To ask why you changed your name if you are married?

[Danni290]

This isn't to knock anyone that has made this decision - I truly believe each to their own.

I haven't changed my name and get a hard time particularly from men about it.

I totally understand why the family should have the same name - that makes total sense to me.

But what I don't get is why in 2020 this is purely dictated by gender? And why so many women go along with it without question?

Just wanted your reasons, AIBU to think it's a really archaic way of doing things?!

Why can't we choose the surname depending on whose we like the most, like we do with first names?

I prefer my married surname and neither of my parents have my maiden name anymore. Seemed pointless to hang on to it in principle.
Had I liked my maiden name more or been published etc I'd have kept it.

Nobody is forcing anyone to change their name.

If you want to change it, fine - you should be able to without other women looking down in your supposed ignorance of how historic inequality has led to the current set of norms.

Equally if you want to keep your own name then do so - but accept that, whether you like it or not, this goes against the current societal norm so people will call you Mrs DH if they don't know different, and it's unreasonable to give them a hard time - even on MN - for doing so.

I changed mine because I much prefer DH's surname. I wouldn't have done so if I hadn't liked his name. My surname was okay but one of those names that you get teased for at school.

I wanted my lovely DHs surname, rather than my maiden name which is obviously my dad's surname. Since my maiden surname is a) very ugly and b) he wasn't a great dad, I wanted my husband's surname which is much nicer.

OP, how is keeping your maiden (father's) surname better than taking the surname of the person you choose to marry? You can't choose who your father is.

@Parker231 because he's proud of his name and it's history whereas mine was chosen by a great grandfather as a means of going AWOL from active service and I never particularly liked what it rhymed with at school!

www.scottishweddingdirectory.co.uk/plan-your-wedding/legal-stuff/change-married-name-scotland/

With same-sex couples, another issue can arise: what if you have the same first name? When I helped Stuart marry Stuart last year, they came up with a clever idea. They each hyphenated with their old surname first, so Stuart Rennie-Cameron and Stuart Cameron-Rennie can be told apart!

"I wanted my lovely DHs surname, rather than my maiden name which is obviously my dad's surname."

Why is it DH's surname and not "obviously" FIL's surname?

I find it interesting how many people say they "freely chose" one option or the other. Everything we do is influenced by society, there's no free choice about it. Whether we like or don't like our surnames is socially conditioned - there's nothing objectively better about one or another. Wanting to have the same name as our family members is all down to tradition - in some cultures surnames don't even exist. I'm not judging anyone for their decision but it's not true that those decisions are made in a vacuum.

@LouisBalfour

All this “I hated my maiden name” bullshit...

I genuinely hated my maiden name and was delighted to be shot of it. Plus, as I said upthread, I got married in the 90s and it was completely the norm to take your husband’s name. I have a box full of our wedding cards and 90% of the envelopes are addressed to Mr and Mrs....Nobody actually asked our plans for a surname - it was just the expectation.

Plus, I was, and am very happy to be a Mrs, terrible feminist that I am 😂

LOL! I know! Seems we haven't the right to our own thoughts any more and will NOT be believed whatever WE think about our OWN names 😂

Anyway seems that since marriage I've been living under an assumed name all these years because I certainly haven't legally changed my name.

www.scottishweddingdirectory.co.uk/plan-your-wedding/legal-stuff/change-married-name-scotland/

When you change your name in marriage, you’re not actually changing your name “ legally, you’ll be living under an assumed name. If you want to legally change your married name, contact the National Records of Scotland, pay £40, and your birth certificate will change too

I definitely don't want to be called Ms and get quite annoyed when I am. I see nothing wrong in being a Mrs.

I don't agree that women changing their name will die out. Just about all the young women I know who have got married in the last 10 years have changed their surname to their husband's. They also all call themselves Mrs

You say women do it out of tradition and don’t need to because things are different now but they’re clearly not different as the majority of people still follow that tradition

I changed my name when I got married 15 years ago didn’t occur to me not to wouldn’t have occurred to me not to now I just don’t see it as being a massive issue.

My cousin and his wife created a blended surname from their surnames when they got married That seems to be a “thing” these days is that better? More respectful of each parties lineages? Or just try hard?

Each to their own

I’ve never had my dad’s name, and my mother never had hers either, nor did her mother - my grandma simply changed her last name to something she liked and passed herself off as a widow when she was a single parent pre WWII.

But anyway, people who did change their names to match their partner’s - how would you feel about your children doing the same? I think I would really struggle to support their choice (my children are all grown women now) but hopefully it will never happen!

Long thread with lots of interesting responses. In response to OP, I'm one of the ones who didn’t relinquish my family name on marriage. I’ve never been seriously questioned as to my reasons, but have experienced pushback from those who seem to believe women should toe the patriarchal line and if we refuse should be put back in our boxes tout suite. You’ve experienced this from men; IME, it’s been women. My MiL still persists in addressing me as Mrs Hisname. I’m sure this can’t be that unusual: the greater majority of women in my profession don’t change their names on marriage (I sense this is part of MiL’s problem).

Picking up a few points from various random posts (not made by the same PP):

I didn’t change my name on marriage... People find it strange that I didn’t and comment on it. That in itself annoys the heck out of me because nobody would even think to comment if I DID change my name.

Agreed. Nor would they comment if a man didn’t change his.

‘It’s just a name’.

A family name. This links a person to their own personal family history, for better or worse. I don’t want to relinquish that and take on another link to a family history which isn't mine. As for the antediluvian term ‘maiden’ name, there are obvious reasons why that’s plain repulsive.

Because I love my husband.

I love mine. I’m a devoted partner of some 2 decades’ standing, I’ve committed to him for life, I take that commitment seriously, and I have no wish to hide the fact that I’m married. I wear my wedding ring with pride. I’ve also happened to take the freedom of retaining my own family name. It doesn’t make me any less married.

Children do get judged at school with a different surname to the mother/father.

Do they?

abusive fathers, sadly a number of mentions

So was mine. Nonetheless, our family name is my family name and has been from birth, just as much as it’s my father’s and brother’s. It’s who I am, part of the experiences that formed me and I’ll no more erase it than I can erase the past. Hopefully I can bring something more positive to it as my mother did (and I also want to retain that family link with her. It was her name too).

I'm not conscious of ever having gone through these reasoning processes when we married. Changing names isn’t a legal requirement and nor is it the default option. Your name remains legally your name unless you actively change it, and it never seriously occurred to me to do this.

I just don’t see it as being a massive issue

If no one got divorced I think I'd maybe agree with you. But it seems a bit unfair to me that when a couple divorces the man just carries on with his name and the woman is left with a quandary about whether to change her name back or be stuck with the surname of someone they (potentially) hate. Then if they get remarried they potentially have the same drama all over again. Given the number of marriages that end up in divorce this seems like a bit of an issue to me.

Is it only a UK/US thing, or do any other cultures go in for this? The more you think about it the weirder it gets!

@slipperyeel

Astounding how many posters on here hated their original names, cannot imagine what all these awful last names can have been.

Yep. But they never changed it by deed pool until they got married but guys almost never feel the need to change their awful surnames. It’s staggering the amount of women on this thread who genuinely think that they made an independent and considered choice.

Because that's what you did in the 80s.

If I remarried I would keep my name now which is my ex husband's name.

@kangaShade

I just don’t see it as being a massive issue

If no one got divorced I think I'd maybe agree with you. But it seems a bit unfair to me that when a couple divorces the man just carries on with his name and the woman is left with a quandary about whether to change her name back or be stuck with the surname of someone they (potentially) hate. Then if they get remarried they potentially have the same drama all over again. Given the number of marriages that end up in divorce this seems like a bit of an issue to me.

Presumably she can just do whatever she wants. We've had a few stories on here about ex husbands who want the ex wife to stop using the married name, but she doesn't want to.

Because I like having the same name as my husband 🤷🏽‍♀️

I haven't officially changed it yet. I probably will at some point so that I have the same surname as the rest of my family. I'm a bit lazy and this isn't a priority for me.

My DH has been very clear that he does not care at all if I take his name and he is happy to change his if I'd prefer that. We looked into both of us changing our surnames but it's a faff, no surname feels right for us, and there's a cost involved.

@AnotherEmma

"I wanted my lovely DHs surname, rather than my maiden name which is obviously my dad's surname."

Why is it DH's surname and not "obviously" FIL's surname?

Absolutely. 100%.

Why do names belong to dads or husbands but not women. It’s a deeply sexist but horribly entrenched view. Traditions which are so embedded that women can spout this nonsense without realising how idiotic it is.

@ifiwasascent

So why didn't your husband change his

It does make me sad when women don’t question it at all before changing. Not sad at the woman but sad at the system that put her in that place. This happened to one of my friends and then she just couldn’t get used to the new name after the change. She’s now back to using her maiden name apart from for legal things.

It also makes me sad when women say they changed “so that they would have the same name as their children”. You do know that you could just give your children your last name?! It doesn’t have to be the father’s (and in my opinion shouldn’t be the father’s of the parents aren’t married, but that’s just my opinion )

DP and I are currently discussing what to do about our names. We both want to keep our own but also want to show that we’re married and a unit so will likely hyphenate the two. If we have children they would have hyphenated names either way, either to share the same name as both parents or to have both my name and their dad’s.

My friends have all been a complete mix in terms of what they’ve done, including creating a new surname, taking one of the DM’s maiden names, hyphenating, choosing just his name or just hers, or both keeping their own.

It’s staggering the amount of women on this thread who genuinely think that they made an independent and considered choice

It's staggering the amount of women on this thread determined to tell other women that their choices weren't independent or considered.

Funny isn't it how it's alright for other women to shame a woman about their own choices but not a man...