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 went from rare(ish) infamous name that caused me bother, to a relatively common, anonymous name. So it suited me to do so.

I changed mine as it was my dads surname who left when I was a toddler and I never saw him again. It was different to my mums and brothers and sisters so I never liked it. I love my married name and like that all of us have the same name now, I hated having a different name to the rest of my family growing up. It was a shit name anyway.

Because we have a free, easy, totally acceptable way of changing it

Is it really easy though? I want to change my entire name (not by getting married) but the list of people to notify is depressing me (lazy). You still have to tell everyone you’ve decided to call yourself something new?

If people's were as bad as they are making out and the family connections so awful then why don't they change through deed poll. Even if you change your name when married you still have to go through the whole form filling in to change on passport, bank accounts etc - it is a pain.

Their is no expectation for men. I am often quite surprised when quite young people on here are getting married whose parents probably aren't much older than me and they are getting comments etc if it is even suggested that the womans name isn't changed. I find society very old fashioned in many ways, stuck in old traditions which keep women in their place.

Is it really easy though?

I didn't find it difficult, no. I didn't go through a list of people and informed them all, I just informed people/companies as and when I spoke to them. So the next time I had to go into the bank 'oh can I change my name to X please, I've recently got married'. I didn't make a special trip or call to do it. Same with things like utilities, it was only when I came to renew and go on a different plan that I changed it.

My driver's license was the only thing I actually sent off to be changed and it wasn't hard to do.

Because my birth surname sounds a bit like a swear word and I had gone through life either just spelling it out or saying it out loud and having people do a double take. 😂

My husband's name is very plain and easy.

I hadn’t really decided what to do and would have liked more time to make up my mind. My relatives immediately started referring to me by my husbands name e.g. I think I got sent some post.

But I had to make up my mind quickly as I was starting a new job in a new country and they needed to know what name I would use for a visa application and because the employer wanted to set up my email and update structure charts etc.

So I made a hasty decision to change, which for a little while I regretted but now quite happy that we have the same name and I think DH’s name is easier to say.

@Ylfa

Because we have a free, easy, totally acceptable way of changing it

Is it really easy though? I want to change my entire name (not by getting married) but the list of people to notify is depressing me (lazy). You still have to tell everyone you’ve decided to call yourself something new?

Sounds like you want to change your name legally by deed poll? That might be more effort, I don't know. I had to send my marriage certificate off to change my driving licence and passport, and show it to the receptionist at the GP. Everywhere else, literally just told people as I went along. It wasn't particularly arduous.

But more to the point about it being easy, I think, is that barely anyone in real life gives a toss. When a woman marries, there's a strong tradition to change her name but also a vocal and growing movement not to, so in the context, she will be making a choice one way or another. She's kind of automatically at a crossroads, if you will. Men aren't, so it isn't anywhere near as "easy" in that sense. It is much more radical for a man to do it.

So yes, I can easily believe that women, given they will be making more of an active and inevitable choice whatever they do than men will, are likely to take the opportunity if they never liked their maiden name much but do like the husband's. Men who felt the same way wouldn't get as easy a ride, but if they did, and truly nobody thought of it as less manly, I can easily believe they might when automatically faced with a choice about it like all other marrying men.

I get a bit tired of people telling me I couldn't have disliked my maiden name. I disliked it intensely.

A deed poll is free, getting married definitely isn’t!

I don't think it's right but I think women end up doing it because the man just wouldn't consider taking hers due to convention, and she wants them all to have the same.

I want any man I marry to take my name. Bringing that up really separates the men from the boys I can tell you 😂

Also - any children I have will have my surname. No negotiation on that.

I took my husband's name as a middle name in legal documentation only. I had to do it by deed poll because it was convoluted. I never use it, he couldn't have cared less either way, never refers to me as Mrs Hisname.

Everyone knows me as Firstname Maidenname, the middle name was simply so if I needed it, it would be the same as the kid's passports.

I didn't mind which name the kids had as long as legally it was linked to me.

His is significantly easier to spell and quite common, mine always requires spelling and hardly anyone ever gets it right, hence the kids got his. But it's who I am and I could never imagine not being it.

I did it because it signalled a change in my life and status. I wanted to have the same surname as my children and double barrelled wouldn’t have worked as the two names together are too clunky and long.
I don’t think I would have done it now though. It just seemed like the right thing at the time.

DocOfTheBay My previous post was answering a previous question on why some people think surnames make a family unit. Widely, that's their function. I definitely did not say it was 'just a name'. Names are markers of belonging, that has power, but that only means that people are more likely to change the meaning of them and the meaning of the traditions around them than move away from them.

I'm not convinced that women would be more liberated from sex-based oppression if more men took their family names or people just expected to keep their own. There are plenty of groups with the latter, if we look across the dozens of naming systems. I cannot see any evidence to suggest this specifically is an issue, rather than any society uses traditions to represent power. The issue with children's names when the parents have different family names, that I can see, but even then I think there may be a need to go beyond current naming systems if we want a solution that actually has an impact on equality.

Why do so many women dislike their name and change it on marriage but men don’t seem to dislike theirs and make the change?

Maybe fewer men have the horrible relationships with their fathers that many are describing. Maybe fewer men care about that enough to go through the process of their changing their name. Maybe there is still a lot of social stigma around changing one's name outside of this tradition. I hear regularly how people want to change their name but their family would hate them or they would hate to have to explain it to everyone (maybe I've a less nosy social circle as I only explained it once in person, but it's a worry many have). It is a bit of an annoying process, even as someone adamant to do it, I slowly did it as needed over the course of months, kept finding new places, but never had an issue with having multiple names on the go. The only ones who cared were the Home Office, and they only cared that my passport matched their records, they did not care what any other part of the government had me under.

Since we don't have deed poll data in the UK and this is a pretty underresearched area from what I can see, and many people go by multiple names and pseudonyms in different areas of life, it's pretty hard to say with any certainty how many are doing what with the names they were given.

I want any man I marry to take my name. Bringing that up really separates the men from the boys I can tell you.

That's nothing compared to the consternation and confusion caused by giving DS2 my exhusband's name. I managed to piss off or confuse DP, ExH and both sets of in-laws with that one.

Meh, "my" name was my fathers, keeping it versus the taking the one of the man I am choosing to marry hardly screams "fuck the patriarchy" if you ask me.

@NoIDontWatchLoveIsland. That’s a good point. I was given my Dad’s surname but I chose to change it to DH’s...so it was actually MY choice. I much prefer DH’s surname so it’s worked out.

Because my dh booked the honeymoon in his name so I had to change my passport in a hurry! I use my married name on official documents but never in my job/personal stuff.

@Shizzlestix - Because my dh booked the honeymoon in his name so I had to change my passport in a hurry!

And you still married him?

@NoIDontWatchLoveIsland

Meh, "my" name was my fathers, keeping it versus the taking the one of the man I am choosing to marry hardly screams "fuck the patriarchy" if you ask me.

You didn't take his name though by that logic, you took your father in law's name.

I thought long and hard about it, in the end the decision was taken out of my hands (effectively) by a paperwork error at my new, foreign workplace and when I realised I was secretly pleased about it (despite saying ‘how presumptuous in this day and age!’) I knew changing was fine with me. I would have struggled to make an active choice to do it.

I don’t want kids and envy trendy women who keep their surnames BUT my maiden name was a bit harsh / gutteral sounding and despite being a completely commonplace noun I was forever spelling it. Never understood that.

My husbands name is very exotic, scandibsounding, easy to pronounce, rolls of the tongue nicely and surprisingly easy to spell. In short, it was pure vanity for me 😂

That's nothing compared to the consternation and confusion caused by giving DS2 my exhusband's name. I managed to piss off or confuse DP, ExH and both sets of in-laws with that one

Tbf it is pretty crap for your DP to give your child your ex husband's name, assuming it's his child too. I don't think that's quite the same as pointing out a sexist double standard.

I took my husband's name because I wanted to. Simple as that, no major decision behind it.

I wasn't pressured into it

Neither DH or I changed are names when we got married and lucky for DH he had the good sense to understand that it wasn’t automatic that DC’s would have his surname. We double barrelled (two complicated names, non English) DC’s to reflect both our families.