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?

Do they **

“What does a couple do if they both have double barrelled surnames? Do their children have four surnames?”
Yes, that’s exactly what they do. Because thinking up any other solution is completely impossible.

And where does that end?

Pretty sure I gave two solutions @BertrandRussell

And it was a genuine question. There will be families out there where every one of them has a different surname from the others.

Well, my children have a hyphenated name. If they want to have the same name as any future partner they have several choices. 1. Take his or her name 2.Drop my name and add his or hers. 3. Drop their dad’s ditto. 4. The future partner could take their name. 5. They could both drop their names and make up a new one.
That’s 5. Doesn’t seem massively restricting to me.....

I'd rather have my dad's surname than my father in law's surname.

Also it has been my name since birth and I don't want to change it.

If you kept your name, what were your reasons?

I kept my own name to make a feminist statement.

My parents come from a country where it is.not legal take your husband's name. You can't use any other name on official documents than the one on your birth certificate ( unless you change it by the equiv of deed poll)

I therefore did not take it for granted that I would change my name. I have been married twice and kept my name both times. Frankly I am/ was too lazy to.do the paperwork required . Why do more admin than you need to and it struck me as massively unfair that I had to do it but not my husband...

I have dual nationality and having kept my birth name has simplified a lot of stuff for me so I am perfectly happy with it.

Legally it's your first name which is important.

One of my DCs plans to keep her surname on marriage - as I did - but while there's a certain amount of feminism in it, it's also because it's unusual and because her friends call her by it so it's like a first name anyway.

Rethmynon - my surname came from my father. I don’t see this as any more relevant than that the origin of my first name is French...it doesn’t make me French, any more than sharing a surname with my father makes me his property despite the origin of the patriarchal naming practice.

In Spain ( not where I am from) I think children have two surnames,.their mother's and their father's. I think when they marry they keep their name but pass on the father's bit of their name to their children ( still patriarchal but a different system to ours anyway) Somebody will probably correct me on Spain as I may be wrong on the details but the point is, taking your husband's surname is not always done in other countries so it is not so unthinkable to not do it here either.

I double-barrelled because I had a very difficult-to-pronounce foreign name and wanted to be able to use dh's name in situations where my foreignness might be a disadvantage. Dh's name is one of the most common, boring English names- and there are no doubt there are situations where this can be an advantage.

The thought of abandoning my own name altogether never occurred: I was already known professionally under that name and dh's name would definitely not have been an advantage. Nothing to do with my feelings for my dh: I can love him and still want anyone who meets me at a conference to remember that I am the one who wrote the book on X.

If we had stayed in my country, I might have asked dh if he wanted to change to my name, but would not have taken his.

The choice of location was chiefly based on professional considerations for both of us: we have both done better, and done better work, in the UK than we would have been likely to done in my country of origin. .

Dc were given the surname belonging to the country they grew up in, but dd, who is training to be an actress, is going to have to change hers because of Equity rules. Not to mine (she feels the same about that particular name as I do) but to another family name from either dh's or my ancestry.

If we had chosen for dc to be double-barrelled, I suppose they could have done the Spanish thing for any children of theirs and used one name from each side.

@myname The choices where I live are: full double barrelled name of one of the two parents or new double barrelled name with one half of each side. Quadruple barrelling not allowed.

@Rethymnon

It’s only 100% conventional path in the UK though, Rubicon. In many other parts of the world, changing your name wouid be more if a statement of freedom of choice.

But we are in the uk.

There was a time in history when men wore tights and codpieces. That was conventional then. It would still be an unconventional way to dress now.

There are cultures now where women walk around bare breasted. It is normal there. However it would be a strange and unusual thing to do in britain now.

You don't seem to understand the concept of different cultures.

We are discussing women's choices in Britain,in 2019.

*Sorry that you're having a boring holiday.)

We are discussing women's choices in Britain,in 2019

I'm not British or in the UK. Lots of Mumsnetters in both of these categories these days.

Do you think never any point in considering anything outside the confines of your own culture and perceived norms Rubicon? Even within Britain, what one person considers liberating, might be another’s perception of repression.

As for “women’s choices today in 2019” - do you think we’re all like you?

“Do you think never any point in considering anything outside the confines of your own culture and perceived norms“

Well, I certainly do. But not when considering one specific tradition in one particular cultural context. As I suspect you well know.

But Britain has had so many cultural traditions and contexts. As I suspect you well know too.

Yes. And this particular thread is about the one where women for cultural and tradition reasons change their name to their husband’s on marriage. Happy to join you on another thread about any of the others....

I changed my name ( back in the late 70s). His surname was a lot nicer than mine, and I liked the idea of our potential family all having the same name.

My daughter's getting married in a few days. She's changing her name, and I'm a bit sad. Maybe partly because my husband died a few years ago and it somehow links her to him. If my other daughter changes her name too, our name will die with me.
(My late FIL chose his surname, so it doesn't go any further back, and there are no other branches).

And I am giving you some reasons why some women might not see name-changing in marriage through exactly the same lens as you do.

I don’t disagree that name changing is patriarchal. I just don’t think it’s necessarily as simple as some on here seem to think it is..

@Rethymnon Do you think never any point in considering anything outside the confines of your own culture and perceived norms Rubicon? Even within Britain, what one person considers liberating, might be another’s perception of repression.

If you'd read my posts you'd see that I'm not white British myself. However, as @BertrandRussell has been pointing out with an impressive level of patience, this discussion, on this thread, is about the dominant traditions of the UK in 2019.

In the UK, in 2019, the conventional, patriarchal norm is for the woman to change her name to her husband's when she gets married.

That's what the majority of women do.

To go against that norm is to make an active decision, and as is shown on this thread, that may be either due to not seeing why they should change it (which in itself challenges the patriarchal norm) or actively wanting to make a statement against it.

What women do in other cultures is an interesting, SEPARATE discussion - or in your case, a deliberate diversion.

@SenecaFalls the vast majority of the women on this UK-based site are from the UK or Ireland, or currently live here. The vast majority of threads on this site assume that.

And those that aren't are mostly, like you, living in similar places with similar norms and traditions when it comes to changing names. Please don't try to skew or divert the discussion.

As for “women’s choices today in 2019” - do you think we’re all like you?

Why on earth would I think that?

Even if I were some sort of strange newly-hatched alien who had never before encountered anyone who thought differently to me, this thread on its own is clear enough evidence of that.

I am now starting to suspect that you are just being deliberately goady and on a wind-up. No one could miss as many points, move as many goalposts, or create as many straw men as you have without knowing exactly what they are doing.

This has been an OK distraction from the hellish time I'm having at the moment, but I'm getting bored of it now. It's too irritating to debate with someone who's not doing it in good faith at all

I like my birth surname.
It sounds rather grand, actually - its really lovely.

It is an Anglo Norman surname, which I like, because I'm into history.

The vast majority of surnames would not be worth giving up mine for.

Surely the right question is: Why would you take your husband's name? Almost no man, no matter how 'right-on' would even consider taking a woman's name. It would be regarded as degrading. But women have somehow internalised the idea that it's quite normal and reasonable for them to take their husband's?

Surely the right question is: Why would you take your husband's name? Almost no man, no matter how 'right-on' would even consider taking a woman's name. It would be regarded as degrading. But women have somehow internalised the idea that it's quite normal and reasonable for them to take their husband's?

See this is a big problem for me.

Why is it emasculating for a man to do this, but for a woman it's absolutely fine, expected even?