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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

correct names and MILs

108 replies

lucyellensmum · 29/03/2007 15:30

I get very very angry btw when mother in law sends cards to dd with her dads surname, not married see. I woudlnt mind if she was doing it by mistake but is making a point - my point being if he wants his dd to have his name then he should bloody well marry her mother! So there's a can of worms, i should point out that my MIL is lovely though and i love her but you know how it is with us mums and our MIL, just let anyone q our parenting, go on just you try it! Oh god, do i go on too much. But what do you all think, should a child bear its fathers name, and where did that come from. I have a child from a previous relationship though and wanted both children to have same surname, have been with DP for 15 years and no intention on getting married - grrr.

OP posts:

idlemum · 30/03/2007 09:12

ProfYaffle - I do that too - I love to hear them get all confused and if they don't start to finish the call I say something like ''you are obviously a sexist cold-caller - goodbye'' !

marylou23 · 30/03/2007 12:38

My DH regularly gets called 'Mr My surname' when we stay in hotels as I tend to book (and kept my own name). He just shrugs and accepts it...
He was actually keen for me to keep my own name - he said it was who I was, who he fell in love with. Very sweet. Although since getting pregnant I've partly changed my name (on NHS records) because I think baby will have DH's name (not from any patriachal reason, but more for praticality. You couldn't put our names together, they're too long, and if we're going to 'pick a side', I'm happy to go with his). So for school, hospital, etc I'll be 'Mrs DH's name' and the rest of hte time I'm Ms My name.
Am I rambling now? I do apologise...

Elasticwoman · 30/03/2007 21:29

Lucyellensmum, why didn't you insist upon marriage before having a baby, if you are keen to be married? You have lost rather an important bargaining chip. 1950s cliches spring to mind re buying v borrowing books from libraries.

thelady · 31/03/2007 12:02

Hmm. Well, I'm Dr myname, and it's taken nearly 10 years for my SIL to stop writing cheques to me as Mrs hisname.

My parents are the worst though! The only time I get really grumpy is if I'm addressed as Mrs Hisfirstname Hislastname - makes me feel totally invisible. Mrs Hislastname is just family being old-fashioned, though it's been the tradition in Scotland forever for women to stay with the name they were born to.

ginnedupmummy · 31/03/2007 12:15

Message withdrawn

mytwopenceworth · 31/03/2007 12:25

i couldn't wait to ditch my surname. i love being Mrs XXX!

mytwopenceworth · 31/03/2007 12:26

erm , that's 'XXX' in place of surname, obviously. I'm not Mrs XXX porn queen.

BellaBear · 31/03/2007 12:39

I didn't change my name when I married as everything I've ever done I did with my name - I like having it on my exam certificates! When we have kids they can have his name, it is nicer than mine, he cares more about it and if we double-barreled it with make a rude word!

And surprisingly, the only post we have had addressed to Mr & Mrs Hisfirstname his last name has been from one of my friends, very odd.

ScottishMummy · 31/03/2007 14:33

thelady- hi i am scottish lived there til relatively recently and not aware of any tradition of scottish ladies keeping their surname upon marriage. i grew up in Lanarkshire so maybe its not reached there yet

i did keep my surname and baby is diuble barreled - Scottish family both sides were aghast their eyebrows have not returned to original position since, and bit humphhy about double barreled baby initially addressing mail to baby DAdSurname til we complained

idlemum · 31/03/2007 14:50

Further to my previous post I am now hopping mad at the continued ignorance of my in-laws as to dd's name. She has just received an invite in post from her cousin (written by DP's SIL) with DP's surname only. My DD's surname is my surname followed by DP's surname and is not double-barrelled. Everyone knows this but his side of family continually get it wrong and send stuff to us as Mr&Mrs his surname when we are not married!!

Original poster

lucyellensmum · 31/03/2007 15:02

Elasticwoman FYO the baby wasnt planned, so of course had i known i was going to be barefoot and pregnant i would have insisted on a wedding. Its not really that important to me, as it isnt that bigger deal to DP that dd has his surname, on account of the fact that he is a great dad and does all the things great dads do so doesnt need to rubber stamp this with his name. Clearly had i realised i was in the 1950's (sorry, im a bit dumb you will have to explain the cliche) then i wouldnt have been living in sin in the first place. Anyway, as with thelady, i am also Dr Mysurname, and having worked my behind off to get that on my c-card im not about to give it up now am i. And another thing (jeremy clarkson said that and i think hes cool - which clearly means im not!) i already have a 16yo DD from a previous relationship so not about to have two children with different names, everyone is entitled to name their children how they chose and other people, ie: inlaws need to recognise this. Of course were we still in the 1950's i doubt that i would have been released from the home for teenage single mothers by now either. excuse the rant im pre-menstural, have a good day

OP posts:

potoroo · 31/03/2007 15:07

I actually know of someone who announced on his wedding day that he would be taking his wife's surname - because she was the last in the family to have that name.

A complete palaver to get his name changed though

Original poster

lucyellensmum · 31/03/2007 17:01

bump - any more thoughts?

OP posts:

wheresthehamster · 31/03/2007 17:40

Dp and I had been together for 10 years before we had children but even so I felt that when they started school people might think that the children weren't his if they didn't have his name.

Also my name is my exh's name so I don't think I considered it for long anyway.

How old is your dd? You could tell your MIL that it is confusing for your dd and could she stop it?

mm22bys · 31/03/2007 17:47

DH's aunt has a son, but she divorced his father and is remarried. She is currently going by her maiden name. So in a family of three, there are three different surnames!

Before DH and I got married, he told me that if I asked him he would take my name.

I did ask him one Feb 29. Did he keep his end of the bargain? Of course not!

I think if you and DP agree that the child should not have his surname, then everybody else should respect that....

Lact8 · 31/03/2007 17:57

I think she is being unreasonable. She should use the name you have chosen.

All of my children have different combinations of surnames.

DS1 has XP-mine

DS2 has DP's

DD has mine-DP's

We were planning on getting married after DS was born so we just gave him DP's. Then we had surprise of DD and wedding plans went out the window.

When we went to register her I told DP in the office that she would be having my surname as well, bit of an impluse decision but he didn't mind. Due to circumstances during pregnancy I very much felt she was my baby so it just happened that way.

thelady · 31/03/2007 22:26

ScottishMummy - I'm not sure where the tradition is strongest, but the minister who married us spent a lot of time in the Highlands and said that there if you were born Jeannie McLeod you'd die Jeannie McLeod no matter who you married!

In the Borders a woman seems to take her husband's name at marriage, but is rarely known as that - she'll be her Dad's daughter forever....

Elasticwoman · 31/03/2007 23:07

lucyellensmum - sorry but I inferred from your first post, "grrr" I think you said, that you would prefer to be married. The cliche I had in mind was "why buy a book if you can go to the library?". In other words, why give your partner, well, partnership, without his having to make a public commitment to you, unless (like many women) you don't want that public commitment with all its legal implications?

But at least you have held out about dd having your surname, which is quite right in the circs. All you can do about mil is keep correcting her. Be patient with the old dear, she's probably having a senior moment when she writes the cheque wrongly.
At least that's the attitude you can take when you gently mention it.

RosaLuxembourg · 01/04/2007 14:11

I kept my name when I married and then when we had DD1 we decided we would double-barrel our surnames for her.
PILs went ballistic.
Phoned up raging and crying down the phone at DH.
Wrote deeply unpleasant letter threatening everything from cutting us off from family to cutting DH out of will
Wrote to my parents ordering them to intervene with me.
Got his sisters to put pressure on DH 'because you have made Mum cry and what does it matter anyway'. They also told DH that PILs thought it was all my fault and I made him do what I want.
We stuck to our guns and are now a very happy three-surname family. People go on about how it causes problems - we have never encountered any - apart from those other people have made for us.
But because of the way PILs reacted then as well as other problems in DD1's first year, I am polite and distantly friendly to them but have no respect or affection for them whatsover - that's what they destroyed when they chose to react the way they did.

nailpolish · 01/04/2007 14:13

Rosa that is outrageous!

wheresthehamster · 01/04/2007 15:08

And good for you for not caving in to pressure.

Elasticwoman · 01/04/2007 15:09

Good for you not bowing to pressure, Rosa. Of course you did not make MIL cry; how ridiculous! If there is one thing parents have a right to do it is name their own children.

Elasticwoman · 01/04/2007 15:09

Great minds, Wheresthehamster .

meowmix · 01/04/2007 15:16

DH took my name. Partly because I refused to take his (feminist principle and its AWFUL) and partly because he was tired of the jokes. Since then MIL (who no longer has this name as she divorced his dad, reverted to maiden name and then remarried taking new husbands name) has refused to call me by my first name, preferring some strangled variant on it instead. Heavy sigh.

bran · 01/04/2007 15:47

I have an aunt who can't/won't remember that I still use my name and not dh's. The funny thing is that she can't remember dh's surname (it weird and foreign, and she doesn't need to use it very often), so she has in the past introduced me as "This is my niece, bran, I can't remember her married surname", she looks such a fool when I say "it's bransurname, the same as it's always been for the past xx years". Nobody else seems the slightest bit bothered, it never even occured to me to mention it to my parents/PILs before the event.

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