What's in a name....
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Anonymous
| I hate how women come up with all these reasons to justify keeping their own name, when there's really only one: self-respect. |
Anonymous
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Married at 36. Kept my name. The PhD and publication record was a good excuse to tell the world, but I wouldn't have changed it even without that. We both wore engagement rings (mine was my mother's, his was a smaller gold band).
Eventually decided to hyphenate our child's name because the given names were very collaboratively chosen and I was not comfortable having our kid be Ourname Ourname Hisname or even Ourname Ourname Myname Hisname. |
Anonymous
Really? Because I think there's only one: you want to. I'm a woman who -- after 18 years of a relationship -- changed her name to her wife's after we were married. I enjoy the external symbol of us as one family unit. Names are powerful. You don't get to tell anyone else what their self-respect hinges on. |
Anonymous
Did not change my name, and many years later (with multiple kids and still the same DH, and still in love with him), I would say that if your connection to your DH and your children depends so heavily on you having the same last name, at least to me that would seem like a really big red flag. I didn't change my name not because of wanting to keep a connection to my biological family, it was because it was my name, it's core to my identity, and changing it felt wrong. |
Anonymous
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Married at 28, never changed name. Happily married 15 years.
DH said he would never have married a woman who wanted to chnage her name. To him, it meant she had no identity and was not professionally her own woman. But, by 28, I had already established a very good career. Never even crosssed my mind to change my name. But, also, my DH is a very self-assured man. Doesn't need me to change my name to feel manly. This discussion is quite entertaining to me. |
Anonymous
PP here. Also, traveled extensively all over the world and never encountered any problems with our different names and children names either. Women, stop making excuses. |
Anonymous
I'm adopted, so it wasn't about my connection to my biological family. It was just the fact that my name was been my name for 30 years before I got married, and I didn't see any good reason to change it. Men aren't expected to change their names to demonstrate their commitment and connection to their wives or kids--why are women? We're a family whether or not we have the same last name. |
Anonymous
Nope, no engagement ring, no wedding ring. He didn't "propose" either. No wedding, just the requirements at city hall. I'm just not into the trappings of tradition and ceremony. |
Anonymous
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I changed my name and since I didn't have a middle name I made my maiden name my middle name. It didn't feel like I lost anything and I like the symbolism of our whole family having the same name. DH had no expectation of me changing my name but did like that I decided to. It seems our friends are a mix, probably 1/3 of the wives kept their name. The kids all seem to just assume mom's name is the same as the kids anyway.
It's kind of funny to see what it's like to live with one name and then another. I didn't realize how often I was clarifying for people that I wasn't the religion/ethnicity they assumed based on my maiden name until I changed it. |
Anonymous
+1. I think about 2-3 months before we got married, he asked me in passing, "I assume you're keeping your name? " I said "yes", and that was the end of the conversation. Like many of the above posters, I really like my name, and was very attached to it. It's crazy to me that women go through this bureaucratic rigamarole, sitting at the DMV, paying money to change their names on their passports and professional credentials. Why? |
MrUnreal
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My wife took my name and I am glad she did. I did not require it, my wife wanted to. She is a very strong independent woman and I don't think it really mattered to either of us. However, I will state that I am the only male left and if I did not continue my family name (German heritage) it would likely die with me and for that reason I am glad she decided to take my name. We never had a discussion or anything.
PP, maybe because it is important to one person or they don't mind either way. Honestly, if sitting a day at the DMV is the biggest of your worries then who gives a care. It doesn't seem like all that much effort to me and I don't see why you would be so biased against taking your husband's last name. If tradition was that I take my wife's last name and I wasn't morally opposed to it for whatever reason, then I would've changed it. It sounds like a non-issue to me and not sure why there has to be a debate about it (other than the feminist belief in displacing any tradition seemingly in any male's favor). |
Anonymous
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Single, never-married woman in my 30s. Just piping up with no actual experience in this matter. If I ever do marry, these are my thoughts.
I have an established byline in my maiden name, so would keep it professionally. I would give my kids my husband's last name, and also take it on personally/legally unless it was truly terrible (e.g. Hooker or something of that nature). I am also the last of a 'line' so I would probably legally dump my middle name and become "Jane Cooper Yates" and consider giving my children the my maiden name for their middle names (if they were girls) or as their first name (if they were boys) as my maiden name is of the vein of the 'last name as first' trend that is happening now (e.g. Cooper, McKenzie, Smith, Jackson, etc.) |
Anonymous
So you're a narcissist. |
Anonymous
Care to elaborate? There is nothing vain or self gratifying from stating that my family name would die with me if my wife didn't want to take my last name. I already expressed that it wasn't an important issue to me... |
MrUnreal
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| PP was me, forgot to log in. |