to not want to change my name?

[wishingonastar123]

I got married last week but I don't really want to take my DH's name.

I have a child from a previous relationship who has my surname, DH and I have a child together who has a double barrelled name (DH's surname - my surname) and I had planned to also have the double barrelled name as I don't want my DS to have a completely different name to the rest of us. But I don't like the double barrelled name, both names have two syllables so it's a bit of a mouthful and I always have to spell DH's part of it.

My surname is a well known one which I never need to spell, it's just simple.

I thought that once we got married I might change my mind and want to take his name, but I don't.

I've spoke to him about it but he seemed to take the hump a bit, he's very traditional and I think he just assumed that I would take his name.

I don't know anybody who hasn't taken their DH's name but I thought in this day in age it was a bit unnecessary and I'm sure lots of people don't change their name these days?
After all, what is in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

If I didn't have my DS with my name then I probably wouldn't hesitate to take DH's name but his Dad is on his birth certificate and he wouldn't give consent for me to change his name to DH's name, and I think that should be DS's decision to make when he is older.

Plus I'm not particularly keen on DH's family so that doesn't really make help my feelings towards the name.

YABU for not resolving this before you got married - a week in is a bit early for your husband to be in a grump with you for something which presumably you have discussed before.

Congratulations on your wedding though - I hope you can resolve this to everyone's satisfaction (and that includes just leaving it until it's not really an issue any more!) and enjoy your honeymoon period!

YANBU. I have and haven't taken my husband's name. My passport, mortgage and joint banking are in my married name and everything else is in my unmarried name.

My DH was a bit surprised when I told him I didn't want to change my name. He'd never really considered the implications or why it was traditionally done. I asked him if he would want to give up his name under those circumstances and he admitted that no he wouldn't.

Everybody thought I was bonkers, though, and I got no end of grief about it! My non-married name (I won't use maiden because I was definitely not a virgin when I got married!) is very unusual - I'm the only one of me in the whole of the UK - so it's a big part of who I am.

Congratulations on your wedding. Maybe you should have discussed with your DH beforehand really? But there is no legal obligation for you to take his name.

I amended mine to incorporate DH's. Most of my friends took their DH's name. A few did not.
Whether or not you take his name, you're still married, so I don't really understand why this should be a problem.

Didn't change my name, am more surprised that people do. Doesn't cause any problems.

YANBU to not want to take DH's name- traditional ho har! YABU to spring this now. TBH DoJo is right - you should have discussed this before marriage.

The easiest solution is to double barrel. FWIW, I have a double barrelled name despite it being a MN pet hate. DH's surname is the latter part which usually is mistaken for the singular surname eg Fitzwilliam-Smythe is usually shortened to Smythe. Which in your case is a Brucey Bonus as usually people will therefore default to yours.

On another note, my DH would like to know why your DH isn't changing his name to the double barrelled name? Family unity and all of that.

I have 2 friends who didn't change their names when they got married.
I double barrelled mine but wish I hadn't now and just to kept to mine.
It's a pain for all sorts of reasons.
Your name - you keep it. Your DH will get used to it.

Not sure why your DH should get the hump about your not taking his name. Surely he's the one who takes yours, i.e. you have it taken away from you.

Amazed you left such fundamental thing so late in the day, or to find out your DH has "traditional" views. About what else, one wonders?

You say no-one you know hasn't taken their DH's name. In my generation, coming up to 60, I know no-one who did.

He could take yours if he really wants everyone to be the same.

Beccajoh, so you have your passport in your married name but would introduce yourself with your own name? Why did you choose to change those things into married name?

Op, I would stick with your own name as it seems your priority is being linked by name with your children.

I'm surprised that as your child with your DH has a double barrelled name that this didn't come up at all before you got married.

I took DH's name in a fit of bring traditional or something and actually regret it so YANBU, stick to your guns.

It's funny, but it's seen as a far bigger deal to not change your name here in the UK than it is in Australia. I wonder why?

Also using the Ms instead of Mrs even if you do change your name, completely baffles people here. Whereas where I worked it was the standard to be Ms whether you changed your surname or not. Whose business is it at work whether you're married or not?

I didn't change my name. It seems very strange that a grown woman with a life/ career/ education / qualifications in her own right would change her name to take on that of her male partner.
Goes back to the days of women being owned by men.
Similar to slaves having the last name of their owners and having to change it when they are sold on.

I read somewhere that 30% of women do not take on new husbands name now -I don't know if it is true.
I also was told that in Spain women do not take on the mans name.

A more important issue is what any couple might call there children and do you know that the children do not have to have the parents' names at all but can have a whole new name of their own.

I did the same as splendide - not sure if it was a fit of being traditional or just that I wasn't too keen on my name. But now I miss it (years later) & wish I'd kept it. Like beccajoh, I had a very unusual name - had years of being teased about it, but now I'm sad that there are hardly any of us left. And there's noone at all to carry on that name in my branch of the family.

The thing about not being keen on your DH's family isn't a minor issue, either - I've got less & less keen on my MIL over the years, sadly, & I do wonder if that's affected how I see the family name!

Yes, perhaps you should have discussed it first. But your partner certainly shouldn't have made such a massive assumption. Another one who says stick to your guns.

DoJo - I had made the decision to have a double barrelled name, that just made sense and that's one of the reasons why DD has a double barrelled name rather than just DH's name, because I had always planned to have the same when we got married, despite the fact that I don't really like it.
But now that it has actually come to it I don't really want to.

I wouldn't say that DH is in a grump with me, he has said it is up to me, but he didn't seem happy about it.

I'm another one like beccajoh. My name at work is my own name - I had built up a reputation under that name, published under it etc so did not want to lose that recognition. My passport is my married name, but I only changed that when we had children, as it seemed to me to be easier to have the same name as the children when I wanted to take them out of the country without DH (I have family abroad). However, thanks to some lovely lady on here, I discovered I can have both my names in my passport, so the main page says 'Poledra MarriedName' then there's an added comment that 'The holder is also known as Dr. Poledra MyName'.

DH doesn't particularly care, as long as I'm not committing fraud

He didn't bring it up before marriage either so it can't be that big of a deal to him. He is the one assuming a change to the status quo so he should have brought it up. This isn't OP's responsibility.

My DH became aware before our marriage (as a correction to an assumption from MIL) that I was not going to change my name (and that whilst I know many people do it I thought it was a very odd thing for anyone to do, like having a tattoo done afterwards with the date).
After marriage he put my first name and his last name down as my name on our electoral register form. When the form arrived I questioned it (our council muppets have previous form for being unable to transpose details to a computer) and was shown what he filled in.
I hit the roof - it was the first argument of our married life.

Listen to what you want, you are the only one affected by this, you want to keep it, so do.

Of all my close married female friends, I can't think of one who changed her name. It never even crossed my mind. As well as it being patriarchal bullshit dressed up as 'tradition', it makes zero sense to drop a name under which you have built up a professional identity.

I can, though, think of two male academics in my field who added their wives' names to theirs on marriage. (I don't know either wife, but I assume both also double barrelled their names.)

Congratulations on your marriage. Don't change it if you don't want to, and you clearly don't. It's nothing to do with your husband.

Congratulatons on your wedding. IMHO YADNBU.

I am one of a small number in my circle of friends who completely refused to even countenance it. A number of people, the young rather than the old which surprised me, took issue with it but it's not their life and if they are happy to accede to what I consider to be erasure of a person then that's a matter for them. I am a Lucy Stoner to the last! (even share her birthday )

My "married" name does not exist in any form in my life and any mail addressed in that name goes in the pile including "to the Occupier", the endless communications from Virgin broadband and pizza menus. Patriarchal bollocks in my view. Only had a small issue with it on travelling together with DS but I am scarier than most border control staff so they let it go. I was "told" by my bank to change my name to make matters "easier" so I changed bank.

I didnt "discuss" it with OH either - it just wasn't going to be happening and that was that. Do not do anything that you are not comfortable with and as far as I am concerned it has nothing to do with your husband at all.

Didn't change my name - we discussed it but in a 'I'm not changing my name - how do you feel about that' - 'never expected you to' kind of way.

I'm surprised that women do still change their name - I know lots who haven't.

He's got an ex-wife and kids who all have his surname. We don't have kids though - but I don't think that would have made a difference to whether I changed my name. We'd have discussed the kid's surname.

I was over 40 when I got married - far too late to re-brand.

I'm surprised you haven't discussed it though - don't do it if you aren't sure - you can always do it later.

Yanbu
Changing names is such an an anacronism. I really wish women didn't still feel they had to do it, or worse, want to do it.
If I were you, since you said you would double barrel and mostly since your DS has double barreled, I might consider changing it formally to the double barreled but still using yours in practice.
Hell, no I wouldn't. If I were you I wouldn't change it in any form, but I guess that's a kind of compromise.

Thanks everyone.

I think I just felt as though it was assumed by everybody that I would be taking his name, a massive chunk of the cards we received were addressed to Mr and Mrs [DH's name]. Which made me a little mad that people have just assumed. Even my Mum who knew that knew that I was only considering the double barrelled name phoned me the morning after the wedding and said "good morning mrs [dh's name].

I don't even feel that strongly about my own name, I'm not particularly proud of my father's side of the family, I don't like most of them. But I don't want a double barrelled name and I don't want to take the name of a family that I don't like very much.
All our family stayed together in a cottage last week and even my mum came to the conclusion that my DH has done really well to turn out as well as he has because he parents are lazy and rude.

Maybe we should just pick a new name for our family? Just a random name that has no meaning to any of us? Because we are our own family unit.

YANBU at all. It's entirely up to you what you do with your name. I didn't change my name, I didn't see any reason to. DH didn't change his name either

I don't agree with all the people saying "you should have raised this before". It's not like you told him you would change and are now changing your mind. If your DH assumed wrongly, and is now surprised, then that's his fault for not having raised it with you.

I changed my passport because it was running out anyway, but we were TTC at the time and wanted to have the same name as any children - less hassle if I was going away with them on my own and so on. I was quite happy for children to take his name DD and DS both have my name as one of their middle names. I did consider double-barrelling, but DH didn't want to change his, so I'd still have had a different surname so not much point! It would have been a total PITA to have to spell it out every time too. Also if we had some horrible accident when overseas, having the same name was a v easy way of proving I'm his next of kin and vice versa.

I'm aware it's all a bit hypocritical keeping my name for some things and not others... Being 'Mrs' bothers me more than the change of name upon marriage. Women are defined by their marital status but men aren't...

YANBU. Totally up to you.
I am also like beccajoh and Poledra. I kept my own name professionally and only started using my married name for family stuff when I needed to renew my passport after we had children. Passport and joint bank account are the only documents in my married name, drivers licence, other bank stuff, professional certificates are all in my own name still. It doesn't cause any problems at all, although DH's family always write Christmas/ birthday cheques to me in married name which irritates slightly. They are generally lovely though and I wouldn't want to upset them by making an issue of it.

I don't think it will cause any significant issues if you keep your name, your DH keeps his and your children keep theirs. There is still the family connection with your name in both children and your husbands as part of the double barrelled name in your second child. You can always adapt and change to double barrel yourself later if you feel the need, but if not sure don't change it now, just see how it goes.

Poledra I didn't realise I could have both names on passport, I will do that when next up for renewal. Thanks for the info.

YANBU. Why on earth would you or should you change your name to your husbands? Sod tradition, it feels so wrong to me that women still do this without question