Surnames

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Oops, should've read while thread!

Double barrelling is NOT unsustainable, this argument drives me nuts, all Spanish speaking countries have sustained it for centuries. Everybody has two surnames, one from their father one from their mother. Nobody changes their name on marriage. Children are then given one name from their mother and one from their father. It is still patriarchal overall as the name which is passed on to the child is the name from the grandfathers rather than the grandmothers, but SO much better than our system. Nobody finds it in the least bit confusing, in fact I caused consternation in a Costs Rican police station by only having one surname, the database couldn't cope!

I certainly won't be adopting my fiance's name when we marry. I know it's not a big deal for everyone, but for me it's huge. The thought of being addressed as ''Mrs'' makes me cringe.

Early in the thread there was lots of talk of correcting people a lot - I don't bother. I have my original name and am married. Our ds will have my surname as a middle name and dh's as a surname.

If people call dh my partner I dont' bother correcting that we are married.. he is my 'partner' in life.. unless it matters to somebody (a solicitor or something) or we're talking about marriage then I let it slide.

And I don't really bother correcting most post or lists of names if they put me down as Mrs Him. It doesn't bother me either, I see 'Mrs Him' as being a label I have.. just like I am also 'ds's mum' or 'dm's daughter'..

I guess it depends how picky and precise you want to be. I am not 'forever correcting' anybody about anything because I don't care enough....

minimalist - you're spot on about Spanish naming customs, while the child does get a surname from each parent, it's still from the paternal line.

So the name the child gets from his/her mother, is the name the mother took from her father, not the one she took from her mother.

Furthermore, a lot of people I know from Spanish/Hispanic backgrounds, tend to only end up using one surname and the majority opt for the first one (the one from their father).

Penelope Cruz for example, is actually Penelope Cruz Sanchez, but just uses Cruz.

However, her husband Javier Bardem, uses the surname he got from his mother (his full name is Javier Angel Encinas Bardem).

My DSs are officially Weevil-TheirDF's name but to my annoyance they both dropped Weevils because it was all a bit of a mouthful.
DD has her dad's surname because I didn't want her to be double-barrelled but different from her brothers. And because her older sister just has her mum's name and her dad was upset.
But now I wish she were Weevils-Hisname.
Actually I wish they were all just Weevils.

what about two surnames... without the double barreled Hypheny bit.

So if your child was called Percy and you are a jones and DH is a Davies, call the baby Percy Jones Davies

Just had a phone call for dh... I explained that he wasn't in but that I was his wife, they could talk to me. He immediately started up a sales patter directed at mrs dh surname. It just sounded so embarrassingly old fashioned...

For me it is a feminist statement to have kept my real name. I'm married yes but that's no ones business but my own. I have not changed my identity in the slightest and if people lamely suggest that I have then I just feel a bit sorry for them and their antideluvian attitudes tbh. Just makes them look a bit stupid

Thanks Allen, that's quite reassuring.
Be nice if it was the default on birth certificates as well, it would remove a lot of later angst for parents that seperate.

I always thought the Spanish model sounded good, but had assumed that the female line kept the matralineal surnames and males the patrilineal. From minimalist's post, it seems that it is only a partial solution.

In Spain, the convention is that each person gets one surname from each parent, and it's the male side that gets handed down to the child, to avoid exponential-surname-expansion. So the female side is represented, but only for one generation. Male-side name goes first in the DB:

e.g.
DH is Juan Lopez Diego
Wife is Maria Santo Matador

Child is Domingo Lopez Santo

Child marries Theresa Flamenco Saville (I'm running out of Spanish names here), nobody changes any surnames

Grandchild is Juanita Lopez Flamenco

Which sort of solves the problem and sort of doesn't, as it's the patriarchal line that keeps the name going down.

Waiting to be corrected by someone who knows this stuff properly!

I changed my name for practicality but feel that by using Ms, not Mrs, I've removed a bit of the 'owned by husband' tone I felt came with the Mrs. Took me 7 or 8 years to get around it doing it after we married... We chose a family name and I choose to use it too; I'm not completely happy with it, but it's a practical compromise, even if DH thinks it's funny and I keep explaining myself to people that we are married. Hopefully I'll stop that soon endlessly seeking approval

Weirdly, what kicked it off was looking at the Royal family's website at around the time of the Royal wedding a couple of years ago, and it said that women are 'styled' (i.e. titled, given status), by their husbands. What bloody nonsense, I thought, my status in society, whatever that means, is all my own doing, ta.

Years back apparently a married woman kept her full maiden name but had the title Mrs John Smith or whatever. I could live with that, provided my husband could also use the title Mr My Two Names and when a Dame's husband is Sir just like a Sir's wife is Lady!

And yes I do like it when we get cards addressed to Dr & Mr DHname and I only really use Dr for work as it's not a medical title (no use with a heart attack, me) but I will admit to a little light vanity, as Dr trumps Mr in the etiquette line, or so I heard, and I worked bloody hard for it!

Re double barreling - if everyone did this, when the next generation get married they'd be quadruple-barreled. It's unsustainable ... or something!

In other countries e.g. Spain, everyone has 2 surnames and it doesn't cause any problems.

Honestly, Roller, it's ridiculous what a noticeable difference the address labels made. It's like people thought 'ooh, they spent a tenner on some stickers, they must really mean this name thing!' after laboriously writing our names on the backs of dozens of cards achieved very little.

Sonly, there's two aspects to that though - one is "all having the same name" and the other is "being traditional" - only the second means that the name under the first is DH's.

Sonly, your choices are your own. I think a blithe 'tradition is important to us' is not a great thing because there are plenty of societal traditions that are actively damaging, but that's up to you.

However you suggesting, even obliquely, that sharing a name makes a family feel more of a 'team' is flat-out baseless and needed challenging.

That's fine and your choice sonly. Doesn't make you more married than anyone else though.

Thats really super for you Jassy its just not what I wanted and I thought that was what we were talking about. I just wanted us all to be the same. Tradition is very important to us.

Sorry, meant to say 'occasionally a pain'!

I see the tired old canard about inevitable quadruple barrelling has come out. Wondered how long that would take. I'm happy for my kid(s) to do whatever suits them, but I quite like the idea of a boy passing on his father's name and a girl her mother's.

For the record:

• My connection with DS is that I'm his mother; DH's is that he's DS's father. Don't need names for a connection.

• DH, DS and I are a team. We feel like a team. Amazingly, we have achieved this without sharing a name.

'Sonly, because civil partnerships are without some of the connotations of marriage eg father giving daughter away to husband. They give the legal protection without the historic baggage.'

Completely agree that civil partnership is a much more attractive option. Peter Tatchell and the Equal Love website are still campaigning to have CPs extended to hetero couples - more info at www.equallove.org.uk if you're interested.

My DS is nearly two, and we've gone with your plan. For the most part it's fine and DS being double-barrelled (Mylast-DHlast) has actually made some of his older family (and mine) more aware/accepting of the fact I didn't change my name.

Get an address stamp or stickers made for you and DH. Somehow this seemed to convince people that these are our 'official' names.

When DS was born we sent thank you cards with his picture and full name on the front, to help point people in the right direction.

We've never had a piece of post to him misaddressed, though I still get the occasional personal thing. DH's family sometimes get the double-barrelling round the wrong way in informal situations though I'm hoping it's unintentional.

It's a pain, but it works for us.

Fwiw I kept my surname at work, with the banks etc. however I go around as Mrs dh's surname for the purposes of the school and drs. The dc have dh's surname. My DS however recently realized that mummy was the only one who wasn't a dh's surname (because I get post in my surname) and so decided he wanted to db his name. He is 5.

We have friends who use mums surname as a middle name, others who db their name and their kids names whilst dh keeps his own name, still others who took turns in keeping their surname (dc1 her name, dc2 his name, dc3 her name...).

i am always completely perplexed by this, that intelligent women are prepared to just junk their key identifier in the public sphere upon marriage. i just don't understand it.

but my dcs have my name - i built them with my body, with attendant damages, (carrying them is an astonishing, belittling euphemism, imo) and i think their having my name is a public testament to that. naturally, they are free to dump the name if they feel like doing so when they are grown, but i do hope they won't do so because tradition identifies them (both girls) as the less important parties in whatever relationships they choose to have in adulthood.

Oh Thank you Allen