Can’t make a decision on taking his name

[PoptartBarry]

Name change for this one (ha!)

I am getting married in one week and I still can’t make up my mind about changing my name. It’s driving me a bit mad so I want your opinions.

Have any of you changed your name and regretted it? Have any of you regretted NOT changing your name?

My surname is ‘foreign’ to English speakers, long and tricky for English speakers to pronounce so I’m not considering a double barrel. It would be too much!

Does anyone keep their maiden name at work and use their ‘married’ name in their private life? How do you feel about it now?

YABU = stop overthinking and change the name!

YANBU = no way, keep your own name!

Would love to hear your lived experiences.

marriage itself is no longer reflective of the patriarchy. There are legal ramifications for both parties- inheritance, divorce, pensions, life insurance, wills, tax etc.

those benefits are not dependent on sex.

Civil partnership. 🙂

Doesn't have the same global recognition as marriage, so the legal protections are lesser. There've also been some issues with some of the older private pension schemes not giving the same benefits to civil partners as spouses. I don't know if that's still happening now, but Parliament was looking at it a few years back.

Well that’s the risk you take in order not to uphold the patriarchy I guess. 😂
I’m married and a feminist. I just don’t think there’s any need for anyone to look down on other people’s choices unless they’re completely shiny spotless themselves.

It’s an institution based firmly within patriarchy. We might not see it as such any more and that’s fine, in which case choosing to change your name is no longer rooted in patriarchy either as it’s a freely made choice. Unless it’s not, in which case fill your boots.

Again though, availing oneself of the best legal protection available is the least patriarchal choice, when in a relationship with a man and having DC. Patriarchy prefers it when women don't have rights they can enforce against men, which means the basis of your argument here is wrong.

I changed my name when I got married and really regretted it. When I got divorced, I changed it back again when my passport needed renewing. It feels like the best version of me, plus I have a good relationship with my parents and not particularly fond of my ex so made it made sense.

My maiden name is one of those surnames that people call me all the time ie they call out my surname or refer to me by my surname when they see me. I'm so pleased to be back to it as I didn't have that with my married name.

If I get married again (unlikely) then I would absolutely stipulate that he would have to be happy for me to keep my name - or I just wouldn't get married.

I changed my name, predominantly because a minor trashy celebrity shared my full name and I also liked that I would be the only person in the world with my first name and married name combo.

I wouldn't have changed my name if I liked it more and I would have double-barrelled my DCs' names. I don't see my surname as a strong part of my identity, it was very common - akin to Smith.

Hilarious
My husband moved into my house. He does more cooking than i do and financially I'm the bread winner. I couldn't be less stepford wife and he couldn't be less misogynist.

If it pleases you to see it as wrong and not nuanced, no problem.

It’s odd to reason that in order to beat the patriarchy you’ll enter into one of the most patriarchal institutions there is. And yes it’s pragmatic. But why aren’t married women who claim it’s unfeminist to change their name on marriage for any reason including personal preference or abusive/unpleasant fathers campaigning for parity between marriage and civil partnership? It seems a little hypocritical.

It's only odd if you're failing to apply the same critical lens to cohabitation and civil partnership. Once you do that, it becomes clear that your claim about marriage is incorrect.

Your question about why married women, specifically, aren't mounting what would presumably have to be a global campaign is odd though. It would be very arrogant for those of us who aren't in CPs to assume those who have them actually want them to be identical to marriage. After all, everyone who's in a CP now could be married instead, if preferred. But apparently, women (and only women, evidently) who are in an entirely different setup should be speaking for this cohort? Bizarre.

What’s the disparity between marriage and civil partnership? Apart from the name? It’s always seemed bonkers to me to retain civil partnerships at all once same sex marriage became legal.

Civil partnerships are relatively recent for mixed sex couples and wasn't a choice for the majority of married people.

It’s rare to hear someone argue that civil partnerships and cohabitation are historically patriarchal institutions, gotta say.
I think your point about women being less secure without marriage is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting here. Especially since I’m not particularly arguing in favour of or against marriage, just mildly pointing out that a few decades ago many women describing themselves as feminist wouldn’t have thought of getting married because of the historical connotations.

It was an interesting choice.

CP was essentially introduced as a way to give same sex couples some rights without letting them get married. Then once same sex marriage came in, we got straight CP because the government lost a Supreme Court case. It was found to be discriminatory that same sex couples could have a marriage or CP but straight couples only a marriage. However, the court didn't specify that CP had to be extended. Equality could also have been achieved by allowing only marriage to both.

There's some info here on the legal provisions.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/marriage-and-civil-partnership-in-england-and-wales/marriage-and-civil-partnership-in-england-and-wales-accessible-version#recognition-overseas

Well no, that's not what you're doing. You made a silly assertion that flies in the face of the legal and financial realities of the institution. It remains a fact that marriage is the best protection for more women who are partnering with men and considering DC. You think it's doing too much heavy lifting because you refuse to apply the critical lens consistently.

And you can't really be talking about what feminists thought decades ago when you brought up straight civil partnership, which is only a few years old. Pick one and go with it!

Lastly, the point about patriarchy benefitting when women have fewer legal protections gets brought up loads on MN.

Although you’re being oddly hostile, I’d point out that I was purposely talking about a time when civil partnership wasn’t an option and cohabiting was uncommon and frowned upon. Yet still feminist women didn’t always marry, because of the historically patriarchal roots of marriage.
At no point am I disputing that marriage doesn’t offer robust legal protection for women. That “silly assertion” seems to be based on misunderstanding on your part. However, I still maintain that the choice to marry or not remains a dilemma for the feminist woman and that getting married then claiming feminist credentials because you’ve kept the patriarchal name rather than assuming the marital one is contradictory.
If you’d like to respond, I’d ask that you keep it civil otherwise this branch of the debate will be at an end!

Equality could also have been achieved by allowing only marriage to both.

Precisely. It would have been far simpler and more logical.

DH took my name instead. Much easier.

A lot of LGBTQ people objected to the institution of marriage on the grounds that it had traditionally been an institution that was incredibly hostile to them.

Disagreeing with you isn't being openly hostile, neither is calling an argument silly. The tone policing is interestingly timed, though!

Since you acknowledge here that the feminists you're talking about predate CP and cohabitation was rare, they weren't in a position to assess the practical implications of either. They couldn't have known that women commonly having DC and living with men whilst unmarried would result in them still suffering from the impact of patriarchy but with less protection. With that in mind, the relevance isn't immediately obvious.

Ultimately, the claims you've made about marriage and patriarchy are just bad ones. I don't know what language you'll tolerate being used to explain why your whole argument is wrong, but it is. When you ignore the financial and legal realities of the situations we're comparing, you're just not going to be able to say anything sensible.

The way to make the argument you're attempting here would be to say anyone being in partnership with a man can't be that concerned about patriarchy. The political lesbianism angle. That would get round the fact that marriage is more advantageous for the majority of women partnered with men than the alternative models. But, well, you didn't.

I changed my name, and even 5 years later it doesn’t feel like my name. Will be going double barrel when I change my passport next year. I only changed to his name on a couple of things so not loads to have to update again

Sorry civility turned out to be beyond you! TTFN.

Yes that's true. There were some who thought this, others who regarded the implementation of CP instead of marriage as a discriminatory sop. Separate but equal, if you will. So there was real diversity of view.

That said, I'm not sure any of this is the reason why the then government chose to extend rather than abolish CP after the Supreme Court decision.

And a lot of them objected to it not being available to them.