Surname change after marriage

I love 'Ms' and have been one since I was about 14. Some people seem to have a visceral hatred of it though.

it still won't be a truly feminist choice until men also make the choice when they marry. Many men don't care if their wife keeps her name but I doubt many of them consider for a second changing theirs. So still not an equal action.

Alpha but Miss defines you by your marital status and arguably keeps you on the level of a girl - there's a video somewhere where Camille Paglia discusses the invention of Ms by Gloria Steinem - she says it was to address the failing in English (unlike some other languages) that a woman retains Miss regardless of her age (and thus status in society), whereas in other language a woman becomes Madame, for example, regardless of her marital state. So Ms bridged that, as well as bringing women in line with men who do not have to demonstrate their marital status every time their title is used.

Olenna put it beautifully and I agree, I think that changing names will become less frequent as time goes by, and that can only be a good thing, as long as it's a choice made freely.

I think it's completely reasonable to talk about a woman's age and time of marriage being relevant factors. If the average age on FWR is mid 40s then I'm a generation below that, so cannot speak to how it was for you. It's just that this requires acceptance that women didn't/don't make a totally individual choice independent of any societal context, and that their stated reasons might not be the whole story, which obviously some people (not you Olenna) get very upset about.

did she voluntarily take on a 'worse' (in your opinion) name when your parents got married?

My parents got married in the early 1950s. She couldn't even have a bank account of her own. Her wages from her job in a school had to go into a bank account that was countersigned by her father. She had to give up her job the moment she got married. Do you think she gave a moments thought to taking on a different surname name when she married?

Kennehora - you said But no pain when you changed it on marriage?

Well, my dad was sad because the surname is probably going to die out with my generation (or this branch of it at least, and it's a very very rare surname in the UK so there aren't many other branches of it out there). But as Assassinated said:

it's interesting that marriage, for women, gives a socially acceptable reason for changing an unwanted surname without offending family members. They would presumably view it as an expected change and not feel negatively towards it, as they might if a woman just changed their name as a single adult via deed poll

Maybe in a couple of generations changing surname on marriage will be far less common, and then we can have conversations about motivation and pressures and choices. 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; where little girls who had a crush on a pop star would practice writing their name with his surname; and just about everyone who you knew at school had the same name as their parents.

My big stand has been that I am not and never will be known as Mrs Bill Wimple. I know that it is technically correct to be addressed in the "Princess Michael of Kent" way, and that Mrs Olenna Wimple is for divorced women, but I was happy to take DH's surname, I wasn't prepared to take his first name too

Oh and I'm happy with Miss too. So essentially I'm happy with any of Miss, Ms or Dr. I object to Mrs. Because I will not be defined by a title that says I'm a married woman.

If anyone asks, I just say I love my name and I have it for over 30 years before I got married. They just shut up after that. There's only ever one person (the double glazing guy) who insisted giving us the cert as Mr and Mrs DH. Everyone else is happy to just use Mr DHname and Ms DHname. (it's actually Dr but i'm happy with Ms too).

If I had to guess though, I'd imagine he felt differently about it than I did. But I expect you could have worked that out for yourself.

It's almost like him feeling differently about it than you did is kind of the point...

I'd ask him but alas, Doctor Who borrowed my time machine and hasn't returned it.

If I had to guess though, I'd imagine he felt differently about it than I did. But I expect you could have worked that out for yourself.

Or alternatively, rather than doing any corpse bothering, you could just not make it all about you, and instead accept that there's a legitimate discussion to be had about why women with embarrassing names are more likely to change theirs and not inflict them on their children, but men aren't.

@OlennasWimple it's interesting that marriage, for women, gives a socially acceptable reason for changing an unwanted surname without offending family members. They would presumably view it as an expected change and not feel negatively towards it, as they might if a woman just changed their name as a single adult via deed poll.

No just pointing out as others have done the peculiarly high incidence of woman having terrible birth names. You miss the point that if this name was so terrible why didn't your father leap at the chance of getting rid of it when he married?

I'll dig them up and get them to do that, shall I?

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

Which could have been avoided by your mother keeping her name and your father changing his.

If you have the luck of having a lovely birth surname, and you love it and want to keep it, then do so. If you want to change, like I did, then do it. I thought part of feminism was about women having the right to make our own choices.

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

I knew a Mrs Smellie and a Mrs Boak (the latter is a Scottish word meaning to vomit)

I've often wondered what appalling birth names Mrs Smellie and Mrs Vomit had.

We should all be ready to say 'yes, I am a feminist but not every decision I make is a feminist one and it's up to me to decide how much of a problem that is'. But we should be prepared to really think about our decisions and own them.

But I am completely happy to own my decision to change my name on marriage. I've said that my reasons included being sick and tired of having to spell my name every. single. time. But apparently this reason isn't good enough for some posters, as I should have just changed it by deed poll when I was 18 (and never mind the pain that would have caused family members who would still have that name)