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.

Many non religious people celebrate Christmas and Easter.

A lot of people like traditions, particularly those that can bring a family together and demonstrate no measurable harm.

Because its not a family name if one parent has one name, the other something different and then whst go the kids have?

It's different to the Baker family or the Thompson family

I’d much rather have he same surname as my husband, (my choice to change it, wasn’t forced to, I’m not anyone’s property but I preferred his surname), than have a double barrelled name, they are just hideous, poor kids having to learn to write their names.

So just use your birth name and give it to your children, if you think they’d struggle to write two surnames?

I agree. Women who want to their children to have the same name as them, never seem to think of keeping their own surname and having the husband change his surname to hers. And having the children have her surname.

The tradition of taking the males name is deeply ingrained in a lot of women .

Sorry, should have said for those who are not religious, they are traditions.

Exactly my point, for non religious people, celebrating Easter, Christmas, pancake day, new years eve etc are traditions.
On this thread it is being made out that because something is a traditional thing to do, it makes it a negative thing.

I changed my name when I got married and definitely regretted it. I wanted double barrel but my now Ex didn't. I felt I lost part of my identity. Now we're divorced I changed it back. I won't change it again if I ever remarry

It isn’t a negative thing because it is a tradition, it is questionable because that tradition is deep in the patriarchy.

When as many men as women change their names and use the woman’s birth name as the family name it will still be a tradition that on marriage a family takes a shared name, but it will no longer be the default that it is the man’s name.

The default tradition if it being the man’s name is quite simply sexist.

Like many other traditions around marriage: a man accompanies a woman down the aisle to ‘give her away’ to another man. In traditional wedding etiquette men make all the speeches. Groom, FoB, Best Man. Women stay silent. Having been ‘given away’ the woman then adopts the man’s name. There is often much jocularity about this at the wedding around Mr and Mrs etc.

All fine if it is a tradition that moves with the new legal freedoms for women (no longer chattels in law) and a decision about names is made on a level playing field: no men a
instantly dismissive that they change their name, no family members refusing to use the woman’s birth name, men looking on marriage as a way to divest themselves of a surname involving bottoms, cocks or death , or that reminds them of an abusive family.

But cultural pressure for it to be the woman who also changed her name is strong and deep, and part of the old trappings of patriarchal marriage.

Women and men who buck the tradition are chipping away at it and making their own decisions free of that old sexist stuff.

Yes, people make their own individual decisions for their own reasons that are not sexist. But it is those who make a different decision who are changing the context and the sexist default.

But there is no evidence whatsoever that women who elect to change their name, have their father walk them down the aisle or decline to give a speech suffer any diminution in status as a result.

I did all those things and at the time I got married was a successful corporate lawyer who out earned my husband by a multiple.

I like tradition and embracing those things was a complete irrelevance to the balance of power in our relationship. None of them meant a damn as far as my identity or anything else was concerned.

If you don't want to go down the traditional route fine but I think it is unfair to suggest that women who do are succumbing to the patriarchy.

Not succumbing to it, no. But not chipping away at it, either.

Small things. Like I don’t use the term ‘maiden name’ . I know it’s in general use but once I see the fact that there isn’t a male equivalent and the connotations of ‘maiden’ are just cringeworthy I use ‘birth name’ or just ‘name’.

And to be honest, I think many men do see it as a status thing, even subconsciously. So many will not entertain them changing. How can it not have some psychological effect for women to understand that they don’t have their own name, only their fathers or their husbands, whereas men (who also have fathers) have a name that is theirs?

My feminist-sympathiser, fully 50% child rearing and domestic duties DH was baulking at his surname coming first in the hyphenated surnames of the Dc because he saw the last surname as the ‘real’ surname and he knew he would meet resistance from his deeply traditional and patriarchal family (It was really awkward to say and didn’t flow with mine first). I had to appease him with ‘ they will always be filed under your name because that comes first’.

@suckpoppet I see where you are coming from but I guess I just look at all the terrible problems facing women in society; chiefly male violence and males encroaching on women's spaces and I just don't see the particular relevance of surnames.

It is obviously the tradition of women in Muslim communities to retain their surname after marriage and it doesn't seem to have done much for them as parental rights are concerned (in Muslim countries ).

I'm amazed this topic has caused so much of a reaction on here - I have so many friends who have or haven't changed theirs and I can honestly never remember even remarking on it let alone having a conversation about it. It just seems so irrelevant as far as actual equality is concerned.

Absolutely, we are missing the real issues here around equality. When we have males burning down houses, forcing FGM and child marriage, I think me taking my husbands name is a non issue.

But I shall go and give my brother a pat on the back for taking his wife's name when they married, and helping to 'chip away' at the patriarchy, especially as he is a stay at home Dad, I'm guessing that gets him double chipping points.

It’s not a ‘non-issue’. It perpetuates the idea that women are male property, being transferred between father and husband, which has an obvious relationship to the longtime trivialisation of domestic violence (the old police line ‘just a domestic’) — bear in mind how recently marital rape was criminalised, and how much more recently coercive control was, and to the normalisation of crimes ‘inside’ the family.

And why are you so snide about your brother taking his wife’s name and being a SAHP? Anything that dilutes the idea that a woman’s ultimate destiny is to subsume herself in family life, while men’s careers ‘naturally’ continue untrammelled after marriage and children, is a good thing, however minor. Your brother’s children will grow up with those role models and be less likely to adhere to reactionary norms unthinkingly in their own lives.

Of course FGM, VAWAG, Equal Pay, Equal Opps etc are the big issues.

But that doesn't have to mean we don't look at and analyse the other issues.

We see from so many MN threads that men very often do still retain deeply ingrained expectations of women being domestic and maternal and often men (and other creatures) use language about women that is outdated, chauvinistic or derogatory. Whole threads by women experiencing extreme abuse can be de-railed on MN by people focussing on the use of a word that the OP didn't realise had racist connotations, but looking at a phrase like 'Maiden name' or interrogating the history of men's names being default on a thread about surnames, is seen as irrelevant or extreme, bullying etc and seems to make people very defensive,

Honestly, outside of HR and pensions though my marital status has fuck all to do with work.

it is ingrained bias. A woman changes her name at work because she’s married and immediately everyone is now expecting mat leave. So that, consciously or unconsciously, now biases people as who would you choose for the long term big project- a bloke who you don’t have a clue about his personal life, or a recently married woman who in the order of things will be taking time off.

yes it’s probably not ethical but there’s a reason for the gender pay gap.

read the recent stats about whether a university degree increases lifetime earnings- the difference between male and female with the same degrees is eye opening.

you personally may not have experienced it but I have. Plus the gender pay stats back it up.

I think men who have ugly names usually just put up with it. I think it's hard for them to change it without causing serious offence to their own parents. They are hampered by cultural norms too!
I do know one man who changed his name because he really disliked his. He chose a completely new name, but had to be tactful - couldn't use the name his mum and step dad had because that would upset his own dad. It is a bit of a minefield.

But the husbands name would be his father's name not his own name in that case?

Comparing taking a man’s name after marriage and Christmas is beyond stupid! You’re comparing traditions in the loosest sense of the worst and it makes no sense.
Those with absolutely no religious ties celebrate Christmas because the benefit is spending time with your family for a special occasion, there is no tangible or objective benefit to changing your name. It doesn’t make you a more loving family despite what some people try to suggest.

@izzymoon just because you don't see any tangible benefit to it doesn't mean other other women don't.

What tangible benefit am I losing out on by not changing my name?

What tangible benefit would I encounter by changing my name to my husband’s?