I tried to give you a little credit.
LOL i bet u sit down 2 pee!
:rolleyes:
…adding: I don’t care that you don’t take it seriously. I don’t think this is anything earth-shaking either. I do think what you said about the guy was, I don’t know- crude and pointless, at best?
My husband and I blended our names when we got married. The clerk at City Hall had to call the state capitol to see if it was allowed (even though it said on the back of our marriage license that it is). It sounds like a very common name, but it’s spelled slightly different. His mother was so confused as to why we did it, but I heard him explain it to her, and I knew I was marrying the right man. “She’s not a textbook or a garbage can, she’s my partner, I can’t just scribble my name on her.” Neither one of us wanted to give up our name, but we wanted the whole family (us and kids) to have the same name. Hyphenating is great in theory, but in reality, causes too many problems. So this is what we came up with. It was a bit of a hassle for him to explain to Social Security, DMV, etc…but he says it was worth it. He’s taken a bit of ribbing from a few acquaintances, but those aren’t people whose opinions he values, anyhow. We even got mentioned in the newspaper (not by name) in an article about marriage and names. Something to the effect of “Most women take the groom’s name, very very few grooms take the bride’s name, and one couple even (gasp!) blended thier names.”
When my daughter was in elementary school, she had a friend whose parents blended their last names for the kids. Each parent kept their own name, but they put them together into one new name for their kids. It worked, partly because the names fit together well.
It wasn’t hyphenated; it was like his name was Black and hers was Stone - the kids were named Blackstone.
I can without trying think of a couple who combined their last names in a portmanteau, a couple who kept their orginal last names, a couple who hypenated, a couple who made up a last name, a couple who took the wife’s last name, and one that took the husband’s. And that’s without going into the married gay people I know, whose naming traditions haven’t really had time to gel. The hyphenated couple, and their kids, have the most issues around their last name.
Personally, my wife took my name. She hadn’t started her professional career at that point, and she wanted to get rid of the name she’d had while growing up. I wouldn’t have taken her name as I didn’t like the way it sounded, and my name is a homophone with a legendary character, but I certainly didn’t care if she took my name, kept hers, or we came up with something else. I don’t like hyphens though, and while she can do what she wants, if/when we have kids, I wouldn’t saddle them with that mess. Now if she was carrying one of her maternal names, which is cool sounding and has some history to it, that’d be a different story :).
Why are people making fun of this guy? Because people are dumb. End of story.
For some bizarre reason, guys think giving up their name is a loss of identity, a giving up of self, a subjugation, but a woman giving up her name is no big deal. It’s okay for us to lose our identities and give up part of ourselves and subjugate ourselves because we’re not guys, and besides we grow up expecting to have to do that. I had this exact conversation with DoctorJ about the first of our friends to get married. She was talking about keeping her name and he was really pushing for her to change it. I suggested, if it was such a huge deal to him for them to have the same name, that he be the one to make the change.
You would have thought I had grabbed a butcher knife and demanded he drop his pants. But…but…it’s his name and he’s had it all his life!!!!eleventy!!!1111! He can’t give up something like that, it’s too much to ask! Somehow, though, it wasn’t too much to ask the exact same of her. It was, in fact, a totally different proposition because she’s a girl and somehow magically wouldn’t feel the loss.
I have never seen a guy able to explain how the issues of identity, and loss of sense of self and all that are different based on one’s gonads. The closest any of them can come is to claim that we’re acculturated to those issues and shouldn’t mind the loss, whereas they aren’t acculturated and would suffer horribly. In other words, they’re delicate little precious princesses who can’t handle that sort of treatment. Sounds pretty pansy-ass to me.
How is it **not **oppressive to require that the person with the vagina change her name while the person with the penis doesn’t, simply because of who has which bit of anatomy? Your name is a **huge **part of your identity, and the custom began in a time when women were pretty much chattel. Marriage meant a woman was now considered part of her husband’s family and that she was his property–so she was now branded with his name instead of the one she grew up with. Her surname didn’t matter, because inheritance was through the husband, passed on to his sons, so that was the family line that it was important to maintain.
Two of my best friends just got married (to each other) and they’re keeping their own names. I’ve taken to referring to them as a portmanteau of the surnames, which they think is kind of cool, and they’re actually thinking about changing their surnames to the portmanteau.
Fine. Then if it isn’t a big deal then you girls can be the one to change your last name.
Or is the problem is that you do feel that it is a big deal that comes with “issues of identity”, “loss of sense of self” and implications of dominance and submission but you don’t want to be the one who ‘loses’ by giving up their name?
Wait, isn’t this the same thing a couple of posters asked you? Why should they answer it if you won’t? 
The problem is when the woman is **expected **to change her last name because that’s “what’s done.” Flipping the requirement would **also **be sexist. People should just be able to do whatever they personally prefer with their last names without anyone else judging them for it.
Nothing. You’re the one who was inplying that there was.
My data point…
My last name was an artifact of various adoptions/divorces over my life. When Mrs G and I were to get married, she insisted on it being changed since it didn’t correlate to a true genetic relationship to anyone.
She suggested my taking her name, but honestly I agree that society (in the US at least) views it as a huge emasculation for a male to do so, and I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life defending and rationalizing it. We managed to compromise by digging up my (genetic) mother’s maiden name and both of us took that as a last name instead.
I recently got engaged, and I’m still not sure what to do about names. Ideally, I’d like each of us to add the other person’s last name as a middle name. That way we both keep our last names but add the other person’s identity to our own. Last I checked, though, he didn’t care what I did with my name but was dead-set against changing his own. I’ll probably just keep mine as-is and get a tattoo to mark the wedding.
msmith, you’re the Last Angry Man. What would we lesser men do without our Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, ever vigilant to keep us from becoming grabbastic pieces of amphibian shit?
Please don’t inform me what I can and cannot do on the basis of my gender, nor women whom they can and cannot desire. Thank you.
Denied. Feel shame! Shaaaaaaaame!
Awesome. 
Isn’t a woman taking her husband’s name an artifact of time when she was his property, the same as slaves? Wives, children, slaves all belonged to the the man of the house, so they all bore his name. Nobody owns anyone anymore. If a woman wants to take her husband’s name because of tradition, then so be it. If a man wants to take his wife’s name, I won’t judge him either.
I have never been married and am not close. My last name is common as dirt(and the same color too.) If I ever get married, I would consider changing my last name to my wife’s, or at least hyphenating it, if it was really interesting or cool. I like my family, so I do want to honor them too. If my family were a bunch of assholes, I would definitely consider changing it, because I wouldn’t want to be associated with them if I didn’t have to be. I wouldn’t consider it a pussy thing to do either.
The only thing I am angry about is a number of people in this thread seem to think it’s appropriate to personally attack me just because they don’t agree me.
So maybe the answer is that it actually IS about power? And so if it is about power, the reason people make fun of men who change their name is because losing power is a sign of weakness. IOW, both of you want to keep your last name, but if you can’t even do that as a man, what sort of power or authority do you even have as a “real man” in the relationship.
I think it also plays off some common cultural stereotypes where women traditionally wanted to be married since they were little girls and men typically want to be bachelors forever. She gets what she wants while he has to give up the motorcycle, the dreams of being a rock star or whatever and his friends in favor of a family sedan, a stable 9 to 5 he hates and “man play-dates” with her friend’s idiot husbands. At least he can keep his name.
At least maybe that is the rationale. Otherwise, why would anyone care? It would just be assumed that the cooler or more prestigeous family name would win out. Like I would have no problem changing my name if she was a member of Bill Gates family or the Rhinococks of Massachusetts.