To name all of your children after your ex husband

[Caterpillarhopping]

I made a discovery about someone I've been friends with a couple of years. She has 4 children. I know her through work and we get on well but I've never known the ins and outs of her life. It came up today that she was married to her eldest child's Dad and took his surname so eldest daughter is Katie "Blogs". She went on to have 3 more children each by different men. She retained her married surname and gave that to each of the children. Second child only has the "Blogs" surname, the one after that is double barrelled and the 4th Blogs.

I sort of understand Mums logic, that she kept the same name as the eldest child (& it's absolutely not my business) but Is it not a touch weird to be sporting your ex husbands name 20 years later and have lots of children named after a man that's nothing to do with them,?

My mother did that to me.

Worst things in the world would have been

a) anybody knowing she'd been fucking another woman's husband for nine years

b) missing out on claiming widowed mother's allowance/pension when her actual husband died just before he divorced her for having somebody else's kid. Yep, she told them that her husband was my father so she could claim extra benefits for me when he died. I always wondered why they didn't query how somebody divorcing her on the basis of being separated for so long and having a kid with somebody else managed to conceive a child whilst hooked up to a ventilator for three months.

Judged the hell out of any woman who had a child with a different surname, though. They weren't her sort of people, what with 'all those men she has hanging around her like dogs on heat' (ie, one man who was still there 40 years later).

Always whined 'but it's my name, not his'.

So I've been stuck with a stranger's name.

But if it's not weird for her to keep her married name, what else would she give the kids?

My mum was in a relationship when I was about 10 and they were trying for kids - it didn't happen for them but having spoken about it years later she said she would have given them her surname (which happened to have been my dad's originally - she kept it because it was also ours, but by then it was just as much hers). So I don't think that's particularly odd!

Of course it’s odd.

All the “but it’s her name now” posts… 🙄

What she did is correct. Children are meant to have their mother’s surname. If she is married that would traditionally be her husband’s as she would have changed her surname on marriage. I’ve never understood why unmarried women so often give away something as important as a child’s surname to some feckless goon who is no better than a sperm donor.

Do you know who your genetic father was?

An anomaly in English law (possibly to protect children like you) is that children are/were legally the offspring of their mother’s husband, regardless of how they are conceived. It stopped them from being illegitimate. I’m sure you can put whoever you want on the birth certificate these days, but I don’t think the law has changed.

Maybe her surname was ‘Bottom’ and her first ex’s name was something rather better?

Yeah that’s really creepy and misleading

Weird post. It’s her name. Shes not naming them after her ex-husband.

Its hardly unusual for a woman to keep their marital name after divorce, especially if they have a child. If you change your name at hat point you have a different surname to your child.

I also thought you meant the first name!

I think YABU - the surname is her surname now, and that of her child. Makes perfect sense that she gives subsequent children that name.

The fact is, what ever surname you have, it’s YOUR name. Not your husband’s. Not your Dad’s and not even your Mum’s. Once you have it, it’s yours.

Their father's name would be an option.

It's her name and she's named the kids using her name. Apart from making stuff way easier in general life - like travelling abroad - it's a form of a bond between the kids too. When you get divorced you can choose to revert to your former name or not and if she didn't - probably because of the first child - then it's what she has chosen for her name. It kind of reeks of thinking she is the property of her former husband if she has to abandon it now because she's not with him.

@NeverDropYourMooncup you're not stuck with it at all - you can change your name at any point. I'm 47 and I moved my middle name to my first name and got a new middle name last year because I was sick of being called my first name in official settings, despite my parents never ever having called me it. Seriously change it, cost me less than £50 and I didn't need anyone's permission, although I consulted with my parents first just to be nice - and then made my own decision on account of being a full grown adult.

They're not "named after" her ex. It's a surname, but if you're going down that route, then her kids are named after her, because it's her surname.

That’s so odd and confusing.

Yep - calling all of your subsequent children “Dave” after your exDH would definitely be weird.

Giving them all your surname, which you happen to have retained after your divorce, is fine.

It's no more odd than the current trend for the children of unmarried couples to have their father's surname.

All these people who think that kids should have their dad's surname and anything else is wrong - what century are we living in? She's giving the children her current surname - regardless of how she came by it. But yes, let's let men have the surname privileges over children, because it's not like it's the men who usually leave the relationship and yet the women stick around to be the primary parent almost always! It IS her name. Her kids are not named for anyone else but for HER name. To say anything else is honesty being stupidly sexist.

It HER name... women aren't property men label.

Any name a woman has instantly makes it hers not some mans. The idea that men 'own' surnames is utterly ridiculous.

Many culture acknowledge women in surnames, its very 'English' not too.

I think women in Spain are rolling their eyes right now!

Me too! Clicked thread to say yes it is weird to name your children Dave, Dave, Dave and Dave. Bit disappointed tbh

She didn't name them after her ex, she gave them HER surname. Entirely reasonable.

Can't stand the misogynist idea that women don't really have their own surnames. If it isn't the idea that women should go through the trouble of changing "back" their surname if they get divorced because apparently it's no longer theirs (i.e. was only ever temporarily on loan from a man), it's "why do you want to keep your maiden name? It was also inherited from your father, a man." You can't win.

If you change your name upon marriage you're bowing to patriarchy. If you keep your birth surname, you're holding on to a patriarchal name anyway. If you give your kids your surname and not their fathers', you're denying the father a connection to his children, but if you do give them a different name to your own you're causing all sorts of confusion at schools and airports.

I suppose the main thing to take from it is, no matter what, women always get to be wrong.

Ding, ding, ding.

So all four kids have different names rather than her name? She is the common denominator, not the dads. She is the mother of all of them. The dads are each the father of one of them. Why do the dad's surnames trump her surname?

Confusion in schools because children have a different surname to their mother? What sort of schools do you deal with that can't handle this?