When I got married, it took some explaining to my wife that in Italy you just don’t assume your husband’s surname. It used to be the case, but they removed that law around, I believe, the late Sixties, and from then on everyone kept their name. I have to say that this turned out to her advantage in UK (where we live now) because we didn’t have to worry about paperwork to change anybody’s name. The only effect is that there have been some cases where people call me Mr Wife’sSurname because they think she did take mine.
I like the reductio-ad-absurdem argument against hyphenation. “Oh no! We can’t possibly hyphenate, because our great-grandchild might have eight different surnames!” In that unlikely event, the kid can abbreviate until age 18 and then change it. Anyway, which of you wants to volunteer to be the ancestor whose existence is completely forgotten by the great-grandchild? (Hands up from those who knew the maiden names of all their great-grandmothers without genealogical research.)
Good friends of mine got a ton of flak for (a) the woman keeping her own name, and (b) hyphenating their daughter’s name, a five-syllable surname. When people objected that the name was too long, she just said, “What about names like Martina Navratilova?” or some other famous polysyllable. (The order of the surnames was chosen for euphony.)
I agree that asking women to change their surnames is a masculine power trip. I really don’t see the point.
I know a guy who did this. His last name was kind of dorky and unappealing, and hers was cool, on an aesthetic level. I think, if I told you their names, that most of you would agree. It was a choice made for himself to get rid of a name he didn’t want to carry around anymore, something women have been able to do forever. It was his choice, not wimpy, not done to appease his wife or anything. He took advantage of an opportunity for a free name change, and changed it to something that meant his family would have all the same name. Seems sensible.
I don’t see why it’s anyone else’s business. I would never have asked my husband to take my name, but if he really wanted to, that would have been fine. It was his choice, just as it was my choice to take his or not. The kids will have both, because otherwise it would be weird. We did get a bit of shit for it, from my father, who thinks they should just have my husband’s name, and from my in-laws, who think my last name should come first in the hyphenation.
But guess what? It’s nobody else’s business. Sure, everyone can make snide comments about what they think it means, but that’s all they can do. It says more about you and your prejudices than it does about the people upon whom you’re commenting, who don’t have to justify shit to you.
While we’re discussing this - anyone else get the people who try to “correct” you on your own name?
Being hyphenated, I get endless crap from people who want to which of the two parts of the surname is the “correct” last name (answer: both, it’s one unit), or who insist on chopping off half my surname (random which half they pick) or who scold me on even doing it or basically REFUSE me the dignity of being called by my legal name.
Then there are people with an unhyphenated double surname like Gene Gore Vidal. The trouble with married double-barrelling is that the kids have to take somebody’s name or when they marry that’s four names already. Some South Americans have had names of that kind (check Simon Bolivar sometime!). There seems no reason why either spouse should take the other’s surname and logically, the children would take the mother’s. Icelanders do not have surnames, they have patronymics so it is quite normal for Fríðríkur Magnussón to be married to Anna Björnsdóttir and their children Magnus Fríðríkssón and Helga Fríðríksdóttir respectively. The phone book goes by first name.
I won’t care much if the wife doesn’t change her last name but the husband changing his last name to the wife’s makes it seem like the husband is those Gynophilic type of men who are (well psychologically) slaves of their wives.
Do you think the reverse is true, that women who DO change their names are psychologically slaves of their husbands? This is a genuine question: if there is a difference, why? Because one is customary and the other isn’t, or because it’s a natural gender role, or because the woman bears the children, or what?
I will never, ever understand this mindset.
Maybe I’m just an old Tory but I support tradition when it does not harm or oppress anyone. So yes I’d prefer women to change their last names.
Unsolicited advice: don’t hyphenate your kid’s last name, just suck it up and pick one last name, or give them one as a middle name, or something like that. I have a hyphenated name because my mother is the idiotic type of feminist who not only kept her own last name (which I have no problem with) but thought that giving my sister and I just our father’s last name was misogynistic or something, and thought that giving us just her name would be disrespectful to dad.
Number of times I have been grateful for having both their names: never
Number of times I have had a problem buying plane tickets or taking a standardized test or giving someone my personal information on the phone or some other situation because of that stupid hyphen: countless
Amount of obnoxious family drama that my even mentioning legally changing my name has caused: tons
Seriously, do whatever the hell you want with your own name, but don’t needlessly complicate life for your kids.
Thanks for the answer. I think you might get some argument as to whether it harms or oppresses anyone, but since I’m a guy I’ll leave others to make it.
It wasn’t long ago that women did not take a job, and instead stayed home to care for the household and children. Now, typically, both spouses have a job, and the idea of the man staying at home to care for the house and kids while the woman works is gaining acceptance.
It used to be that a woman simply took her husband’s name, end of story. Now, though it’s not so typical, it’s perfectly acceptable for the spouses to keep their own names. We’re just beginning to see the emergence of men taking their wife’s last name. It’s not yet accepted, but it is happening.
These things are no different, they’re simply at different points in the process. Slowly, we’re getting rid of “tradition”, i.e. assumption of male domination, and moving toward a more flexible system where the marriage composition is determined by the needs of the two individuals entering into it.
This isn’t to say I’m a feminist; if I married my current SO, we’d probably end up in a traditional household with her taking on the domestic role while I worked. But if things don’t work out and I end up meeting someone more assertive and outgoing, I’d have no problem with her keeping her job and last name. It all depends on the needs of the people in the relationship, not what people think a relationship “should” be.
I think more couples ought to consider dumping both their last names and finding a new one. It could be a dead-end family name, a blend, a word, even a coinage.
Just as long as it’s not something lame, like Rainbow or Mailbox.
At the time I married I was working as a free lance artist, most of whose new business came by word of mouth. By changing my name to my husband’s it would have made it very difficult for customers to locate me, in, say a phone directory and it would have essentially wiped out all of the professional reputation I had acquired over some years. If I had followed that tradition it would have meant, essentially, starting my career all over again.
What was that about “not causing harm”?
More and more women have professional careers prior to marriage. Making them change their names can be highly disruptive, even damaging. Maintaining a “pen name” and a separate legal name entails all sorts of hassles, up to and including being unable to cash a check at the bank without requiring a manager to be involved.
It really is time to end the custom.
A woman taking her husband’s name is a vestige of a time when women were closer to being actual slaves to their husbands and not merely psychological slaves. When a present-day woman takes her husband’s name, it can be dismissed as a harmless vestige. When a present-day man takes his wife’s name, there is no long tradition to point to, so it suggests that there’s a brand-new reason for doing so.
That’s actually a cool idea.
Are you saying this like it’s neccesarily a problem? What if she’s a Dom and he’s a Sub? Wouldn’t this make perfect sense then?
MrWhatsit took my last name when we married. I am very surprised to hear that the blogger linked in the OP has taken a bunch of crap about it, because nobody has given MrWhatsit any crap whatsoever. Maybe this is because he is a 6-foot-tall wiry Nordic guy and they are intimidated, but I kind of doubt it.
I didn’t actually ask MrWhatsit to take my last name. I simply said that I was thinking about keeping my maiden name, because it’s unusual and ethnic and I didn’t want to give it up. He said, “OK, I’ll change mine.” I thought about it for a while and couldn’t see any reason why he shouldn’t. So he did. Most people we’ve mentioned it to think it’s cool. My dad actually wrote me a letter of appreciation because our particular branch of the family tree would have died out if I hadn’t given my kids my own last name. (This was not particularly important to me, but it was apparently important to my dad.)
It really doesn’t come up that much in conversation, though. Very occasionally we’ll get people saying, “You know, MrWhatsit, for a guy with a last name like that, you sure don’t LOOK Slavic.”
Take it up with your wife. I don’t see why people get to have a preference about what other people do. This is such a clear cut case of “none of your business.”
My kid is having a hypenated last name. The combined number of letters for both of our last names? 11, with 3 syllables total. If he feels oppressed by it, he can change it when he’s an adult. End of story.
I have no problem with a guy taking his wife’s name. I hate how my last name sounds, and would consider taking my wife’s name (or coming up with a new one) if I get married.
However, I would make fun of this particular guy too. It isn’t what he did, it is the way he writes about it and the reasoning he gives. He deserves all of the insults he gets and much more.
I do kind of have a problem with hyphenated names for kids. Given the problems it causes for the kids, it just seems overly selfish.