To ask: why wouldn’t you take your husband’s surname?

[Josephinaphia]

Not looking for a row here - just genuinely interested in people’s reasoning behind not changing their surname upon marriage.
I am married and although I have a very unique maiden name which I love, I took my husband’s surname when we married. It was strange at first and a little sad, but now it is my name and part of my identity, as my original name was. We have 2 DDs who both have the surname too.
My questions are:
If you kept your name, what were your reasons? (e.g. you’d already made a name for yourself in your profession)
If it is a feminist issue of ‘ownership’ as some people seem to suggest, why is it any better to be ‘owned’ by your dad, to be known by your dad’s surname?
Is it not complicated having a different surname to your children, does it not get annoying when people assume you are Mrs DH’s surname anyway?
Do your children question why you have a different name?
With the whole double-barelling thing, again is this a feminist issue? To both be equal? But then what is the long-term plan? When your DC get married will they add their surname to their spouse’s surname and potentially have a quadruple-barrel name? And what of the generation after that?
I have a really lovely dad who treats my mum incredibly well and my husband is the same to me, so I’ve never really had a complex about men being superior or me being inferior and just never really saw the issue with having a shared marital, family name - but it seems so common now for women to want to keep their maiden name (their dad’s name) in some capacity and I guess I’m just curious as to why. As far as I can see, taking your husband’s name is the sensible way to do it if you’re going to have family. Double-barrelling in particular is surely just causing problems for your children further down the line?

I think a name becomes YOUR name when you deem it to be so.

Not simply because it was the name of the man who happened to father you. And the man before hom and before him and so on.

I kept my name when I married. It’s my name. It’s always been my name 🤷🏻‍♀️ my DD has my name, not double barrelled or anything because it sounded daft, and we’ve never had any problems... apart from my DH’s parents taking offence that DD didn’t get their surname. Didn’t matter that their daughters married and changed their name and had children with different surnames, but for some reason our daughter’s name mattered. Fuck that.

My DH sometimes talks about changing his name to mine, because he’s called that at DDs school, the vet, and various places where I’ve registered first and people make assumptions 😁

I've given both of my children my name, so what do you think about that then?

I suppose you'll say it's not really my name, it's my fathers

Its because glitchstitch, when it comes down to it, that argument inevitably rests on the idea that your husbands name is more his name than your name is yours. Because when one actually understands that men and women don't own their names any more or less than each other, that argument essentially amounts to claiming that it's somehow less patriarchal to take the name of someone else's long dead probably male ancestor. Which is batshit.

Why not ask the men why they don't take their wife's surname? Why is this even a question?

As for people going on about 'it's your Dad's name' etc - yeah, but it's also MY name since I was born. I'm more proud of me than I'll ever be of being someone's wife.

Strange that I never feel the need to ask women why they choose to change their given name for some archaic tradition.

Its because glitchstitch, when it comes down to it, that argument inevitably rests on the idea that your husbands name is more his name than your name is yours.

Yep, spot on.

This whole thing about it being your dad's name is batshit.

It's almost like saying I don't really own my property because it was once a man's in the days when women weren't allowed to own property.

My name is legally my name. There is little I can do about history. But I don't need to change my name just because I got married.

Besides anything else, I am the daughter of my dad, as my brother is son of my dad. This is the same for male and female children, we take on our parents surname, more commonly our fathers.

Only a woman is then expected to change it upon marriage.

Tang - I would day that because your children have your name, they do not have a patriarchal name.
Your name was still received from a man though, so if you had taken your DH’s name, you would have simply been replacing one patriarchal name with another. Yet, in both cases, it would be YOUR name.

Tang, I am not saying your name is not your name. I am saying you can’t deny where it comes from and that that is from a man and that is because of patriarchy.

Otherwise you would have your mums name wouldn’t you? Or another name altogether?

But you are entirely missing the point that only women are expected to change their name on getting married.

Therefore it implies that a woman's name is never really truly her own. It is borrowed.

“Your name was still received from a man though, so if you had taken your DH’s name, you would have simply been replacing one patriarchal name with another”
But one of them is the name that I have made my own over the years. The other is a blank slate.

Your brother does have your father’s name too. This is obvious. He’s just less likely to change it.

^*Tang, I am not saying your name is not your name. I am saying you can’t deny where it comes from and that that is from a man and that is because of patriarchy.

Otherwise you would have your mums name wouldn’t you? Or another name altogether?*^

I suppose that all depends how far you want to go back and what your family history is.

I take no issue in being given the same name as my dad, or my mum if that's what they'd have decided. I'm not sure why I'd want to swap it to my fils just because I'm female and I got married.

If enough women keep their name and give their name to their children, then we won’t have to worry about women getting their name from their dads any more, will we?

No a woman’s name is not “borrowed”. It’s the name she inherits, as does her brother, yet there is no denying that this default inheritance is due to patriarchy.
Exactly the same patriarchy that traditionally results in women taking their husbands’ names.
The only difference is that babies have no choice.

I didn't take DH's name, as my maiden name and first are alliterative and work well together. Also people can spell my boring surname and can't (for some reason, it's obvious to me) spell his much cooler one. The kids have his surname because it's distinctive (my kids are both googlewhacks!)... DH changed his name by deed poll last year after we'd been married for 11 years to put my surname as a middle name and the kids want the same, but we haven't got round to doing it yet.

Didn't want double-barrelled partly as I worked for a very middle-class organisation doing some database stuff involving kids once and so many of them had double surnames I thought it was a bit ridiculous and what would happen when they marry one another!

“Your name was still received from a man though, so if you had taken your DH’s name, you would have simply been replacing one patriarchal name with another”

Not in my case. I picked my own name when I was 18.

Why do our fathers get their own names when we and our brothers dont?

The thing with this argument is that the logical but rather silly conclusion is that literally nobody has their own name unless they are the inventor of it. While most names originated with a male, they certainly didn't all, and not many of us know exactly who the first to use our surnames actually was.

1. I’m from an ethnic minority and wanted to retain my heritage. My husband is white British.
2. I’m a professional and therefore all my achievements, qualifications, publications etc have been in my unmarried name.
3. I wanted to.

Rethymnon - It's you that is not getting it. I didnt have a choice in what name I was given and how it came to be mine because I was a baby at that point. It wasn't in my power to accept or reject the patriarchal tradition. However, at the point I got married it WAS in my power to choose and I chose to reject patriarchal tradition. THAT is what keeping my name means to me - I chose to do something, a very small thing admittedly, towards equality.

I am not voting. I loved my mum and dad (both dead when I got married)

Wanted to keep it for them, but also CBA to change it

Your brother does have your father’s name too. This is obvious. He’s just less likely to change it.

In our case as I have no intentions of ever changing my name, that isn't the case.

Funnily enough my dsis has also kept her name, so in our family we've really messed up the status quo

Nobody is expected to; some women want to.

Because I would have had an alliterative name which would make me sound like an action figure.

He still has the hump 12 years later

I didn't change my name as I already have a surname, I have no need for another. I don't view myself as a feminist, I wasn't trying to make a statement, it just boiled down to his name is his and mine is mine and in my personal opinion there was no need to change it.

I don't view our marriage as less because we have different names, I don't feel less of a family because our children have his surname (we flipped a coin and his name "won" when deciding what surname to give them). I never considered changing my name and he never asked me to.