Mrs Husband's Name

[BloodyDisgrace]

I have a question for married women who didn't change their name.

Is your husband's family aware of it? Suppose, you're called Sarah White, and you married Peter Jones. Do they address you on correspondence correctly, or as "Mrs Peter Jones"? If the latter - does it annoy you? Have you said anything about it?

When it happened to me, I was actually quite annoyed and upset. I thought "It's 2018, ffs. Have they never heard of feminism? Or women not changing names on marriage? What's wrong with just putting "Sarah and Peter" on the card, rather than old-fashioned Mr&Mrs etc?

It turned out no one wanted to slight me, they just "didn't think". I'm kinda ok with it now, they all are after all very good people. Would you personally go as far as add a note to the back of any card (during festive season when people exchange cards I mean, and you expect some from them) saying "Please kindly note Sarah's name is Sarah White, not Mrs Peter Jones"?

There are some people who, for whatever reason, genuinely can't get their head around it. I suspect there are rather more who could but won't.

When we got married DH's (horrible anyway) aunt sent a card saying "One Jones less, one Smith more, now let's hope for Smiths galore"

Ahahaha that is appalling.

Hilda

We put a note at the bottom of the information sheet we sent out with our wedding invitations (info on location of venue, etc) saying that neither bride nor groom would be name-changing after the ceremony.

People could get their heads around it easily enough if they wished. But instead they would rather point-make.

My sister in law won’t change her name it’s caused. Of end of issues and people still put to Mr and Mrs smith so all she’s done is fuck off Bil and have a different name to her children

I kept my own surname and everyone knew. I'm second generation keeping my own name, my mum did the same and it never ever even crossed my mind to take my husband's surname.

Anyway, cards etc from my MIL were addressed as Mr and Mrs DH firstname DH surname. I found that seriously horrible, even worse than Mr and Mrs DH surname. That's a mistake people might make, but to have "lost" my firstname too really really pissed me off .

My husband had a word with my MIL (think he ended up having to do this a few times actually...) and now we get stuff correctly addressed with our actual titles and surnames, Dr my surname and Dr DH surname.

I get that people might think I'm odd for having taken it seriously, but honestly, it seemed so disrespectful.

People who know us less well sometimes make mistakes, annoys me, but it's fair enough that they have to do a best guess, so not so bothered with them... My MIL just really bloody got to me lol!

[i]"My sister in law won’t change her name it’s caused. Of end of issues and people still put to Mr and Mrs smith so all she’s done is fuck off Bil and have a different name to her children"[/i]

It kind of sounds like you're suggesting that she is unreasonable for making a choice regarding her own name that other people choose not to respect. Rather than the other people being unreasonable for not respecting her decision regarding her name.

Have I got that right?

My partner is not British and it is far more usual for women to retain their name in his country so his family are fine with it. Here very few people can spell or pronounce his surname correctly, for day to day stuff e.g. Booking a restaurant table he often uses my surname as it's easier.

Our children have my surname for reasons above and because my eldest two have my name so all four have the same name which we felt was important.

Ex PIL and family refused to acknowledge that I and DTs didn't use ExHs name and would send occasional cheques using the incorrect name, meaning we had to return them to reissue in the correct name or not cash them. Still I've not heard from him or his family for nearly 12 years so it wasn't an issue for long.

@snowbrigade - we resolved it in the similar way.

Another thought and I'll stop snot-bubbling. I don't get it that, supposedly, "older generations are used to traditional address" bla blah. Older generations are cutting themselves some slack here. For they have figured out how to use smartphones, so it's not as if the are decrepit of brain. From which follows that they must be aware of what happened with women in the last 60 years, and one of these things is that women have their own names, not those of their husbands.

What's polite is to use the correct name, not to assume what it might be. And if you corrected someone and they ignored you, that's some disrespect. Just think what a man do if called John Smith when he's a John Williams. He'd say "It's not my name". And every fucker takes notice, so why should we be different?

I have double-barrelled my name. Our children, who were born before we got married, have a double-barrelled surname too. Yes, my husband's family know and I really don't think they care one bit. They've never mentioned anything anyway. They don't write to me because they don't really do cards anyway and anything else is directed towards my husband, their son. That's fine with me. I thought it was normal.

I didn't change my name. We even went as far as putting a small note on the wedding information saying that neither of us would be changing our names.

But I still (after years) get post addressed to Mrs F Husbandsname. It really annoys me. It's either a deliberate sleight, or laziness. Either way it is unacceptable to address anyone by anything other than their chosen name. (However, I excuse people who didn't come to the wedding and might not necessarily know until I tell them). My 95 year old mother can get it right, but my BILs in their 50's can't, so it is definitely not an age thing.