I just tacked my MarriedName onto the end, no hyphens: FirstName MiddleName MaidenName MarriedName. My personal joke is: I have four names – I confuse computers the world over.
[anecdote] I was terrified that the SSA would hyphenate my last name. They didn’t – they managed to screw up in a way I hadn’t anticipated. My new Social Security card came as “FirstName MiddleName MaidenName MisspelledLastName.” :smack: [/anecdote]
When my daughter got married, she wanted to have the same name as her husband, but his name was hard to spell and ugly. His family would be offended if he changed his name to ours. They wound up both changing their names to something reasonable. It worked out fine.
My wife didn’t much like her last name, so she was happy to change it to mine.
My wife didn’t change her name for the first two years of our marriage. She, like you, felt like she was losing a part of her identity. Socially, she never corrected anyone that addressed her as Mrs. Wilbo, but legally kept her maiden name. I didn’t care, and it did not bother me that she didn’t want to change her name.
After she got pregnant with our daughter, I advised her that our daughter would bear my last name, as the American culture dictates. I was not agreeing to any hyphenations, because it just looks stupid. She started thinking about traveling on airplanes and registering our kid for schools, and decided that it would be too awkward to continously explaining why she and her daughter had different last names. So she legally changed it. She like several others dropped her initial middle name and replaced it with her maiden name.
When we got married, I told my wife I was not about to change my last name. She came up with some idea of combining our names, think Smith & Jones being combined to make up a new name, Smones but I hated that idea too (I don’t know if she was serious about it.) I don’t like hyphenated names either - what happens when that person gets married? I remember reading a news bit about some person in Germany who was a child of Father A-B and mother C-D and wanted to have a last name A-B-C-D (four german surnames all hyphenated together). The government department in charge of registering names told them that this was too long.
I told her she should keep her last name, and when we have kids, one of us would have my last name, and one her last name. That would make it fair. But she hated that idea and so took my last name.
I have to say that conforming to the convention that everyone in the family has the same last name does make life easier. There is a family at my church that’s something like this: Husband has last name Smith, wife has last name Jones, their son’s last name is a hyphenated name, Williams-Brown. It was months before I realized that they were all related to each other.
I have this idea in my head that one day I might run into problems at school, or at day care, or in a medical emergency, where it will be handy that I have the same last name as my wife or children when I show up to take control of the situation. If I show up unexpectedly at school to pick up a child with a totally different name, how are people supposed to know that I really am the father?
My wife kept her name, never bothered me in the slightest. Our son has my last name - hyphenation is just a pain. We thought if we had a son he’d have mine, and if a daughter, hers.
So far, we’ve never had any issues with it at all.
Pronouncements such as this would not have gone over well at all, with me. But then, you’re not married to me, and that’s just as well. 
I changed mine the first time, changed it back post divorce, didn’t change it the second.
Its a pain to change it. There are still a few things floating around in my (first) married name.
It isn’t really that difficult to live with your “old” name legally. Socially I answer to both Ms. Maidenname and Mrs. Husband’slastname without getting my panties in a bunch (usually, there are a few people where it bugs me). Bank will cash checks and everything.
Kid’s have his last name. There is never any issue there either. And my son is Korean, so not only do our last names not match, we don’t even look alike. One issue in a security line at an airport, but since my husband was with me, it had more to do with the mismatched appearance than the name and took 90 seconds to resolve.
I just thought it was a PITA to change my name (everyone knew me as X, I’d have to change credit cards, driver’s license, passport, etc) so out of mostly laziness I kept my name.
Mr. Boozilu doesn’t mind because “she knows who owns her”. Ba dum dum.
I just don’t think it is a big deal today. If people want to call me Mrs. Husband, I understand. The kids don’t care at all. In fact, the only people that seem to care are our mothers (“People will think you’re just living together!”) but they’ve gotten used to it too.
So if you are unsure, wait. It’s just a name, after all.
PS – plus when I get mail for someone with my husband’s first name and my last name, I know can just throw it away without opening!
Wow, I was with you until you said she couldn’t even have her name hyphenated on the kid’s name. What the hell? I agree they’re generally awkward, but if she has her own last name, why can’t the kid have both if your wife wanted that?
Wow.
Anyway, OP, you don’t need to change your name right away if you don’t want to. I don’t think I ever would, because it is my identity. There’s certainly nothing wrong with hyphenated names and while they may be a little difficult, I know plenty of folks with them who have no problems at all.
Heh, I should mention that for some reason we are registered in the phone book with a hyphenated name - a major bonus, as any letters addressed to “Mr. X-Y” or “Ms. X-Y” can be thrown out unread.
I have had pretty much the same experience as you (except for my mom disapproving - she thinks it’s cool and feminist that I haven’t changed my name). I’ve had some well-meaning relatives assume that I changed it, which was a minor pain when we had to explain it to the bank teller when depositing wedding gift checks - when I first attempted to explain the problem, she assumed I was asking how to change my name on our bank account, which wasn’t the case at all.
An additional reason I didn’t want to change my name, besides it being part of my ethnocultural heritage (in spite of it being an Ellis Island-ized version of what was probably originally a Yiddish name), is that I’m an Ashkenazi agnostic who is nonetheless strongly connected to her ethnocuiltural roots, and my husband’s family is 150 years of Christian missionaries. They have been nothing but warm and welcoming to me, but well, that’s just not something I care to take on as part of my identity.
Do whatever makes you happy, and if people whose opinions don’t matter to you raise a fuss, the hell with them.
I didn’t change mine, and I’ve never had any problems. I’m not particularly attached to it, I just didn’t see any reason to change it.
If we’re checking into a hotel, both of us are on the registration list. If we spawn, our kid will be Hisname-Myname, because it has a better sound to it than Myname-Hisname.
I don’t feel any less married. I don’t particularly care whether other people know we’re married or not. If necessary, I use the phraseology “My name is Maggie Myname; my husband is Husband Hisname.” That way our relationship is clear as is our nomenclature.
You “advised” your wife - as in “unilaterally informed her that YOU, the man of the house, had made a decision, and she had no say in it”? Why is it exclusively YOUR choice?
American culture these days is characterized by a lot of blended families where mom, dad, and the kids may need several “step-” prefixes to describe relationships properly and may have several surnames among them. Does that mean you should get a divorce and marry someone else with kids, just so that you can follow cultural norms?
I did not change my name when I married, and it would have been a poor fit for me to marry someone who insisted that I do otherwise. But before we married I did have the decency to talk to my husband about his opinions on the matter. His answer? “It’s your choice, but to tell the truth I can’t imagine falling in love with a woman who wouldn’t want to keep her own name.” Nearly three decades later, I still love him for saying that.
For the record, our son took my last name as his surname and it has never been a problem at all in our family. I’m sure there are people out there who think that our son is mine from a previous marriage, but so what?
And, as a guest on NPR once memorably said “Why would you change your name because of a wedding? You are getting married, not joining a witness protection program.”
Really. That’s interesting criteria for picking a life mate. And by interesting, I mean dumb.
I kept mine as sort of a middle name. I don’t really use it, but it’s there and I like having it there.
Hey, if “seeing eye-to-eye on deeply held views regarding a very personal matter of identity” is not relevant to you when you choose a mate, by all means employ the criteria that work for you. I’m very happy with my “dumb” husband, and you don’t have to ever meet him, so it’s unclear to me what purpose your gratuitous insult is serving.
My wife wanted to change to my last name, but also, she had always gone by her middle name, so she dropped her first name, made her middle name her first, and made her maiden name her middle name. In other words, she had been (we’ll say) P. Griselda Knickerbocker, and now she is Griselda Knickerbocker Tildrum.
I couldn’t wait to change my name. There was no pressure, I’m one of 4 sister and 2 of us changed our names and 2 didn’t. By husband would have slightly preferred me keeping my name, but didn’t mind my changing it.
But my mother had a different last name from me when I was growing up and that bothered me. I wanted us all to have the same name and be the ‘Smith’ family as a unit. And I never really liked my last name, it was hard to spell, hard to pronounce, etc. And my dad was a jerk who left the family when I was quite young, so having his name was no incentive.
The only hard part was learning to sign my new name in a fluid and natural way. And writing my initials with a new final letter was weird at first.
The same purpose as your gratuitous insult to the other people in this thread.
You seem to have some sense of superiority over not changing your name. It’s misplaced, in my opinion.
You and your husband seem to think that there’s some “type” of woman who changes her name, and that’s a “type” you think is inferior in some way. I suspect that you have an underlying belief that it’s not consistent with feminism to take your husband’s name. But from the replies to this thread, it’s been demonstrated that there are a number of reasons why a woman would do it - a bad association with her maiden name, the fact that her husband’s name sounds nicer or is easier to spell, the desire to have the same surname as her children, etc. All are legitimate reasons. None say much about the underlying character, belief system, or morality of the woman making the choice. There certainly isn’t an identifiable “type” of woman who changes her name. To profess as much sounds ignorant and smug.