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.

Seriously?

It is the reasons given that lead to a condescending attitude plus some of the reasons e.g. to be one family unit are quite insulting. It's fine to just say you changed your name because you wanted to. You don't need a reason and trying to come up with one invites ridicule because it is nonsense.

No one needs to justify anything.
There is a choice. Change if you want to. Don't change if you don't want to. If you want to change that's your business. If you don't want to change then that's also your business.
I don't have kids. I wanted to change. Simply because i wanted to. No other reason. No dodgy name. No history of poor relationship with dad. Quite the opposite. I just wanted to so i did. Not one person irl has ever questioned it but on here it's the equivalent of putting a bow in your hair and warming his slippers when he comes home to his dinner on the table!

She has no reason to lie and I believe her experiences though. Just because I've not actually lived it doesnt make it true

Edit to add: the relevace to the OP post is it formed my decision to take my DH name. Her experiences came before I was married.

Some people really do struggle to understand that a women might actually still choose to take their (future) husbands name as a free and entirely valid choice.

Obviously, it's important that it is a choice, but to mock someone for making that choice is achieving nothing more than just being a bit of a dick.

I suggest you give changing your name the same amount of consideration your husband to be has given to changing his name.

If he hasn't had a considered discussion about who changes their name from a fair and equitable position, then I don't think you should do it.

That doesn't even make sense.

Agreed 100%

Married, still have my birth name. So does H. DS has both, I’m not precious about him using both as he gets older, it will be his choice. My name is more unusual, H’s name is more common.

You said you disagreed based on experience but you have no experience.

Well I would certainly not let the sneering on this thread factor into your decision : women such as Amal Clooney, Hilary Clinton and Michelle Obama have all chosen to take their husband's surname.

Thank goodness irl people tend to respect the validity of other's choices.

I entered a new phase of my life, so why should I keep my old name just because I got married?

I had many new phases in my life, I did not realise they all should have come with a name change.

I don't think it's sneering to question why only women make changes to allow for a family with the same name, or why only women seem to think about this at all.

It's not questioning the choice - it's questioning the fact we just accept that the male name is the default. It certainly is not sneering.

I'd love to hear from some same-sex couples on this one, anyone?

I love having DH name & our children for me it makes us feel like a proper family unit I’d feel odd having different names & double barrelling the children ect.

We didn’t even suggest it. I didn’t like mine and his is a nice name! Plus my dad wasn’t the best dad so I wasn’t sad to lose it!

I find it utterly depressing how many women don’t even view themselves as having their own name.
They talk only about their relationship with their father, and their husband’s name. From one man to another.
Interestingly they never refer to their DH’s name as his father’s name, it’s simply his name.

I want to find the alternate universe Dadsnet thread where all the men have horrible ugly names or dislike that it was the same name as their dad's who they also dislike

Yes, it is hilarious isn’t it how some people are sometimes passed over in the career because of their tricky to spell surname. I was laughing until my sides hurt when work was passed to my colleagues with the easier to pronounce /spell names - and no, it was not because I was not as good as them, I had to be better to achieve the same.
I wasn’t going to change my surname and give into the prejudice and have kept it after marriage.

As I mentioned previously, perhaps men don’t consider changing their tricky surname on marriage because it is so socially ingrained that it just doesn’t occur to them as an option.
It’s only relatively recently that more and more women kept their birth surname after marriage, bar the few rare exceptions in previous generations.

.

It’s perfectly reasonable to choose to have a family name. If you are marrying a man who doesn’t think there should be a very real discussion about which name, then I do question your choice in spouse. If truly equal consideration can’t be given to using the woman’s surname as the family name, then I don’t think he is worthy of marrying, let alone dating.

Don’t forget the men who have names that are too common and easy to spell /
too foreign and difficult to spell.

Or those who changed their names because they wanted to feel like a proper family / unit / team with their wife and didn’t want to get stopped at passport control because they had a different name from their kids.

I changed mine, and very happy with that decision - the hassle of changing everything over was annoying but short-term (not done my passport yet but will do when it expires). I liked my surname but felt no real attachment to it... in no way does it signify my husband owns me, just as my maiden name didn't signal that my dad did. Personal choice, though.

Not only women change their name. I know 2 men (including my brother) who took their wives names and a couple who both hyphenated.
And I'm sure I will get "vs how many women who changed their names....."

The tone of some of the posts has been really sneering though - not your one, but some others have been really patronising

Genuine question, if your reason for changing your name was that you had no real attachment to it, do you feel more attachment to your husband’s name after a relatively short window of dating and why do you think that is?

Tbh, I do now - probably as it's also our DC's name, and I like that. To me, changing it just felt like the right thing to do for me. It's hard to explain, really, as I loved my dad.

I can't answer for anyone else but I feel very little attachment to my name, either my current name or the name I had before I was married. I just don't derive any particular identity from it, not least because my relatives all have different surnames, obviously.

Two of my nieces' husbands actually took on their wives' surname when they married as it a name in danger of dying out. I don't remember anyone even commenting on this.