If you're a feminist, why take your husband's name?

[OrIsTheWorldNuts]

I just want to talk. No judgements so no biscuits

As a feminist, why take your husband's name? I know some say it's because they want to have the same name as their children but why do the children have to have your husband's/bf's/partner's name not yours? Then your husband could change his name or better still both change names to something new as a family?

I know to each their own but just wondering how you reconcile some feminist beliefs with the old tradition of taking the man's name.

So I could have 2 identities.

Yep, @Narniacalling - I agree.

@MissingLinker

Out of interest, everyone here with a really terrible maiden name, if you hated it so much, why did you wait to get married to change it?

Like @DramaAlpaca, I didn’t want to upset my dad, and as my mum had done the sum total of fuck-all about the bullying, I doubt she’d have been supportive of me changing the name that was the root of the bullies’ nasty name for me.

She prefers the full version of my first name, whereas I prefer a shortened version, and have been that version for over 30 years, but mum just finds it too hard to use it, so no chance of support with changing my surname.

Interestingly, I see a lot of women here who mention their surnames were ugly, hard to spell, etc. I get that. What if your husband's surname was also ugly, hard to spell, etc? What would have happened then?

That one's easy to answer: if we had settled in my country he would have taken mine. We discussed it at the time and he was absolutely fine with that.

He was also fine with the idea of moving to my country, but I wanted to move here because of my career (was doing research related to UK rather than my home country).

Also actually my dad took his ex wife's name and kept it so it wasn't really my last name anyway

@veeeeh oh I didn't know that was the case in ireland as all the irish women I know mainly live in the uk ,but all known by mrs x y z ( husbands name)

dotoallasyouwouldbedoneby

But what happens to the next generation...quadruple-barrelling

Yes I am pretty sure that my great grandchildren will have 8 surnames, and so on.

Or not.

My Ds’s are welcome to make their own choice and decision free of any pressure from me. That’s the whole point. Take their future partner’s name, use one of each, combine, invent as best suits them.

We discussed it at the time and chose his because we liked it and it was unusual and we didn't want the name to die out. I wouldn't have wanted to have a different name from him.

Around the time two other couples we knew were getting married and they both decided to take a different name altogether. I think it's becoming more common to do that.

I wonder how many men wouldn’t change their name because society would think them ‘less of a man’
I think both attitudes need to change in this situation.

Because I don’t think feminism is about one way of living, it’s about having the choices and being free to make the choices I want. It’s about not judging women for the choices they make and supporting them.
I have a senior job in a traditionally men’s industry. Other women choose not to work. Provided we have chosen it, we’re all good.

I choose my husband’s name. It was important to him. My job is important to me, he supports that.

Currently debating this.
2 women so its not a feminist angle! We would like the same name but both feel that Mrs surname is our mums. Neither of us feel an urge to fight for our own names, we have tried multiple ways of merging. Neither of us dislike the names so much as to create a whole new one

We are considering double barrel but feel that we will both end up just using one as both together are long, and one is difficult to spell

Oh yes, was actually thinking about this. What do some women do when it's them and their partner (another woman)? Do they also consider changing names as default?

I know two women who decided to create a whole new name though because neither of them felt it was fair for the other to take one person's name and they wanted to share a name (Not saying everyone has to do this, just saying what I've experienced).

The same sex couples I know have double barrelled or just kept their own names. And the women continue using Ms.

I never use Mrs, anyway.

Moorhens you could swap names

I wonder if there tends to be any difference in the discussions re naming between same sex male couples vs female couples? (I'm sure there's no way of knowing this beyond anecdote, it might be illuminating... or not)

Feminism has never been about supporting other women's choices. This sisterhood people talk of is a myth. Some of the most bitterly contested political/theoretical ground witnessed over the last century has been under the umbrella term of 'feminism'.

It's about not being disadvantaged, mostly in terms of economics but also physical strength, on account of having been born female. It's about certain protective laws, environments and spaces needed by women and girls because we, on account of our physical form, are more vulnerable to attack and abuse. It's about protection from misogyny. It's about the distinction between sex and gender, once conflated as one and the same, to evidence that biology confers a set of very sex-specific issues on women but doesn't necessarily equate to our destiny. In the current political climate, that's a distinction that's more necessary now than it ever was.

The result of striving for those goals has doubtless resulted in more individual autonomy for women, but that was never its endgame. Feminism had far more serious goals, some of them amounting to the difference between life and death. In recent global, local and political contexts, women scrapping between themselves about 'My Choice' is pretty small-fry by comparison.

I took my husband’s name, we were together unmarried for 7 years, no children by choice now or then. I needed to disappear/ hide from someone in my past marriage and a name change made that easier.

We wanted to have the same surname and DH’s is much nicer! DH’s sister kept it and her husband changed his name to it when they married.

It really is a very nice name!

@MarieIVanArkleStinks

Feminism has never been about supporting other women's choices. This sisterhood people talk of is a myth. Some of the most bitterly contested political/theoretical ground witnessed over the last century has been under the umbrella term of 'feminism'.

It's about not being disadvantaged, mostly in terms of economics but also physical strength, on account of having been born female. It's about certain protective laws, environments and spaces needed by women and girls because we, on account of our physical form, are more vulnerable to attack and abuse. It's about protection from misogyny. It's about the distinction between sex and gender, once conflated as one and the same, to evidence that biology confers a set of very sex-specific issues on women but doesn't necessarily equate to our destiny. In the current political climate, that's a distinction that's more necessary now than it ever was.

The result of striving for those goals has doubtless resulted in more individual autonomy for women, but that was never its endgame. Feminism had far more serious goals, some of them amounting to the difference between life and death. In recent global, local and political contexts, women scrapping between themselves about 'My Choice' is pretty small-fry by comparison.

Makes me think of this quote I found online.

As a mother to an only DS I would sincerely hope that (if he chooses to get married) he and his future DW would clearly discuss if/why either of them changes name. I wouldn't give a fig, and neither would my DH, if she choose to keep her name or they both took her's. I would care more of they just blindly followed tradition without questioning it.

We wanted the same surname

Dh wanted us to have a brand new name but his dad went right off on one and dh was still young enough to ‘give in’

I didn’t care

BUT this was 30 years ago and although i would have said i was a feminist it was at the very basic level of ‘ women should have equal rights’ and it wasn’t overly common in people i knew at the time to keep your maiden name

I was shocked when a friend recently was told that her partner wouldn’t marry her unless she changed her surname to his, she still had an ex husband’s name, but I’m older and probably more feministy

@MeMarmiteYouJam YES. Precisely.

Response to another PP who wrote:

Why is your husband’s name his name but your name....is your dad’s.

Whenever this ‘argument’ is made (by idiots) I always wonder why they chose to change their name to that of their father in law? As that’s what you did, obviously.

I agree this stance is completely illogical. I would hardly choose to discard a name which links me to my family history, my genealogy, my past, my ancestors, my upbringing (however flawed, it's what shaped me into the adult I am), in favour of the name of a family with whom I have no shared history.

The idea that it's 'just a bunch of letters' is nonsensical to me. If that were the case, then if my colleagues for example decided that from here on out they were going to address me as 'Janice', I'd have no reason to object Ludicrous. (Incidentally a colleague I once worked with decided she didn't like my given name and renamed me 'Emma'. I told her very firmly 'My name is X, and that is how I'd prefer to be addressed'. Likewise, my MiL insists on putting me back in my box by addressing me as Mrs (Ugh) Hisname, despite requests to stop doing this. So she then addressed me (once) as MyGivenName MyRidiculouslyMisspelledRealName (misspelled to a ludicrous degree to make it clear it was deliberate)! As for using the 'Dr' title, I'm sure she'd rather choke.

She now doesn't address me at all and I prefer it that way. But let's not pretend names don't matter in the slightest. Find me a person who doesn't object to the serial misspelling of their name, especially by friends and people who should know better. It's seen at best as ignorance (sometimes wilful); at worst mildly insulting.

Identity matters. It matters on a form of very primitive and base level. And it's not a thing I'd personally choose to relinquish lightly.

Why not I suppose, feminism and women's rights gave me to option to choose and I chose his (that reads as defensive, ita not meant to!). I did change to Ms as a title rather than Mrs though.

I wasn't particularly bothered about my maiden name and I liked the idea of us having the same surname (and ds who came along a couple of years later). Dh didn't try to sway my decision either way.

Identity matters. It matters on a form of very primitive and base level. And it's not a thing I'd personally choose to relinquish lightly.

Sure - but for many of us our surname simply isn't an important part of our identity even if it is to you. It's just a somewhat arbitrary label. Personally of the three elements you mention my title is probably the only part I'd say matters to my 'identity' because I earned it. I'm not sure I'm even that attached to my forename, nowadays I probably get called Errol more.

Find me a person who doesn't object to the serial misspelling of their name, especially by friends and people who should know better. It's seen at best as ignorance (sometimes wilful); at worst mildly insulting.

And yet people on here won't accept that I did not give my children my surname for precisely this reason.

I'd say my surname is mis-spelt 2 times out of 3, on official publications, by people I work with, at the doctor's, at the pharmacy, by my employers.

As for pronouncing it- not even my own husband can do that. In 28 years in this country I have not met one single person who could pronounce it properly. Not one.

But no, that can't possibly be the reason why I wanted to have access to a name that people would just tick off the list without thinking about it.

Identity matters. It matters on a form of very primitive and base level. And it's not a thing I'd personally choose to relinquish lightly.

I have no idea what you mean by primitive, but there are cultures and have always been in the past, where people change their names regularly through life, to mark major events. Presumably, they still have some sort of identity. Surnames isn't a very old invention anyway.