Did you change your surname after marriage?

[user1489792710]

The other thread in AIBU got me thinking about changing surnames after marriage.

I didn't change mine. DH would have liked me to and sometimes would ask in mock anger why I haven't. For professional reasons it made sense to stick to my maiden name as most of my qualifications and certification are in that name. So for work I use my maiden name. It's completely unpronounceable and would make sense to change to the easier married name. However I feel it's "my" name my identity and would really hate to change it.

I'm from an Asian country with predominantly Buddhist culture and married women do change their name to take on their husbands although it's not a must. It's 50/50 among my friends back home.

Just curious as to what the UK is doing?

I kept my name, because it was my name! I never saw a reason to change it, hadn't caused any problems in the ten years before we decided to get married, even when we had children.

I am surprised though by all these people who hated their names but waited till they got married to change them.
Also, I have never knowingly met a man who changed his name on getting married. That says a lot to me.

Yeah, a massive change for him as well. I suppose the tradition is still for the female to change to the male’s name. It’s half & half among my friends, with name-taking.

In response to Antihop

smallereveryday I strongly disagree with you. Saying that something is feminist just because a woman is making a choice doesn't make sense. It's like saying eating meat is supporting animal welfare just because you say so.

Nonsense. I can off course support animal welfare by eating meat. I have choice . I can be a vegetarian. I can be a vegan or I can support higher welfare farming. I can make personal choices such as only eating free range eggs. Not eating meat that isn't grass fed. Refusing to eat pork from pigs forced to farrow in crates. I have a pile of different options if this was something I wished to support . Choices that I can make made by doing my own research . I do not require 'telling' in which way I support something.

Marriage is a patriarchal institution. There's no point in pretending getting married is a feminist act. **

Bollocks. ! Getting married enabled me to exercise my rights within the current laws of this country by having my input of unpaid work (, lack of career progression, loss of pension contributions and income whilst giving birth to /and raising young children. ) Upon divorcing I was entitled to 70% of marital asserts. Not being married would have meant CM only and no home!
So a bloody site more than I would have received by NOT marrying.
I avoided marriage to my dp for many years because of this. I eventually decided it was a sensible thing to do from a legal perspective.

You think ???

We did everything we could to get away from the sexist aspects of the wedding ceremony. Eg I didn't wear white, wasn't given away,

You need to get out of the history books then. ! Things change and evolve. Had my father 'owned' me then I would never entertain 'giving away' ... However he doesn't and it has been reduced to a tradition. A tradition that I wanted AND CHOSE to bestow upon my relative.

I didn't wear make up or heels, no father of the bride speeches. But I can't pretend that getting married is a feminist act due to the history behind it.

Bloody hell that sounds dull. I also wasn't aware that wearing make up or heels is unfeminist ?? Really . Not in my book.

My feminism is demonstrated in the work I do and the way I've bought up my children to believe that there is nothing they cannot achieve because of their sex. About treating people equally.
Far too many feminists are hung up on the past. If their were laws that underpinned these traditions that would be different but the laws changed. And we now have CHOICE. I will not be dictated to by anyone. Least of all someone telling this woman 'how to be' .. just as bad as the patriarchs of old.

I did but I've been married 40 years and it was relatively uncommon for women to retain their surname then. Mind you I never really liked my maiden name so was more than happy to change it.

I did, as my last name was my dad's, who left when I was a baby and I have no connection with. So I didn't feel any connection with my maiden name so I decided to change it. Both my maiden name and my married name are fairly unusual, but I preferred the sound of my married name.

That's an important point smallereveryday: lots of women who choose to marry are obtaining more rights and protections by doing so. Not all, but lots. There's nothing feminist about doing without these, especially not if you do so whilst taking a disproportionate amount of the care burden and financially penalised for it. Which again at a societal level is the majority of us. We can argue that women shouldn't do this, should take minimal ML etc, but back in the real world, we still do. Taking steps to acquire for yourself the best protections available to you in your circumstances and in your relationship with a male partner is feminist, actually. Of course, this doesn't always look like marriage either.

The frustrating thing about these types of threads is the tone becomes so negative and dismissive and it really undermines the debate. Comments along the lines of "oh people are bound to say it's because they didn't like their name / it was hard to spell but I'm going to make it clear I don't believe any of them"^ just set out to (rather snidely) preemptively invalidate people's experiences.^ Even though you don't know them, you know better than they do why they did something and nothing they say can be true and it's so belittling and not conducive to free discussion.

This is a self-selecting audience - most likely to attract people who fall into one of two camps 1) DIDN'T change their name and proud and 2) DID change their name for a variety of reasons and feel the need to defend their choice. If there was an actual unbiased survey done that took a balanced sample, I would expect the results would show the majority of women changed name because it is the "done thing", a much smaller percentage did so for other (genuine!) reasons such as liking their partners name or not liking theirs but the former are not going to be heavily represented on a thread like this. And apparently anyone else who changed for other reasons are only kidding themselves they were thinking beyond societal conditioning

Unless your wedding day had no ‘ceremonial’ aspect whatsoever and was purely a legal process, then let’s be real, getting married wasn’t a very ‘feminist’ thing to do.

Total piffle. Women who say thoughtless things like this are why so many women back away from feminism, BossAssBitch. You remind me of the self righteous young women who expelled me from my hometown's feminist group for wearing makeup and sleeping with men.

I've been a radical feminist all my life. Telling women they're not good enough feminists is so destructive. Gender affects all of us, and denying that is foolish.

If your dad giving you away was actually the law, and you were his possession being handed over to a new owner then I could entirely see your objection. But these days it's just a tradition and one some brides really enjoy, depending on the relationship they have with their DF.

In my case I couldn't have had a better father, and one who has told me all my life that I can do whatever I set my mind to. The only man who's loved me as much is DH, so I was very moved when DF walked me down the aisle. He trusted DH and that was important to me. To me it symbolised the transition between your birth family and the new family that marriage creates.

DF has always told me women can do anything. It's my DM who wanted me to limit myself, to be demure.

Both DH and I had really been through the mill emotionally when we met and married in our 30s. We were over the moon to have found each other and we wanted every bell and whistle going.

DH's morning suit was totally out of character, as was my wedding dress. We were both pretty unconventional normally. But we loved the whole performance. It didn't alter our relationship at all. He didn't go all domineering on me, and I didn't start submitting to him.

The wedding was conventional and beautiful. Our marriage was unconventional and even more beautiful.

Comments along the lines of "oh people are bound to say it's because they didn't like their name / it was hard to spell but I'm going to make it clear I don't believe any of them"^ just set out to (rather snidely) preemptively invalidate^ people's experiences.

Well no.

It's not that I or anyone else doesn't believe the posters who say they changed their name because it was ugly or difficult to spell. The point I and others are making is that these 'choices' are made against the backdrop of centuries of tradition whereby women are expected to change their names, but it would be considered bizarre for a man to do so. Why? Because on marriage, the woman became the property of the man. That is why she took his name, not the other way round. Whether people like it or not, name changing is a vestige of that tradition.

Approximately equal numbers of men and women will have the same 'ugly', 'difficult to spell', 'boring' etc names. But men will not only keep these names - with a tiny number of exceptions - they will want and indeed insist that their wives and children have them too. And many women will go along with this. Their choice, sure, but to repeat, choices are not made in a vacumn.

Neither of us changed our names when we got married.

And neither of us have encountered the millions of problems that people on this thread cite.

We must have smarter passport staff / teachers / health care staff / solicitors etc in Scotland as no one has ever had any problems. It’s almost as if it’s the 21 century and families come in all different forms .

BossAss
"I wouldn’t feel properly married if I had kept my surname."
How come your DH feels properly married?

"what do people envisage their children to do when / if they eventually marry and have children? So for example you and dh have hyphenated or given both surnames, say they meet a partner down the line with the same set up, you'd then be in a situation with four surnames if both sides wanted to keep the tradition you'd set up?"

Bingo!

We're not setting up a tradition.

I would hope that my Dc and future partners will use their free will to do what they like, without pressure from parents, ILs , the patriarchy or peer pressure.

And whatever they do I will not get in a huff and exert emotional blackmail.

Haha.

DH and I came in together, him with his Dad, me with my Mum.

He had Page Girls, I had Brides boys. (they all wore trousers and shorts)

(Because this was how the children of our families worked out.)

His Mum and My Dad made speeches, and he and I did a double act.

Free and easy.

@smallereveryday

I am not telling anyone how to be. I'm recounting what I did.

Just telling our daughters 'you can achieve anything' is a lovely sentiment but rather one dimensional. It doesn't prepare them for the barriers and oppressions they will inevitably face. Acknowledging and understanding the past doesn't make me stuck in the past.

I note that you've insulted my wedding. The fact that you've resorted to insults says a lot about your argument.

I agree that marriage gives protection for the partner that earns less in event of divorce. Which is most often a woman.

TheRedBarrows i didn't suggest you were, it was a genuine question out of interest. In no way do I think you're wrong. Do what you like. Tradition is not a dirty word either, we have lots of family traditions that I do with my mum and will definitely be doing with my own children. If they also think the tradition is a good idea and retain it, lovely, if not, each to their own. Also not sure where the emotional blackmail thing came from?

To look at the same question another way if you thought I was posing you have an over-invested view on your child's choices - if you had both parents surnames and partner to be had both parents surnames what would you have done? I guess if it were me and we chose to drop one name each to form a new combined family one of each name if would feel disrespectful to the parent I had dropped? To me, I'm not saying you, ME. Just asking what your choice would have been in that situation. Don't answer if you don't want to, it's just a hypothetical situation I was interested in.

It was only a question as I said in my original post, everyone is so quick to jump to the defensive here. At no point did I say what you did was wrong. Or I disagree. I have no opinion on how anyone chooses their surname. Just an interest.

We're not setting up a tradition.

I would hope that my Dc and future partners will use their free will to do what they like, without pressure from parents, ILs , the patriarchy or peer pressure.

This.

My eldest has calmly told me that when he’s a professional footballer (🙄) he plans to use only half of his double barrelled name, but he hasn’t decided which half yet. On the days he thinks it’ll be the half of his name he got from DH, I do not take it as a personal rejection. It’s his name, just as mine is mine (not my father’s) and DH’s is his.

kyles
I think once something becomes a ‘tradition’ it gathers currency which can lead to pressure. The difficulty men have in considering changing their own names is surely down to going against tradition as much as patriarchal entitlement.

And I didn’t say you did talk about emotional blackmail: I was talking about the situation in general because so many women do face emotional blackmail from men and wider family if they ‘reject’ his name.

I did rudely say ‘Bingo’ because in every single thread about surnames someone says ‘but what will happen if our children double barrel two double barrelled names?’, and we can see that the next generation are not simply adding up strings of names because presumably they deploy common sense and make their own choice.

Had I found myself in that situation I would probably suggest that we take one name each, one from mother, one from father, for example.

And I will not be surprised if my Dc fo this, and use their father’s name, because it is culturally specific in a way that they are visibly identifiable as.

But I will have no emotional
Issue with whatever they did.

I didn't - dh didn't want me to - he said my name was part of me - the me that he fell in love with and didn't want to change - he didn't express strong opinions on the surname of the kids either. One thing that makes me laugh - on our honeymoon we met a man who took dh aside and told him that if I didn't take dh's name I'd never respect him. 20 years on I think we are doing ok - the kids don't care that I have a different surname, I'm not exactly conventional anyway - which they quite like too!

A friend got married recently and he agreed to marry her only on the understanding that she would change her name from her ex husbands

I was a bit ]

A friend got married recently and he agreed to marry her only on the understanding that she would change her name from her ex husbands

Another one of those problems which could very easily have been preempted by the woman never changing her name in the first place.

Possibly iced

But i think that if he is the type of person that is insisting on her having a different name from her children (as they have ex name) he may well have insisted on her changing her name on marriage anyway

At this stage in my life...i would have said no to the marriage

But i think that if he is the type of person that is insisting on her having a different name from her children (as they have ex name) he may well have insisted on her changing her name on marriage anyway

She should have insisted on not marrying him then. He doesn't sound like much of a catch.

he may well have insisted on her changing her name on marriage anyway

But he doesn't get to 'insist'. It is not possible to make a woman change her name on marriage, whether from her birth name or a previous married name.

A friend got married recently and he agreed to marry her only on the understanding that she would change her name from her ex husbands

Not the kind of person I would want to marry. Did she totally miss the huge 'controlling' stamp on his head

I was stood there thinking

RED FLAG RED FLAG RED FLAG

I didn't, my husband did. I love my name, it's a strong indication of my heritage so I didn't want to change it. DH didn't like his surname so it just made sense to do it that way