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 think getting hung up about taking another surname is a bit arbitrary in most cases. There are plenty of traditions we all engage in that have undesirable history but we let it go. Everyone is entitled to their own set of values and to measure their traditions against these and decide what is acceptable. Nobody should be pulling them up as having made a poor choice.

Consuming sugar is a cultural tradition now but it has very bad history. Few of us opt out.

I was very happy to stop having to spell my surname every. Single. Time.

I didn’t change my name and never wanted to either. I also didn’t have a great relationship with my father but I still liked my name because it’s unique. My husband didn’t care and in some ways, I don’t think he wanted me to change it. He references my surname name a lot as a term of endearment.

The only people who seem to have an issue with it are my SILs who keep addressing things to me with my husband’s name. I can’t tell if they’re doing it to be jokey and as a form of welcoming to the family, which I could definitely see them doing. Or, if they’re doing it to be passive aggressive. The latter would be odd because one SIL changed her name back to their family name after divorcing and the other never took her husband’s name when she got married three years ago. They’re both in their 50s and both been married twice. So they both have their original family surname. That’s why I think they’re likely to be doing it all as a kindhearted joke for me. Nonetheless, it just happened again and my husband said he’s going to speak to them about it to force the issue.

Another reason I didn’t change my name: there’s no way in fuck I’m going to do all that life admin work required to change passports, IDs, bank accounts, bills, etc. I’m barely keeping up with life admin as it is. There’s no way I’m going to masochistically add more to the huge pile. Fuck that noise.

@Iggi999

I didn't change and I'm amazed OP that you get a hard time from anyone about it - I never have. One or two relatives seem to ignore it and use Mrs x, but no one ever criticises me for it. If dh had objected I don't think I could have married him.

I'm not amazed at all. And it's often from the strangest places. A few friends who got married around the same time as me - I assume they thought my choice was a judgement on theirs - were the most irritating. My parents took YEARS to get it (weirdly, DH's parents have always been very respectful). I've had random questions at work about it, including from a twatfaced 20-something man who once said, "But you have to take your husband's name." Then there was the woman in the call centre at Barclays who really didn't get it and was insisting she had to change my name on my account.

It's everywhere. If you've never had anyone make it hard for you, you are unusual and lucky.

My surname was really common, almost as common as Smith. DH has a more unusual but easy to spell name and I like that I'm the only person with my name in the world now! I always planned to keep my surname, but we will be giving our children DH's name as there is no one else in the family to pass down their slightly unusual name. If I was my in laws daughter and therefore the only person left to pass down the family name then I would have kept it and named my children after me. If DH had a problem with that then he could squeeze the babies out himself...oh wait.

@Broomfondle. It’s not that it’s a cover up but that it’s simply not credible to state that at a population level, all these women just so happened to independently come to the same conclusion that happily coincides with a sexist convention.

Especially when the main reason stated is something that could apply equally to both sexes (hating their name) but it is incredibly rare to happen to men. Some women may have made that decision themselves with zero societal influence but that can’t account for the massively disproportionate amount of women changing their name rather than men.

holy or maybe they have decided that changing their name is a tradition they want to adopt but are, either consciously or unconsciously, aware that they're 'meant' to want to do something different and need a justification to avoid being jumped on by other women.

I was forty years old when we finally married, so fairly well established with my maiden name. My preference would have been to share a family name: my idea was that I would add his family name onto the end of my name, if he took my family name as a middle name.

Sadly, his first name made that an unfortunate combination. When I asked him what he thought we should do he blurted out that I should change and he should not.

Not the ways it's going to be in this marriage, buster. We each kept our own names.

Only my mother ever commented, mostly because he wasn't sure it was possible or legal or me to not change. I didn't bother even trying to explain. Hers were the only letters that ever arrived addressed to
Mrs His.Initials His.Family.Name

1. not close to my paternal line / wasn’t attached to my maiden name
2. I didn’t like not having the same surname as my mum growing up (she gave me my dads) so I wanted my future children to share my surname
3. I got married young and had no (real) professional experience in my maiden name.
4. My husband’s surname was actually ‘made up’ only a couple of generations ago (and was a male changing his surname to his mother’s maiden name) so it didn’t feel like I was taking the name of a long male line, I was just sharing my husbands name.
5. it’s easy to say and spell.

All that being said, I see it as just as much my name now as my husbands and I wouldn’t change it upon divorce or remarriage.

Coming from another country and culture (but I have been living in England half my life) changing your surname when you get married still puzzles me.
It's clearly a cultural thing and it surprises me how much people care about it. I personally wouldn't as my surname is part of who I am, I can't see why I should change it. Certainly I'd struggle with the idea I 'have to' take my husband's surname, like he owns me after we marry? My identity is linked to my name, it's who I am. I'd hate hate hate to have to give it up as if I would no longer be a member of my original family. But I am and will always be.

I come from a super sexist European country, where the role of the woman is still no where near the UK standards. Sexism is the norm, many women don't work, there is no support network for childcare other than GPs, lots of judgement on women who work or the type of work they should do and so on.
However, women don't change their surname when they get married. And the family doesn't fall apart because of that. It's just the way it's always been and no one thinks twice about it. Men or ILs don't complain, there is no confusion at school about children's surnames not matching the mothers or on documents. It's totally normal to have all the names and surnames of the family members on doorbells and mailboxes etc.

So, is it really a problem or is it a culturally constructed non issue?

Because he's my husband!
Why do people hate tradition nowadays?? 😢

Quite simply I liked his surname better than mine and my maiden name wasn't anything particularly special (as in reasonably common) so I didn't feel overly attached to it.

DH was fine whatever I decided to do.

I don't regret it and I like the fact as a family we all share the same surname.

I probably would have felt differently if he had a surname I hadn't liked.

Amongst our friends and families it is just the “normal” thing to do. I got married in the early 90s and I always assumed I would become Mrs OurSurname. No one queried this. No one asked how I wanted to be known. I just became Mrs OurSurname and I was and am 100% happy with it. All of our friends did the same thing, apart from the same sex ones who double barrelled. I’ve been Mrs OurName longer than I was anything else!

Even my DDs friend who married earlier this year has chosen to to be Mrs HusbandsSurname. I can only think of one person off the top of my head who is Mrs HerSurname and that is a work colleague with an old, unusual, regional name who married a Mr Smith (literally).

I changed mine because I didn't really like my surname. Plus I just happened to be starting a new job after our wedding and so changed it straight away on all of my paperwork - otherwise I imagine I'd still have bits to do 12 years later!

If I'd had a surname that I loved, I expect we'd have hyphenated or discussed other options.

I must admit, I do like that we all have the same surname - feels more united as a family somehow. That said, I don't know any different - maybe I'd feel the same way with a different surname.

It is odd how often independent female choices give the patriarchy what it wants isn't it?

Because I hated my own surname .. think of something that makes people laugh.. like ' Mrs Sluttyarse' so jumped at the opportunity even though my first husband didn't come from a tradition where changing it was the norm. And kept it when I divorced. Then when I remarried it would have been a bit weird to have ex husband's name whilst married to new DH.. ultimately it was always my choice . Which I am happy with.

My poor brothers have never escaped it as haven't married but one is marrying next year and taking his wife's name...

I changed mine to husband's name and now wonder why I did it so willingly! And I got married less than 10 years ago so it's not as though it was when it was typically just "the done thing"

I do like the fact that my husband, children and I all have the same surname but now sometimes question why it has to be his 😂

I think partly I feel this way because I prefer my maiden name. My new surname is hard to pronounce/spell/doesn't look like how you say it whatsoever/is very long and takes ages to spell out on the phone. If it was something beautiful perhaps I wouldn't be as bothered!

Husband and I changed our names to add my old surname as an extra name for all of us and I changed to his name because mine was too long to spell on the phone.

I changed my name because I wanted to. DH wouldn’t have cared if I had chosen not to but I wanted the same name as my dc too and would have felt odd me being the only one with a different name.

I have no relationship with my father, so didn't really want to be attached to his name any more.

DH and I did consider making our own surname, but we were worried it would seem a bit twatty.

@dannydyerismydad

I have no relationship with my father, so didn't really want to be attached to his name any more.

DH and I did consider making our own surname, but we were worried it would seem a bit twatty.

I know a few couples who did this. If this thread proves anything, it's that you'll get disapproval from somewhere whatever you do, so you might as well do what makes you happy.

So, is it really a problem or is it a culturally constructed non issue?

The latter. And just as soon as some posters here had finished nodding in agreement about women not changing their name they would move on to the inference in your post that children get the father's name. And off we would go again.

I know lo as ds of men who changed their names!! I changed mine just because me marriage means you become a family so it made sense to me that we'd both have the same name and his name would have sounded bad with mine and the double barrelled name would have been extremely long!!

I changed because it makes sense for us all to have one 'family' name and I wasn't keen on my 'maiden' surname, it was shared with an American serial killer which obviously isn't great connotations and it didn't go well with my first name, liked DHs surname so made sense to go with traditional for those reasons.

I do wish I liked my maiden name better though so I could have seriously considered keeping it, feel like I've accidentally given in to the patriarchy 😁 But my maiden surname is in turn my father's surname so not much better from that angle. Would LOVE to have taken on my mother's maiden surname, her mum was a single mum so it technically hadn't been 'owned' by the man of the house for a couple of generations and was a beautiful surname but foreign origin so would be spelling it out to people forever.

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

Well, I didn't marry my FIL, I married my husband by choice and took his name by choice, as opposed to having my father's a surname imposed on me when I was born but regardless, my FIL is great so am happy to have his surname.