Surname change after marriage

“My birth surname was very close to an antisocial bodily function. Imagine being a primary school kid in that situation.”

Doesn’t seem to have stopped the President if the United States of America.

I’d hate to have a different surname to my children. as a reason to change to husbands name. Why wouldn’t you even consider that your kids could have the woman’s surname?

I said this as an argument for women not changing their name!

Maybe read the whole post before misquoting it!

'It was 100% a legal and financial contract and I've always viewed it as such'

Same here. We're planning to get married or have a civil partnership soon (when they become available to all) and I see it as a legal contract that will protect us both. The romantic, fluffy side of our relationship is something separate as far as I'm concerned

@daisy your description of why you changed your name is very honest and interesting.

@whispers I like your responses! I get judged and asked a LOT. I have my own name. I thought name changing would be more equal by now but I don’t think it is.

I found women are often the ones keeping the status quo, they judge me more than men I find, who don’t seem to care. I find some women very defensive over changing their name, and quite critical of me.

Even when i was a teenager in the ‘90’s i had female friends whos life goals were “to get married by 25, couple of kids by 30”

I questioned one of them on why attach such importance to marriage and her response was in not so many words that if she hadn’t found a man to marry her by 25, it meant she was ugly/unloveable/fat/sad and lonely.

I wonder if today’s culture which places so much worth on women’s looks and sexuality, we are going back to marriage validating to a woman she is good looking enough/sexy enough for a man to want her enough to marry her. Especially now sex is freely available, and bobody has to get married, she must be something special if he wants her over all those other girls out there..

So we are going back to ostentatious weddings, rings, changing names and using “mrs”. So everyone knows how special you are.

I'm 59. My mother married in 1963 (not to my father) and again in 1969. She didn't use either of her husbands' surnames.

Yes, exactly. It's a mystery to me why. But then, I'm not married and am not interested/have never been interested in being married so I know I'm already outside what most other people aspire to/do.

They're talking rubbish. Your name remains as it is unless you change it

It used to be the custom, but increasingly woman are keeping their birth names. Older generations often assume you will change, but it's absolutely your choice.

I agree there was no taboo, but it wasn't something that very many, if any, of my contemporaries did when they got married.

But like I said, not that long ago, women were expected to give up work once they got married. Now that seems absurd, but that's because millions of women, encouraged by the feminist movement, decided to challenge it.

Women aren't challenging the name-changing convention in anything like the same numbers, even though it's a pretty simple thing to do. The reason must be, as I said above, that a lot of women simply like the idea of taking a man's name. Even now, marriage is seen as an achievement for women, and having a 'married name' is a way to show the world you've snagged yourself a man.

@Annasgirl
I agree and am very similar, 49, married 23 years, kept own name (as did husband) children double barrelled.

I imagine in the future women will look back at the practice of women dropping their name and becoming known by their husband's names with incredulity. Also, if the practice had never existed, can you imagine a man saying that he had a great idea, 'when we get married, you'll stop having your own name and start using my name'.

I agree there was no taboo, but it wasn't something that very many, if any, of my contemporaries did when they got married.

And it certainly seems to me like a social norm, as pretty much most times I interact with people who don't know me, they assume I'm a Mrs, that my surname is my partners or that his is my surname.

There may have been a period of time when it was becoming less standard, but it seems to me at least that it's going the other way these days.

There does seem to be a lot of cutsey personalised Mr & Mrs merch around these days, like bathrobes and mugs. Seems firmly aimed at the 20 something newlyweds.

I'm early 40s and I'd say it's the other way round - in my age group, university friends and colleagues were more likely to keep their names, whereas the late 20-somethings and 30-somethings I know who are getting married now, mostly seem excited to be "Mrs Hisname".

I don't think it is overt pressure it is more that it was/is a definite social norm.

But the majority of women in their 40s will have got married sometime this century. People are making it sound as though those of us of that generation grew up in some long distant past. Even as a teen, I knew that the option was very much there to keep your own name. Yes, it was the norm to change your name, as it is now, but certainly there was no taboo against keeping your own name.

I just find it's interesting that this very obvious relic of the pariarchy is still enthusiastically accepted by many women who would consider themselves - and are - feminists.

I’m 49 and never expected to change my name ever. So I think that assertion is incorrect. I married almost 20 years ago and kept my own name. I assumed that as time went on this would be the norm for everyone. I’m shocked today when I hear women who change their name especially the in law who told me it was because her new husband wanted her to🙄🙄🙄

Interesting comments about children's surnames.

I didn't and wouldn't have countenanced changing my own name. (DH would have rather liked it if I had wanted to, but he recognised a firmly held point of principle when he saw one, and didn't try to persuade me!) However, I didn't think for much more than a moment about the decision to give DS DH's surname. That seems a contradiction. I've thought about why. I guess part of it is that locally (London or other big cities may be different), encounters with health or education professionals seem to be totally all about the mother...from pregnancy through babyhood and the toddler/preschool years, and into primary school. Ther's also the whole "oh, how lovely, he's helping you with the baby/giving you a rest/babysitting" thing (um, no, he's being a parent). We wanted to be equal in all things parenting, but in terms of connectedness and other people's perceptions, the balance seemed automatically skewed towards me. So letting DH and DS share a name slightly redressed the balance.

There's also ingrained historical prejudices, particularly among the older generation, about children only having their mother's name if their fathers don't recognise them, which we just didn't feel like taking on.

I guess at the end of the day, you can't fight every feminist battle.

I don't think it is overt pressure it is more that it was/is a definite social norm. It is just expected as the default, and you have to explain if you're not changing your name. Certainly I constantly get the assumption that I'm married to my long term partner, that my surname is his surname and that my title is "Mrs", just because I am of a certain age, have children, own a house etc.

But it's ridiculous to ignore the fact that for most of us (I'm mid 40s, which I think it similar to most FWR regulars) we grew up with the outright expectation that a woman would change her name on marriage; that a woman who didn't do that was weird;

I’m 41 and I don’t recognise that. Yes, I’m an outlier in not changing my name, but I don’t recall any pressure whatsoever to do so during my formative years.

I suspect in most cases it's a combination of reasons, including tradition / custom / societal pressure; wanting everyone to have the same name; wanting to change their birth name; wanting to show to the world that they are married etc etc

If you have an unusual or ugly surname, that might help tip the balance in favour of changing your name. Like when posters on the Baby Name board say that their DH wants to name their son after his father, and if the name is something lovely they get responses that say it would be a lovely idea ("nice to honour someone important to DH, keep the tradition going, wonderful name on my list too"), but if the name is terrible it is suggested that they find another name ("allow the child to have their own identity, what about your family, why set him up for a lifetime of teasing")

I don't necessarily know that I have the education or even the intellectual capacity to discuss feminism in the depths that the more experienced here can, which I'm sure a lot of you can tell. But I do know that changing your name doesn't change who you are as a person. Age does that.

How do you imagine that it will become 'far less common' without individual women making the decision to resist and refuse this patriarchal tradition?

Well, exactly. It used to be rare for women to wear trousers, work outside the home etc. But these things are now quite commonplace, because individual women in their millions set out to change them. They did so often at considerable cost to themselves.

There really is no taboo against a woman keeping her own name on marriage. And there hasn't been for quite a while - I disagree with the poster above in that respect. As I said before, it's obvious that many women just like the idea of taking a man's name. That's fine - I guess - but let's not pretend that it's all about 'nobody can spell my name' or 'What if the kids had a different name?" They just want to take a man's name. That's not a feminist decision but not every decision has to be.

Of course, the order of his names is so much more important than anything else.

Sorry, but you're just being overly defensive and tendentious now.

Of course name changing isn't the most important thing, or even close. Nobody claimed that. My point was that a large proportion of the world's population get by quite well with a system which doesn't depend on a woman (never a man) sacrifycing her name for a man's. To read some of the posts here, you'd swear the earth would stop turning if a husband and wife have different names.