Am I really that U to change name at work?!

A subset??

only a subset of women change their names

most men do not change their names

there are roughly equal numbers of men and women eligible to change their names upon marriage

therefore most people don’t change their names

I really don’t like my husband’s name, and resisted taking it for that reason - but I had a shitty childhood and never knew my bio dad whose name I carried. So when my DH said that he wanted me to take his name because it was his family’s name, a family that loved me as their own, welcomed me joining and would always be there for me - unlike my own family - I was won over. Taking his name was about becoming part of something bigger for me and our children, not about patriarchal tradition.

When people commented on why, I told them. They tended to lose the superior smirk.

What is the “status shift” (apart from the obvious change of marital status, which the man also undergoes)?

I’m struggling to equate changing name with changing societal status.

Our IT people accidentally set up a colleague’s email with her very simple name incorrectly spelled. Think Ann and they’ve spelled it Amn. They now say they can’t change it, would be too difficult etc. She’s not that bothered as she doesn’t really send a lot of emails from that account (she uses our main info@ one) but it gives me the absolute rage on her behalf.

My DS had two primary teachers in a row who got married and came back with a new name. So he naturally thought that's just what happens when women get married. I tried my best to make him understand it's not a required part of marriage but 100% of his experience is hard to argue with.

I have absolutely no issue with personal choice, my two best friends changed their names and I kept it zipped. But at a societal level, the expectation that women undergo a status shift upon marriage while men don't just won't go away.

A decent IT system shouldn't have a problem with this. A good one will let you look up Jo Bloggs and find Jo Smith.

I'm still going with dim by the description of the conversations!

Not dim - wholly disingenuous.

It's tantamount to the wide-eyed protestation 'but I don't understaaaaand' so often seen on MN.

Any woman who has married will know changing their name is an inconvenient hassle. If you don't change there is none of the inconvenience of taking forms to the bank, etc. You need do nothing at all.

Yet still it's so often the married name-changers who have assaulted me with the bizarre claim: 'but your husband's name is your LEGAL name!'

It's my contention that they know fine well it's not. They're just making a cheap, passive aggressive point intended to keep other women in what they see as our 'box'.

I say bollocks to that noise.

any source for "most people don't change their names?"

IT can redirect your old.email to you new one. I have maiden name, ex H name and now current DH name.

If you are changing your name just do it. It's no one else's business.

Agree with @VarietyIsTheSpice during the many years I was a teacher even 5 year olds could cope with the teacher changing name.

I’ve spent hours explaining to wide-eyed female colleagues that no it’s not illegal to keep your name, and yes we are married, and no you don’t have to call yourself Mrs and yes, you can give children your name even if you’re married.

Bloody hell, you work with a load of dimwits!

What are you talking about? If a woman changes her name she is the one changing it. The fact that she does it to have the same name as her husband is her choice.

And she had no choice in the name when she was born. Is she allowed to change her first name if she dislikes it? Of course she is.

Why would a woman using someone else’s name be feminist? She has a name from birth. It doesn’t matter where that name came from. It belongs to her the moment it is bestowed. Only in extremely rare circumstances should anyone but the woman change it.

For sure. And it's not usually men applying the pressure in this case, although if I'd been with a man who objected to my very reasonable preference to retain my own identity then, needless to say, he would not be married to me.

But I suspect OP's situation is the outlier. Taking a man's name on marriage tends to attract little comment. It's the ones who adopt the lesser-expected practice of retaining their own who invariably face a strength of pushback most of us never anticipated. MN is full of threads written by women whose disrespectful family members refuse to extend them even the courtesy of their own name. IMO, there can be few ruder or less validating forms of behaviour.

Yet retention of our own names is actually the default practice. Your name remains the same - unless you actively change it.

Which is a different point again. It's not a good idea to say nobody cares about any naming tradition really, because it's actually something that attracts a lot of opinions.

Seems to me that in this instance the IT department is making a demonstrative show of disapproval. It's not a difficult request and shouldn't be beyond the capabilities of even the most basic IT system.

In my experience/observation this is unusual. I've chosen to use the same family name since birth and it's never occurred to me that anyone else would care a toss, much less see fit to comment on it. That my lack of a 'Mrs' title and an identity of my own has garnered real rudeness in some quarters came as a surprise. Interestingly, the rudeness never emanates from men.

This isn't a new thing. I was married in 2008.

What other women choose to do doesn't affect my life. I sincerely, genuinely don't give a shit. But I would like to be extended a similar courtesy and some women seem incapable of bestowing this (here's looking very particularly at my MiL, but she's by no means an isolated case).

Incidentally my name is not my father's. It's mine.

I didn’t change mine for a variety of reasons but that said, another colleague got married around the same time and changed hers. Was a non issue. And was at quite a large financial institution

Yanbu at all. Where I work I know of at least 4 women who have recently changed their names due to marriage. It isn't an IT headache at all - either your employer has awful inflexible systems or the IT people are not very good at their job!

It took me 16 years to get round to changing my surname. In the end it mattered very little, I am known to all and sundry as Gnome (it helps that I have a less common first name).

This was nearly 20 years ago and IT coped.