For women who didn't change their names, but gave their children their husband's last name...

[Anonymous]

ANd can someone please tell credit card companies that "mother's maiden name" is no longer going to be a legit security question---since it will be the mother's actual name.

[Anonymous]

I didn't change my name because changing it seemed like a hassle, I'd had it for 35 years and like it, and I didn't want to feel like I was being swallowed up by DH's family. His family is around more than mine anyway and taking his name just felt weird. He offered to take my name, but I didn't see any reason for that.

DC and I share middle names and DC and DH share last names. My last name is pretty common and DH's is fairly unique, so that's why we went with his for our child. Also, my middle name is a meaningful family name, so it was more important to me that my child have that name than my last name.

[Anonymous]

I kept my own name (never, ever considered changing it) and gave my kids my last name. Their middle name.is their Dad's surname.

[Anonymous]

I come from a matrilineal community, so changing my last name didn't make sense anyway. Husband's last name is relatively easier to spell and pronounce, so went with that for kids. Hyphenation would have produced an unwieldy name and there was no portmanteau that sounded good either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I kept my name because I am a feminist and it is ridiculous to expect me to change my name.

Kids are hyphenated last names. DH didn’t want to, I insisted - they are my kids as well as his.

I think the whole thing about hyphenated last names being “too long” is defensive - if you have a long last name like Richardson, you don’t think of it as burdensome. I’m not saying you should hyphenate, just that “too long” is not a reasonable excuse - just own that you don’t want to hyphenate.

The problem isn’t that Richardson is too long. It is that both names are as long as Richardson or longer. Then it become unwieldy, and if they rhyme it is worse. Think Gonzalez- Abramowitz. Or Richardson-MacPherson. Or Bradford-Von Thurstenburgh. They are not all Smith-Cho.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:ANd can someone please tell credit card companies that "mother's maiden name" is no longer going to be a legit security question---since it will be the mother's actual name.

My grandmother’s maiden name was Mayden. So, when my father moved up here for cancer treatment and we going around to all his new doctors, they asked what his mother’s maiden name was for a security question, and when he answered “Mayden”, they said, “Yes, what was her maiden name” and he would repeat, “Mayden” and then spell it out. It was funny at first, but it got tiresome fairly quickly. He started spelling it out as his first answer.

[Anonymous]

I kept my last name because I like it. Not to damn the man. And no- my kids are not part of my identity. They are their own people with lives. It’s not my job to identify by then- it’s my job to help them find their own identity.
Why anyone gives AF about another families last names is interesting to me. You all clearly are not around enough kids/families if this is novel enough to wonder about.

[Anonymous]

I kept my name for professional reasons, plus I like it, and I detest the bureaucracy it would have taken to change it.

Sometimes being a feminist means that we can do things we like, without it being a statement.

We gave DS DH's last name because I figured if anyone was going to change their name (marriage, any da*mned time they please, or never) it would be me. My last name is unique and a mouthful. If I get sick of it, I might change it to DH's someday, but after 20 years it hasn't happened.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My husband changed his last name to mine and our kids have my last name as well. We just liked my name better and it flowed more nicely with the kids’ first names.

Isn't it funny? I kept my last name, DS took DH's last name. No statement whatsoever--I like my name, DH likes his name, and our DS's name sounds better with DH's last name. Names (imo) are not a feminist statement or a sign of "how married" we are-- they're just names.

If I liked DH's name better, I might have taken that...but a small part of it is that DH has a Spanish last name, and my family originated from Northern Europe, but I have a Southern European first name. So, I would be of Northern European descent, with a decidedly Southern European first and last name. I wanted to preserve a little cultural heritage, and keep my last name.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:didn’t change my name bc I’m lazy and I didn’t want to. Didn’t care about passing it on to my kids bc it’s johnson and the world isn’t running out of us, whereas DHs last name is exceedingly rare even in his family’s country of origin. Has caused us exactly 0 problems ever bc we never encounter concern trolling morons like OP in real life

Well said

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Help me understand why most women who choose not to change their names when they get married still choose to give their children their husband's last name? It just seems like if you choose to give up an old tradition of taking your husband's last name, why would you choose your husband's last name for your children? I'm not criticizing. Really. I'm just trying to understand...

I have never understood refusing to take your husband’s last name as you s have a man’s name as your surname.

Um. My own name is my surname. It's not my father's name any more than it is my aunt's name. It's our family name. I was born with it, she was born with it, he was born with it. It's mine.

(And I'm a woman and now it is my son's.)

Right, it was your father's name and descended down the patriarchy. So, you were given a man's name when you were born. There's no shame in that, just understand that you're not really doing anything different by taking your husband's name.

So changing your name after 20+ years of living with that name is no different than your parents naming you at birth?

[Anonymous]

Hyphens are so eighties

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hyphens are so eighties

I never knew anyone with hyphenated names in the eighties or even nineties here in DMV. YMMV

[Anonymous]

We gave our DD my DHs name because she was the only grandchild on his side of the family and my side had 4 already.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our children have my name as their middle, my husbands as their last. So they have both names.

This is what I did. My husband and I come from very different ethnic backgrounds and if either one of us took the other person's name it would shock most people when the name was an obvious dissonance to the face. The kid is a mutt, though looks more like me, so he has First Name My Last name as middle, Dads last name.

And forgot to add - we went with an Ethnic first name from my ethnic background, so i got 2 out of 3 for this deal!

This is me exactly! Ethnic first name (of my ethnicity), my last name as my son's middle name, my husband's last name.

Me too. And no one has ever questioned my kids’ legitimacy. Naming conventions differ all around the world.