To be stressing out over my unfortunate post - marriage name??

[Shande80]

DP and I are getting married in May 2016. The combination of my first name and his second name gives the same name as an undesirable soap opera character. I've already had sniggers and jokes and one person (who wasn't aware of my situation) joked "hey wouldn't it be funny if you married someone with the surname *** oh how awful would that be!" .

The was I see it I have three options ...

1. Grin and bear it ... For years ... And years ... And years ...
2. Not change my second name which would be a shame as I'd like us to have the same name and this option would not go down well with his family. Plus his ex wife still has his surname which would make it seem even worse that I didn't iykwim??
3. Change my first name. I've always hated the fucker anyway but I can imagine it being a right faff on trying to get everyone on board.

It's stressing me out and I don't even watch the bloody program.

I've had absolutely zero conversations with extended family about not changing my name. We told parents on both sides, other than that I've never mentioned it. So I get some cards in the wrong name at Christmas, not a big inconvenience. Really people aren't that interested, and mostly they are addressing you as "Brandy" not "Ms Snapper" so it doesn't keep coming up.

It's fucking tragic that a woman keeping her name is considered to be so high stress and difficult.

You don't know me. You don't know how conservative or otherwise I am based on one account of one action. One action does not make a person. Especially one action quite a number of years ago. Nor do I agree that being lazy makes me conservative.

But I've had enough tbh. I'm going to bow out now.

Whether or not you are normally conservative the action of changing your name to your husbands because it was more socially acceptable was conservative. It's not "lazy" to change your name as changing it involves more effort than keeping it.

Oh FFS. Stop twisting my words. I didn't say not changing wasn't the easiest. I didn't say keeping your name was high stress.

My very first post was to the OP to keep her name unless she particularly wanted to share one with her husband.

What I have been responding to is the assertion that you have to be stupid, conservative or insecure to change your name to that of your husband. My point has simply been that there are valid, but possibly slightly lazy, reasons to do that. And that one lazy choice is not the same as conservative, stupid or insecure. That's all.

I was going to go with Cilla Battersby! Tracy Barlow's not as bad I don't think! Wendy House is terrible, one of the acting Fox family is called Freddie, poor bloke.

Changing your name is not the lazy choice though PenguinsandtheTantrumofDoom Keeping your name involves less effort.

Not changing mine certainly suited my lazy tendencies, it was bad enough changing address on everything when we moved.

"Changing your name is not the lazy choice though PenguinsandtheTantrumofDoom Keeping your name involves less effort."

Have you read my posts? I didn't say keeping your name was more effort. Anywhere. In fact, in my last post I confirmed that I wasn't saying that.

I said that there were perfectly legitimate reasons why you might want your whole family to have the same name. And that, if you felt like that, the woman changing her name to match the man's after marriage is the lazy way of achieving that.

Changing your name to your husbands is not even the most lazy way of all having the same name in your family. It would have been less effort for you if your husband changed his name to yours.

I think all newly married couples should be forced to choose an entirely new name on marriage. Blindfolded and chucking darts at names on a dartboard to make the choice. No vetoes.

Oo, or that word association thing. Start off with a word chosen randomly from the dictionary and whatever the fifth associated word is that's your new married name.

It's the future, I'm telling you.

I took my XDW's name a couple of weeks after getting married. It was slightly more effort than a woman taking her husband's, since I needed to do a deed poll rather than just show people the marriage certificate. There were one or two raised eyebrows, and my dad was a bit pissed off about it, but the "social cost" was really very small.

DH had a funny surname and we both decided on marrying to go double-barrelled - whilst being rather proud of his unusual name, he actually thinks our combined name sounds better! We did it by statutory declaration in 1988.

DS (25) has the same double-barrelled name, but would actually prefer using my maiden name, and indeed does for email, Facebook etc.

Years later though I still end up having to spell the name out (as my original surname is rather long) and on one memorable occasion when ordering some wallpaper in a John Lewis store the poor assistant seemed to be struggling over my name which was confirmed when my parcel was delivered, addressed to 'Mrs hyphen' - yes, she actually thought hyphen was part of my name, lol!

After 26 years of marriage some of DH's family still insist on addressing cards to him using his former name.......which really pees us both off!

My maiden name is a village in Lancashire and nobody could spell it. Except when I was in Germany when people seemed to have no problem with it at all.

Anyway, by a twist of fate both my much older half sister and I married men with the same surname and she said that the new 4 letter surname was incredibly easy to spell and she was so happy with it. By another twist of fate the area I live in is also my surname. And people STILL can't spell it! They like to make it 5 letters. I don't know why my sister's experience has been so different to mine!

Anyway, to go back to the OP, if you are concerned about the surname, keep your own. You could both double-barrel it, a friend of mine from uni recently got married and both she and her husband now use a double-barrel of both their surnames.

You know what, I'm going to plant the idea in DS' head that he might change his name some day on marriage. Not that he should or that it's the best thing or any of those, but just put that possibility in there that he might. I honestly think that's the biggest barrier to men: that they've never considered it before and it's a bit of a jolt and a weird thing to suddenly think about, as well as going against all tradition and being seen as some kind of statement (incidentally, the exact reason I kept my father's name after divorce despite somewhat wanting my mother's.) If it's normal from being a child then it will only be the tradition and statement thing to contend with rather than the "What, you want me to change my name?!"

Good idea Bertie.

Wendy (OK. On what planet did I type something that made Endymion seem the word I was looking for?) House is hilarious! I've only just met someone called House - weird name in itself I find.

Just to say OP that my MIL uses her middle name. Changing tradition is all very well, but it will make genealogy more difficult. Although family breakdown has probably caused a lot of problems already.

Use your middle name if you hate your first name- it's not stopped Alexander Johnson getting on it life, for example.

I don't like my first name but no way would I use my middle name!

It's not my name!