainly big chip on the shoulder feminists)

[calm_kiwi]

@Dangerosa

I’m about the easiest going “didn’t change my name feminist” I can imagine
(Though there are certainly big chip on the shoulder feminists)

I am about the easiest “did change my name…even if it is SMITH” feminist you could find. I still have the flipping name 11 yrs after I had the husband!

I believe it is important for a child to identify their name with their family. Our family is just the two of us. To me, it would be crazy to have more then one name in a 2 people family. So I keep the Smith…Until we become Smitherns (not my idea)

Your family is what matters to you. It is the people who matter to you and how you identify to them. That may be by name but it can just as easily be by address or blood or other ties.

For me it meant keeping a name I loathed so I shared a name with my child…not that I was actually worried he wouldn’t know I was his mum if we didn’t have the same name:D

Mum or Dad are rarely said with a surname.

[wonky]

@CrazyCatLady

I’m going to call you Fathead Loserpants McDoodoo III.

You found out my maiden name!

[CrazyCatLady]

Shit, girl, no wonder you changed it!

[Dangerosa]

@calm kiwi

I am about the easiest “did change my name…even if it is SMITH” feminist you could find. I still have the flipping name 11 yrs after I had the husband!

I believe it is important for a child to identify their name with their family. Our family is just the two of us. To me, it would be crazy to have more then one name in a 2 people family. So I keep the Smith…Until we become Smitherns (not my idea)

Your family is what matters to you. It is the people who matter to you and how you identify to them. That may be by name but it can just as easily be by address or blood or other ties.

For me it meant keeping a name I loathed so I shared a name with my child…not that I was actually worried he wouldn’t know I was his mum if we didn’t have the same name:D

Mum or Dad are rarely said with a surname.

My mother in law did the same - kept the name of a much hated ex husband because that was the name of her sons. Years later she got remarried - and having had her ex husband’s name for forty years - kept it. She considered taking her new husband’s - but at her age, that sounded like work and kind of silly. She considered going back to her maiden - but in the end, the name she had the longest was the one she was most comfortable with.

(It is a nice name - her full name has a really nice sound to it - nice alliteration. And the guy she doesn’t like anymore that she was married to - the name has lost its association to him for her).

[owlstretchingtime]

My wife keeps her last name for professional purposes (she’s a journalist and as such her byline is in effect her “brand”), but is quite happy to answer to “Mrs Owl” otherwise.

The kids have my last name.

[irishgirl]

I’m getting married in September and taking his name.
It’s a nice name (there’ll be a whole alliteration thing) , I love him, and I want to be “Mrs Irishfella”.

I briefly considered having my maiden name as a middle name, but the paperwork is too much effort, so I’ll probably give it to one of my kids as a middle name.

The only thing is that should I ever become a surgeon, I would be “Ms Irishfella”… as “Mrs” is not a professional sounding title.

Surgeons in the UK and Ireland are called “Mr” or “Ms” not “Dr”.

[trupa]

Potentially interesting story on this topic with Mrs. Trupa and I.

She graduated as an MD in quebec, so she can’t legally change her name because she would loose all her professional designations.

But she hates being identified as a Dr. because she hates the change it makes in the way people trate her when they find out. Plus she hates hearing all the same cancer stories over and over again…

So our stategy: she uses Dr. MaidenName pofessionally, but wants to be known socially as “Mrs. Trupa” which I have taken to referring as her “undercover” identity. I also know that when she introduces herself as FirstName Trupa, that I am forbidden to reveal her occupation in a conversation. This has saved me a number of elbows in ribs and kicks in the shins

[serious_lark]

@trupa

Potentially interesting story on this topic with Mrs. Trupa and I.

She graduated as an MD in quebec, so she can’t legally change her name because she would loose all her professional designations.

But she hates being identified as a Dr. because she hates the change it makes in the way people trate her when they find out. Plus she hates hearing all the same cancer stories over and over again…

So our stategy: she uses Dr. MaidenName pofessionally, but wants to be known socially as “Mrs. Trupa” which I have taken to referring as her “undercover” identity. I also know that when she introduces herself as FirstName Trupa, that I am forbidden to reveal her occupation in a conversation. This has saved me a number of elbows in ribs and kicks in the shins

trupa , hubby-pal mine, spilling the beans on “our strategy” to cyberspace risks making the whole thing moot … :rolleyes:

In all honesty, while trupa has correctly described the original reason for my decision to have two names (profesional / social) and two lives (professional / personal), there has been an interesting side effect: I think of myself by my maiden name and not by my married/social name. Now that we have a child (who shares trupa 's last name), it still is not a problem; I identify myself as his mother (if relevant) right off the bat.