Do you do this? If so, WHY???????!!!!!!

[ThatIsNotMyNameSoWhyAreYouCallingMeThat]

It’s my birthday. 47 years on this planet. Had the same name for all of them.

Just two cards through the post, one from each of my mum’s sisters. Both of whom came to my wedding 20 years ago, where the words Mr + Mrs Hisname never appeared, and the cheques they each kindly gave us had to be corrected because neither of us changed our names. (They noticed we hadn’t cashed them and we had to tell them we couldn’t pay them in as we had no joint account (still don’t) and so no account existed that would recognise me as Sarah Hisname.

So why, 20 years on, with a few gentle reminders on the way, are the envelopes addressed to Mrs S Hisname and Sarah Myname-Hisname?

It’s very sweet of them to send cards at all, as a text would be absolutely fine, but I’m bamboozled by why anyone would go to the effort of buying and sending a card to someone and using a name they have NEVER used?

So if you do this, WHY?!

While they may be kind to send the cards they are also making the point that they disapprove of your choices. It is intentional and a way of trying to influence you You're making a huge and quite unjustified assumption there.

So you can remember all these people's birthdays', out of a possible 365 days, but not their surnames, out of a possible two options? I've probably got their birthdays written in a book. But I haven't written down their surname preference.

And you apparently know and care about them enough to send a card but not to spent two seconds sending them a text saying 'Btw - sorry having a dozy moment, are you Emma Jones or Emma Davies?' Goodness, no! That seem so rude! Almost like sending them a blank card and asking them to fill in the gaps.

And I guess if I asked that of the OP, she would be so huffy at the thought I might possibly have thought even for a second that she might buy in to the patriarchy and choose Davies that she wouldn't reply to my text anyway.

oh come on you must know that's complete rubbish.
you really think that someone can, off the top of their head, remember X's birthday out of the 366 options, and their full address out of the hundreds of millions of permutations of number/road/town/country/postcode, but NOT remember whether their surname is Jones or Smith?

and it's not a matter of 'being good at writing things down' - either you do remember all that off the top of your head or if you don't, then it's as easy to write 'Amy Smith, 14.6.1989, 24 Flowery Road, Big town, postcode,' as 'Amy Jones, 14.6.1989, 24 Flowery Road, Big town, postcode.'

And the second part of your paragraph is completely mad, obviously you wouldn't be 'offended' by your sister sending stuff to your old address, but equally obviously surely after it had happened once you would (politely!) tell her and make sure she had the new one, for her sake as much as yours? Surely if she has gone to the effort of buying and posting a present to you she WANTS you to receive it, and not some complete random?

I can't work out which of the possible scenarios is weirder, either you haven't corrected her because of your strange idea that it would 'offend' her so she's been sending stuff to the wrong address for years, and you've been, what lying that you received it? Or that you have corrected her but she keeps on sending it to the wrong place multiple times?

This doesn't make any sense.

It would make way more sense to keep addressing a married woman by her birth name on the grounds that you've had her birthday written down in your little book since she was a little girl but you haven't bothered to write down her married name.

If you're addressing her by her husband's name you've crossed out her birth name in your little book and replaced it with what you believe is her married name. Surely that's more effort?

And as someone who hasn't changed her name I'd far rather receive a text checking which surname I now use than have someone simply assume and get it wrong. To me that text says, "it's important to get your name right".

I’m not married. There is a teaching assistant who calls me Mrs DP’s name, to be honest it doesn’t bother me at all. II is meant with no malice and he is always friendly and kind to our kids.
so I suppose it’s the intention behind it… if they know you’re not married and they are writing your name incorrectly on purpose because they are aghast that you aren’t married!! than that’s one thing.
if they send you a lovely card with kind words in and do care about you and want to mark your birthday (but get your name wrong because they are busy/ worry about offending the other way/ old fashioned) then that’s another thing.

This sounds like a ' and never the twain shall meet' sort of thing then where people have completely the opposite idea of what is 'rude' and what is polite and can't see the other POV.

I wouldn't bat an eyelid if someone asked me 'Sorry, can't remember, did you change your name after getting married or not?' I'd see that along exactly the same lines as 'sorry I remember you've moved house but what's your new postcode again?' basically a polite administrative query. I can't see how anyone, ever could possibly consider that rude. Whereas I would find someone addressing a card to me by a surname I had never been called very rude and frankly bizarre, in the same way I would if I got a card addressed to a completely different first name.

But you think the complete opposite!

People in their 70s now would have been in their 20s when the debate over that norm started to be prominent. 40 years ago age was a somewhat reasonable argument but addressing women by their husbands surname by default hasn’t been the “right” thing to do since the 1980s.

It's hilarious that you're trying to justify rudeness on the grounds that this is just your "internalised good manners".

It's not good manners.

Good manners is making a teeny tiny bit of effort to get someone's name right.

I suspect it’s a lack of thoughtfulness and non ability to listen. Some people are like this, they just don’t listen you and don’t pay proper attention to what you are saying.

I never had this particular problem -I took DH’s surname as it worked better for me but for over 20 years my mum couldn’t remember about my intolerance. So basically the same - not listening. And before anyone asks my mum only has 2 children so not masses of info to remember. It took much less than 20 years for my MIL to remember it.

Saying there are 366 options for birthdays and only 2 for surnames is disingenuous. There are almost infinite possibilities of surnames if you are counting all of them (like you are days of the year), or there is one option for the birthday if you're counting ones that person is likely to use (like you are for surnames)

Saying it's easy to write...down is showing that you are good at writing things down, or others are bad at it if you'd prefer to look at it that way.

My sister asks if I've gotten her gift and when I say no she realises she's sent it to the wrong address. It has happened at least twice.

Not always.

When I got married my mum really struggled with the fact that I hadn't changed my name. At first I think she thought I was joking, and sent things to my husband's name. Then when I made it clear I was being serious and asked her to stop doing it, she started addressing things to Mrs Myname-Husbandsname. I told her I hadn't double barrelled it either. Eventually she accepted what I was telling her and stopped doing it. (Or at least, I don't think she has done it for a while.)

She knew full well but she just couldn't get her head round the idea that I'd made a different choice to the one she was expecting.

I know how you can solve the problem OP. Have a right old go at them and watch the friends drop away and you won't get any cards from them next year 👍👍😄

If they know what your birth surname is and they know what your husband's surname is then realistically your surname after marriage can only be one of those two things! (Leaving aside the small number of people who double barrel or choose a new surname.) It's not like there are infinite possibilities. And if you knew the bride before marriage you've gone to the trouble of crossing her surname out of your address book and writing her husband's surname in its place. Surely it's easier to check first?

It's not rude at all. They have just forgotten and it's nice of them to remember and make the effort to send a card. They obviously have remembered that you didn't take our husband's name and their head has gone to double barrelled. Unless there's a massive backstory why would anyone assume bad intent. Most people when they make mistakes, do just that. They've made a mistake. It's not because they are rude or lazy or have bad intent. The world would be a much nicer place if everyone got into the habit of giving people the benefit of the doubt subject to evidence to the contrary.

Also you might realise OP how much your mind starts to go as a woman in later years. I used to be very quick minded and fairly on the ball and now I feel like I have permanent brain fog and don't know my arse from my elbow half the time. Give your kind aunts a break.

It's a big deal to me and really annoys me. Funny how they never call him the wrong name...

So they get your DD name right and not yours? That’s mad.

it sounds like the younger one is the same age as my best friend and she would be annoyed by this. It is never correct or polite to call someone by the wrong name and a 50 something is not a generation who might make assumptions like this. That’s about 40 years off. Except my mum is 86 and she’d never assume that either. Bizarre.

It’s not rude and it’s not lazy. It’s how it always was. Hardly rude and lazy to make the effort and send a card in the first place.

OP. Have a day off.

Clearly, it isn’t always like that now. Of course it’s rude to continue to address someone by the wrong name.

And unless the bride changed her birthday after getting married then there is only 1 option for that, making her birthday (1 option) easier to remember than her surname (4 options).

To find someone's address I search my WhatsApp messages.

So, after knowing the OP all her life, and after many reminders not to do so, her aunts continue to address her with a name that is not hers? So they have been making the same mistake, every year, for 20 years. So did their “minds start to go”, in regards to this, in their early 30s?

Oh give over.

I am about the same age as OP's aunts, I have not forgotten the names of the important people in my life.

Yes, making a note of people's birthdays but not their actual names is, erm, niche. Especially for someone whose upbringing apparently involved certain practices about names being drummed in. It seems unlikely that someone with a large family only has male blood relatives with the women all married in, meaning there'll be women who the poster has known with their only name at some point. It involves extra effort to find out the names of their spouses.

A lot of hard work to be so rude, really.

Yes. This is it.

They don’t live close to us but they are very close with my mum. They have a group call 3 times a week at least.

Of all the children between the 3 sisters, I’m the only one that’s married. They manage to remember that our DD has my surname but not me. So in my family of 3 (DH, DD and me) they think DD is the only one with that name. When their mum (my grandma) was alive, she managed to get her head around it. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Weird that they remember the name of the man they’ve met twice a year on average for 20 years when it comes to sending me birthday cards, especially when they have no issues tagging me on Facebook at least once a week with my actual name!

Actually, I told DH that I would on my change my name if he changed his as well, to a new name for both of us. We didn’t do that. Imagine the confusion if we had!