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?!

Silly mistake. Not worth a drama. 🙄

My mother is also Mrs Parker. I’m Mrs as I’m married (although perfectly happy with Ms) and Parker as it’s my surname.

If I'd been called Parker, I might have kept it but as my single name was awful, I changed it. It worked as I changed jobs at the same time.

I found the blessing of the rings incredibly spiritual and can't quite explain it.

Whereas we saw marriage as a legal process, not a romantic one, and certainly nothing religious. I’m not someone that wants any assumptions made about me by strangers. My marital status is nobody elses’s business.

i don’t respond to Mrs.

i don’t see why someone would use it at all, but especially if they kept their name.

It doesn't, as it happens. All three labels are merely truncations of one word: mistress.

The pointless differentiation therefore should be meaningless. Frankly I don't see why 'titles' are not completely obsolete in this day and age. They serve no useful purpose: a name is more than sufficient to identify a person.

Were titles dropped elsewhere I would happily drop my 'Dr' title and use this in a professional context only. That would be my preferred option now. But as long as the sexist practice of a woman being expected to announce her sexual status continues, I will continue to use my title in every context. At least that is something I've rightfully earned and cannot be seconded to my relationship with any man.

I also notice that if I sign off an email Dr Initial Myname only, without a hint as to whether I'm male or female, the former is likely assumed and I have much more chance of reviewing a favourable reply.

The flagrant inequality is sickening, and it's not improving with time. Names and titles are only a symptom of a much bigger issue: casual misogyny is everywhere. And as this thread sadly evidences, not all misogynists are necessarily male.

It's not a silly mistake. Have your read the OP's updates?

Obviously they just come from a generation where the woman almost always took the husband's name, and it's not imprinted in their long term memory that you didn't.

Anyway, the cards went in the recycling unopened. I shan’t be thanking them and the flowers I send for their birthdays will be addressed to their husband’s first names. If they’re treating me the way they want to be treated, this is the way, right?

(ironically, as a collective they refer to themselves as The Birth Name Girls……)

They’re still in their 50s.

My surname isn’t English but then neither is DH’s. I kept mine because it is mine. DT’s have double barrelled surnames (very long and difficult for the English to pronounce).
Im not religious and didn’t get married in a church so the blessing for any rings wouldn’t have been appropriate. I (and DH) also don’t like wearing a ring.

Cancel the elderly cheque.

You're kidding, right??!

That's your perogative but our marriage took place before God and because we loved each other and were happy to make the traditional promises 33 years later we still love each other and the promises stand. I still had a pre-nup though.

I also chose to use the title Mrs because that was my perogative.

Girls. At their age, that probably gives an insight into just to the sort of maturity level you're dealing with. Passive aggression admittedly riles me because of the cowardly element of plausible deniability it involves. I will back off instantly from anyone who tries that number on me; it simply isn't something I'm willing to engage with.

In response to a former reply to you, 50-something is Generation X. Those are the daughters of the second wave, and these women are far more likely to have kept their own names than some of those coming later. That generation were taught to value independence, and since the sex discrimination act of 1975 had enjoyed far more rights and weren't about to give up the exercising of those new rights lightly.

Anecdotally I've noted a dip since then, albeit in my profession the majority of women retain their own family names.

I get this from family all the time. Cheques I would send back to be corrected/rewritten, anything else I just leave be. Likewise if I get a caller who asks if I am Mrs X, I say yes because technically I am. I just don't use the name. It's no big deal.

OP I’m with you 💯
it’s just rude and does feel like passive aggression/micro aggression, a subtle comment on your silly feminazi views which aren’t even legal….
its very frustrating. DH’s family still do it. I don’t open anything addressed to Mrs Hisname, i tell him there’s some post for his other wife again 😂
I definitely don’t use Mrs, and we are married. Language is really important here, as is respecting people’s decisions.

Yes totally with you! Like you, it’s my or my husband’s aunts who do this, the aunts that heard me say at my wedding 20 years ago I was not changing my name. Every Christmas I get too many envelopes addressed to someone who doesn’t exist! I think it may have got better as they’ve got the message over the years… I used to post examples on Facebook (no, I’m not fb friends with my aunts…)

I am not Mrs dhname, technically or otherwise. I have never used it, I have no ID in that name.

i am as much mrs Dhname as dh is Mr my name.

technically you can use any name you want, but I don’t answer to any name other than my own.

My mother, a misogynist, firmly believes that men are better than women. Can’t convince her otherwise. I guess that’s one the patriarchy has managed to survive, this far.

You aren’t technically Mrs X.

If I get a phone call for Mrs X, I say there’s no Mrs X here.

But you're not married to Mr Parker. I will forgive Mrs husband's-name but not Mrs Fathers-name - it may be my name too but I've never been married to my father.

Anecdotally I've noted a dip since then, albeit in my profession the majority of women retain their own family names. I used to work in an academic setting, and most women kept their own name for scientific papers that they'd authored, for obvious reasons. So most of the women went by two names, firstname/nickname husband's-name for informal contact, firstname own-family-name for professional purposes.

This was at a time when the staff telephone list would have D A Brown for a man, and Mrs or Miss D A Brown for a woman.

I kept Parker when I got married as it was the surname I’d had all my life.

My elderly mum does this too , assumes that my daughter has taken her husband’s name when in fact she kept her own name .
It doesn’t really bother my daughter too much as she realises the older generation assume that she would automatically take husband’s name .
( for what it’s worth her husband’s surname is lovely and shows his ethnicity)