To still feel uncomfortable with my married surname (and wonder if anyone else does too)

[bitjel]

I've been married 20 years and it still feels off/wrong when I say my name with married surname and even signing it feels off. I'm in a very happy marriage but I still feel like that's not my name. In my head I' still "bitjel maiden-name". (I do have a few items still in my maiden name 20 years later, maybe its because I haven't dived in the whole way). Wondering if anyone else has this.

Edited to add I didnt mean to make this a poll!

It's weird to me that you put 'their' in quotation marks for the woman having her name, but not her dad also having it. Even though his dad probably had it too, and so on.

Is there some difference between the woman and the father that makes you see one as needing marks, but not the other?

I won't be changing my name on any legal documents when I get married (soon!) People can refer to us as Mr & Mrs X with no problem at all, I won't get offended by that either. I like the thought that DP and I will have the same name, even if not legally. But my official name will always be MY name.

It's the opposite for me. I've been married for over half my life now and my married name feels more like my name than my maiden name does. It doesn't feel like it was ever my name tbh.

I know a few.
my sister kept hers.
they double barrelled their daughter's name.

It's really not uncommon.

No, Im self employed under my maiden name

Maybe that's why your married surname sounds weird to you, if you still use your original surname quite a bit?

That's not a criticism btw, I'm not suggesting you change what you use for your business! Just wondering if that's maybe why your married name still doesn't feel like your name after 2 decades.

Most of my married friends have kept their own names. My SILs kept their maiden names too.

There is nothing odd about wanting to keep your own name that you have had all your life. What is odd is that a lot of men want/expect their soon to be wife to change their name on marriage, even though it's something they would never consider doing themselves. I really wish we could ditch the term maiden name, its so outdated, a person's name shouldn't be considered temporary just because they are female.

Well, by that argument, why should a man want to keep 'his' family name when that's also just his father's name? If the important thing is for the whole family to have the same name, why would you expect the woman to be the one to make the change? The man could just as easily change his name to hers. Or they could both change their name to something completely different.

Why do you think it's odd for a woman to want to keep a name that she inherited from her father, but not for a man to want to keep a name that he inherited from his father?

Me too @bitjel
I only changed my name when we'd been married for 8 years and I was expecting dc1. I stayed Dr Myname at work, but am Mrs MarriedName at home, and on my passport and driving licence. It's sometimes useful to have the same surname as the DC.

I'm planning to change back to "my" name after my youngest leaves school.

Been married 25 years

I kept my name because it would have felt weird to change it, I think it's an odd custom to change what you are called just because you have married so I can totally understand why you are uncomfortable with it.

@ItGhoul I completely agree.. why not pick a
new name altogether, or all have the woman's name. I don't have any strong feelings about whose name it should be for the new family.

I just think it's odd when a woman thinks her original family name is more important than her new family's name. Although in effect the family she has created won't actually have a family name 🤪

So you don't know everyone, how fascinating.

Same here. It's the only reason I changed it.

What a small circle you must have

This old chestnut 😆
no my name isn't my father's name. It's mine. I do share it with him, true, but he didn't just lend it to me, it belongs to me. And why assume that to have a new family name it must be the name of the man?

I've been married for two years but still find it a bit unnatural. I saw a numberplate today that was pretty much my maiden name. Imagine my name is Jenny Dale (not my real name), it was J23 DLE. I wished I could buy that car 😆

I’ve been married 16 years and was married at 23, my maiden name seems so far removed from me that it’s just not me. Of my DH left me tomorrow I think I’d be hard pushed to drop the surname to be honest.

Having said that I genuinely don’t give any sort of craps about what anyone else does with their last name.

The poster may have a small circle, I’ve no idea. It seems not unrepresentative though. Most U.K. women do change their name on marriage.

Having been through a horrible and painful divorce, and then having to spend money and time changing everything back when my exh who had an affair didn't have to do anything like that, its nothing to do with being twee or old fashioned. I have six friends who married again, of them only one changed their name properly Two others went double barrelled and the rest kept their maiden names.

I changed my name on marriage over 30 years ago. I was only married for a few years. I kept the name after divorce because it was my name by then and I liked having the same name as my daughter. It’s been my name so long now that my nickname is based on it. I won’t be changing back.

Yeah I double barrelled because I didn't want to lose my name. Like, that's my name.

I have to repeat and spell out my maiden name every time someone needs to write it down and even then people often add an extra letter because it looks like it should be there, so I was happy to take exH’s name which only has one possible spelling. That was 20 years ago and I am now divorced and back to my own name, weird spelling and all! It seems strange I was ever called anything else, like I was someone else for a while.

Maybe because some women want to change their name? I never considered not changing mine when I got married.

Unless the poster knows fewer than about 17 women, it's unrepresentative.

That said, nearly everyone's circle is. Which is one of the reasons why the frequent proclamations on here of not knowing anyone who kept their own name don't really tell us anything useful.

Agreed. I offered my surname (or according to the backwards people here my father's surname) to my husband when we got married and he declined. I can't believe people still think it's the woman's job to change name and even worse that she never actually had a real name until she got married, she was just borrowing a temporary name from her father. Lucky for those who get married so they get to get a real name. 🙄 FFS, how do people with these thoughts still exist?

It's pretty simple, if you WANT to take your husband's name do it, or double barrel or keep your own name. Stop trying to force or guilt this must take husband's name onto other women.