When did married women stop being addressed as Mrs. Husband'sFirstName Husband'sLastName?

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
#121

Business correspondence is defaulting to “Dear John Smith” and “Dear Jane Smith,” to avoid the whole question of courtesy titles.

The problem is that there is also a trend to default to a single name field. There are good reasons to do this, the main one being that not all cultures use the given name+family name system, and even if they do, they might not do it in the same order.

However, I still want to stick to traditional alphabetization sorting, and a single name field doesn’t allow for that. I have suggested adopting a “name” field for the entire name, and an “alpha name” field to indicate which name should be the anchor for alphabetizing, but that hasn’t proven popular.

#122

I have donated money to the ACLU on several occasions, and for years when they wrote me letters asking for more, they addressed them to “Dear Lastname”, no title. Eventually they switched to “Dear Friend.”

#123

For my mother, here three separate names (Dr A Jones, Mrs J Smith, Alice) were a way of keeping her professional, social, and personal lives separate.

I know more than one person who use made up or adopted names for the same purpose, so the practice hasn’t stopped, it just become less standardized.

#124

Sorry, didn’t see that you asked me a question (almost two months ago!). I was referring to a tech school, so high school and college age students. And all teachers go by their first names, with a very occasional Mr. or Ms… annnnd, that one guy in every department that introduces himself as Dr. Stickup Mybutt.

Our guy had a “Doctorate of Education (Classroom Practices)” from an online diploma shop, that’s well known for being “where teachers go to get a piece of paper so they can move up the pay scale at their school”. Which is fine, I have friends that did that.

But wouldn’t Dr. Mybutt realize he’d worked less hard than his colleagues who’d slaved away at a Bachelors or Masters in their field of expertise? I’ll tell you, he fooled exactly zero students (who have great BS detectors, and for whom respect has to be earned).

One of our goals is to have a relationship with the students and meet them on their level. Which I can’t do if I’m Mister Prentiss (pun on In Loco Parentis, clever, eh?). Any time a student asks “Professor?” I think “Crap, I’m not reaching this kid. I need to get to know them better.”

So, sorry for all this verbiage, but it’s a sore spot with me (and if I were calling my fellow teachers Mr. and Ms., I’d be keeping them at arm’s length, too.)

#125

So far, aside from the awkwardness of using a new word, it is working out.

~Max

#126

Yay!

and thanks

#127

When my wife and I got married (in 2010), the officiant insisted on closing the ceremony with “allow me to introduce Mr. and Mrs. Myname Mylastname.” I found it gross. That’s my fucking name. She’s a whole other person with her own name. I’m sharing my whole life with her - let me at least keep my name. I also find it insulting to women for the same reasons, but I seem to be alone (or at least unusual) in finding it insulting to me.

FWIW, she planned to take my name and I had no preference. She wound up forgetting to do it within the time limit that Florida gives you after marriage (I think it was 90 days), and we would have had to pay $400 or something to do it after that. So she remains Hername Herlastname and neither of us cares much.

#128

I’ve always thought that was insulting. They should either drop it entirely or say, "introducing the married couple, John Doe and Chris Doe-Reymi (or however each couple wants their names to be announced.