Am I really that U to change name at work?!

[Misting]

Recently got married and getting my surname changed to my husband’s name everywhere, including at work. The main reason for this is that this is a second marriage and my current surname still links back to my first marriage. I feel it’s finally time to put a close to that chapter and switch to my new married name. It links back to a very unhappy marriage from my younger years and I should’ve changed it years ago. Equally my maiden name is rather unfortunate, so never felt attached to keeping that either.

Ive successfully changed my name everywhere besides my workplace, which I requested recently. Upon speaking to colleagues I was largely met with bemusement as to why I’d want to change my name, particularly given I’m in a professional role and one colleague even condescendingly to it as being “sweet” that I’m “still doing that sort of thing”. I should say they are not aware of my previous marriage. Equally, my IT department contacted me to ask if I really wanted to change it, as apparently it causes a total headache to do.

AIBU for requesting this? Is no one changing their name when they get married these days and especially not at work?

Chances are one of the names will disappear by the time their double-barrelled kids get married, I guess that both are equally at risk of being the one for the chop though.

You seem awfully hung up on the idea that a woman owes it to feminism to continue using her birth name. Isn’t feminism all about having the freedom to chose?

I guess your ultimate feminist would be a woman who decides to use her mother’s maiden name, righting a generational wrong?

I wish you were right, but unfortunately there are people who not only care but make sure you know they don't like it. This is before we get onto the people who do have expectations but aren't dicks about it.

Also, by using the man’s name as part of her double-barrel, the woman is still labelling herself as having a shared identity with her husband. That’s OK by you though?

I work in an IT dept. It's not alot of work but the replication through all of the IT applications and systems take time.
As the change happens there is the potential for emails/invite/calenders etc to be out of sync for a short time, hence checking you do want to go ahead. I doubt it's because they just can't be bothered!

What's interesting is that despite divorce rates being high women are still changing their names so their family has the same name. Why don't men change their names for this reason? And whilst I appreciate no-one sets out to split up get divorced, the facts are that the children generally end up spending the majority of the time with the mother so it's actually logical that children are given the mothers surname.

On the note of it not being expected, I think it still is, sadly. An example of how women are still treated as someone's wife and not their own person was an article in the Telegraph at the weekend about the house bought by Mrs Steve Jobs!

I’m sorry that you feel the need to be so rude in your pursuit of the feminist ideal.

But that’s a media convention because nobody would know who the person was if her name was used in the headline.

I work within the nhs. I am customer faced and have many contacts. I'm also getting remarried this year and am changing my name and couldn't give a shiny shit what anyone thinks tbh. I've kept my 1st marriage name for 30 years to be the same as kids throughout school years. Maiden name...I have 3 brothers and their kids to carry that on. It iant me any more. My 3 kids are grown. At least 1 will carry that on but there's 3 uncles and their kids to do the same. My new husband has the same first name as my first husband so double barrelling is not an option for us. Other than that I very much want to share his surname. By doing so I'm not beaten down by men or belittled by history or any other things. Im a very strong woman in general and no man will dictate their expectations to me in any aspect of my life. The new husband said just do whatever you want to so I'm changing it because I want to and i fancy the change. It's really that simple for me.

I can assure you that my husband and I are equally joined together and have a very equal marriage in terms of work and childcare. We share the same desire to have only one surname. Apart from anything else, mine was 4 syllables and would have been a bastard to double-barrel.

I decided to use his because it’s a nice name. Nobody expected it, and I didn’t even change it for the first 3 years. The end.

Yes, other women are in unsatisfactorily unequal partnerships. But, seriously, the name is the least of their worries.

Most people don’t change their names. I just admit when I see a female colleague has I feel a bit sorry for them. Giving up your name seems so totally ancient history

I think perhaps you are attributing more value to their birth names than they are. I’m sure none of them felt forced to “give up” their names.

It’s not a whole load of work. IT can change it, and you could even do a 2 step process whereby your email address stays the same but your name is changed, and then later your email address is also changed. Simple note at the bottom of your standard email signature also helps eg “on x date my details will change to “ in the same way as people put advance holiday notifications.

Love this reply. (I say this as someone who’s been married twice and never changed my name. Because what’s right for me isn’t necessarily right for someone else. Funny, that. It’s almost as if we’re all different…)

I wish you were right, but unfortunately there are people who not only care but make sure you know they don't like it.

As this thread shows, that goes both ways. People can get arsey if you change your name, and arsey if you don't.

It took me 16 years to get round to changing my surname. In the end it mattered very little, I am known to all and sundry as Gnome (it helps that I have a less common first name).

This was nearly 20 years ago and IT coped.

Yanbu at all. Where I work I know of at least 4 women who have recently changed their names due to marriage. It isn't an IT headache at all - either your employer has awful inflexible systems or the IT people are not very good at their job!

I didn’t change mine for a variety of reasons but that said, another colleague got married around the same time and changed hers. Was a non issue. And was at quite a large financial institution

Seems to me that in this instance the IT department is making a demonstrative show of disapproval. It's not a difficult request and shouldn't be beyond the capabilities of even the most basic IT system.

In my experience/observation this is unusual. I've chosen to use the same family name since birth and it's never occurred to me that anyone else would care a toss, much less see fit to comment on it. That my lack of a 'Mrs' title and an identity of my own has garnered real rudeness in some quarters came as a surprise. Interestingly, the rudeness never emanates from men.

This isn't a new thing. I was married in 2008.

What other women choose to do doesn't affect my life. I sincerely, genuinely don't give a shit. But I would like to be extended a similar courtesy and some women seem incapable of bestowing this (here's looking very particularly at my MiL, but she's by no means an isolated case).

Incidentally my name is not my father's. It's mine.

Which is a different point again. It's not a good idea to say nobody cares about any naming tradition really, because it's actually something that attracts a lot of opinions.

For sure. And it's not usually men applying the pressure in this case, although if I'd been with a man who objected to my very reasonable preference to retain my own identity then, needless to say, he would not be married to me.

But I suspect OP's situation is the outlier. Taking a man's name on marriage tends to attract little comment. It's the ones who adopt the lesser-expected practice of retaining their own who invariably face a strength of pushback most of us never anticipated. MN is full of threads written by women whose disrespectful family members refuse to extend them even the courtesy of their own name. IMO, there can be few ruder or less validating forms of behaviour.

Yet retention of our own names is actually the default practice. Your name remains the same - unless you actively change it.

Why would a woman using someone else’s name be feminist? She has a name from birth. It doesn’t matter where that name came from. It belongs to her the moment it is bestowed. Only in extremely rare circumstances should anyone but the woman change it.

What are you talking about? If a woman changes her name she is the one changing it. The fact that she does it to have the same name as her husband is her choice.

And she had no choice in the name when she was born. Is she allowed to change her first name if she dislikes it? Of course she is.