ILs refusing to use my name

[namechangedasouting]

DH and I married 5+ years ago. I kept my name, children are double barrelled. MIL (divorced from FIL but has kept her married name) has always found it personally insulting that I wanted to keep my name. All cards etc. Are addressed to "Mrs DH surname" and for the kids the same. I've really tried to just let it go - she knows these aren't our names so correcting her over and over seems pointless. She's now started "correcting" DH's other family members who send the kids cards addressed correctly. Her latest comment to DH's aunt (whilst we were there) was "they are "DH surname" through and through, why pretend otherwise?"

AIBU in finding this annoying?

Nope. It can be either name. You get to choose.

Google "use of Miss", also what I was taught by mother and Aunts who were very into etiquette. And several spinsters who took offence at being called "Miss"

Was this in the U.K.? If so, they probably did that because they were tired of people being weird about their two last names. The fact that you’re saying things like ‘much easier on the tongue’ being a case in point.

The Spanish, and millions of people across the Spanish speaking world, ‘manage’ just fine. They probably wonder how the British ‘manage’ with their sexist naming conventions.

Another question....So in countries like Spain when a couple get married does the female traditionally change her name to the husband's one?
Because then a family must have 3 different surnames among them - the Wife has her name - Jane Smith-Jones, Husband has his - Jack Green-Brown and the children are Peter Brown-Jones and Mary Brown-Jones.
(Obviously more Spanish sounding names 😂)
Is that how it works?

I think perhaps you should Google it. I’ll get you started:

www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/mistress-miss-mrs-or-ms-untangling-the-shifting-history-of-titles

daily.jstor.org/from-the-mixed-up-history-of-mrs-miss-and-ms/

info.umkc.edu/womenc/2018/09/05/mrs-miss-and-ms-the-evolution-of-ms/

Women never change their names. Neither do men. Your name is your name and marriage has no impact on that.

You then give one of your two last names (father’s or mother’s, up to you) to your kids. Your husband does the same. It has to be the same names, in the same order, for all your kids. And these are their names, which will also never change. They will then give one of them to their kids, and so on.

I just realised I meant to say if the wife in Spain DOESN'T take the husband's name there would be 3 surnames in the family if there's children 🙂

@150poundrebate so it's correct then - that a family has 3 surnames among them!! So in Spain there's no such thing as "The Smith Family". Wife, Husband and Kids are all different (kids obviously sharing the same name)?
That's all very interesting.

I’ve never seen it that way, but sure. No ‘Smith family’.

Probably because the kind of people who use double-barrelled names are also the kind of people who don't have kids.

Spanish people don’t have children?

I have a friend from Uni who really should know better who still insists on addressing cards to Mr and Mrs DHinitial DHsurname.

So I did it back to her after her divorce and she soon stopped.

I do too! I find it so irritating. Not only are the cards addressed to ‘Mr and Mrs P. Bong’, inside they’re signed in her handwriting with his name first: ‘Thomas and Sarah’. I’m friends with her. I barely know her husband. And he couldn’t be arsed to sign the card so why is his name first?

What about op's parents should they be hurt their names isn't being carried on?

I was taught, in the late 50s, that the correct way to address an envelope to a married couple was Mr and Mrs Hisinitial Hissurname (in those days every married woman we knew took their husband's surname). If the husband died then letters were addressed to Mrs Herinitial Hissurname and this was in acknowledgrment of her widowhood. It has been a hard habit to drop but I accept it's an old-fashioned approach and I drop the Mr and Mrs totally and insert first names instead. Going back to the OP, I'd just keep telling her what your preferences are and hope she has the good manners to eventually take notice.

This reminds me of the time I did this and then BIL sent a reply all email rather than reply to the others excluding me saying And she wonders why we are funny with her.

I replied I hadn't realised you were but I know now.

That makes zero sense. Clearly, people with double barrelled names exist, there’s lots of them. They’ve existed for centuries. So, their parents, aka ‘the type of people who use double barrelled names’ do have kids. It’s demonstrably the case.

Yet, triple and octuple barrelled people are vanishingly rare. There’s a dozen or so incredibly posh families with them, but that’s it. So, clearly there is long established naming convention that governs this. It would be very easy for you to find out what that is. By reading this thread, for example.

@150poundrebate are you a historian, a sociologist, linguist or feminist? It’s hard to tell..

Why have you got me to read through several articles on the history of the use of Ms/Mrs/Miss…..?

I am aware their usage has changed through time, but my grasp of how they’re used in modern day generally is correct. This was what was enquired about - not the full history/potential interpretations!! And in fact your articles confirm this. The only bit I left out is that a married professional woman can use Ms. if she does not wish to take her husbands name. Otherwise - Miss for girls and younger women, Mrs for married, Ms for older women generally 30+ as a mark of respect.

www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/mistress-miss-mrs-or-ms-untangling-the-shifting-history-of-titles

“‘Miss’ was adopted by adult women for the first time in the middle of the 18th century. Before that, Miss was only used for girls”

“The introduction of Ms as a neutral alternative to 'Miss' or 'Mrs', and the direct equivalent of 'Mr', was proposed as early as 1901.”

’Those who objected to ‘Miss’ and ‘Mrs’ argue that they define a woman by which man she belongs to. If a woman is ‘Miss’, it is her father; if she is addressed as ‘Mrs’, she belongs to her husband,” says Erickson. “It’s curious that the use of Ms is often criticised today as not 'standing for' anything. In fact, it has an impeccable historical pedigree since it was one of several abbreviations for Mistress in the 17th and 18th centuries, and effectively represents a return to the state which prevailed for some 300 years with the use of Mrs for adult women – only now it applies to everyone and not just the social elite.”

daily.jstor.org/from-the-mixed-up-history-of-mrs-miss-and-ms/

How do you address a professional woman who is married but uses her own name, Mrs. or Miss? Even as far back as 1901 the alternative title “Ms,” with a pronunciation close enough to both of those, was suggested as a patch to this gaping honorific hole.

“Miss began to be applied to more adult, unmarried women, possibly under influence from French.”

“Mrs.” into the uncharted, old-fashioned, marriage-only territory we see this once noble honorific languishing in today.

info.umkc.edu/womenc/2018/09/05/mrs-miss-and-ms-the-evolution-of-ms/

“Mrs.” is “a title used before a surname or full name to address or refer to a married woman.”

“Miss” is a title of respect for an unmarried woman.

“Ms.” came about in the 1950’s as a title of respect for women that did not disclose a woman’s marital status.

Some articles for you….

The New Meaning of Ms.: Single, But too Old for Miss, 2003
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1471-6402.00101

Names and Titles: Maiden Name Retention and the Use of Ms.
Women who use Ms. and women who retain their maiden name were stereotyped as being fairly career-oriented, not particularly religious, somewhat
independent, somewhat assertive, fairly
well educated, and somewhat feminist.

journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/la/article/view/32393

I'm interested in this site posted above, mainly because even a source existing to give helpful information to women about the myriad name/ combinations/ options they might choose to adopt on marriage, the language is permeated - no DRIPPING - with an inherent sexism that sticks in my craw. This is mainly along the lines of 'most women CHOOSE to internalize the inherently patriarchal naming system' in the same breath as acknowledging a misconception that this is mandatory. I also had a wry smile to myself about the presumptuous deduction that 'EVEN if you've kept your name, you will probably want to change your title to Mrs'.

No, I bloody don't. a) the distinction is meaningless; Miss, Mrs and Ms are all truncations of exactly the same word, b), no man has ever been expected to announce his sexual status during everyday transitions with complete strangers, and c) I haven't married my father.

Rigid conformism, gotta love it ...

Traditionally the fathers name goes last and is the one that would be passed down. So for example Jane Smith-Jones would have a mother called Smith and a father called Jones. If her husband is Jack Green-Brown then their child would be Mary Jones-Brown (fathers name last). Then Mary would pass Brown (her fathers name) down to her own children.

Iceland is even more confusing. Children take their father’s first name with the suffix -son or -dottir (daughter). So a man named Stefan who has a son and a daughter would give them the surnames Stefansson and Stefansdottir. So everyone in the family has a different surname. And of course a woman named Stefansdottir won’t change her name upon marriage because she’s still Stefan’s daughter!

Haha, excellent work.

OP I would be correcting her every. single. time.

It's just rude if she knows full well what your name is and still chooses not to use it.

You don't say how old your children are, but they need to grow up being proud of who they are, and proud of their name.. not having family members calling them by the wrong name, as this could be confusing.

My favourite part of this discussion is people insisting that the occasional spot of complexity for a double barrelled last name, or a parent and child having different last names, outweighs a lifetime of having the name you want, as opposed to the name society dictates you should have. Bonkers.

Old people...

What about us?