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,?

Up to you to remain in the wrong 🤷

No clue what you mean, sorry.

Head -> brick wall 😩

My surname isn't my husbands name. Its MINE. Our children have Our name. Not their fathers.

The name belongs to me and MIL, and her MIL as much as it does to anyone else as soon as we officially decided to use it.

The name is part of my identity now.

That would be a no then 😂You haven't answered anyone's question on why you don't think the woman's legal surname is truly hers and remains "technically the fathers" despite multiple posters asking you.

If you'd prefer not to examine why you believe what you do that's completely your prerogative. Enjoy the rest of your day.

Really? Nothing obtuse there. YOU are the misogynist for claiming that a woman only borrows her husband's name and it's never hers. It's stupid too.

If I marry a man called Tom Brown and change my name from Eastie Smith to Brown then I have taken his name upon marriage. It’s not difficult. It’s why you might read in my Obituary “Eastie Brown, née Smith.

In this scenario, I had a name before I married which I changed to my husband’s name. There’s nothing misogynistic about stating that fact. It is the family name because I chose to take the name and my children with Tom have their father’s name. They do not have the name I was born with.

If I go on to have a child with Peter Jones then the normal thing would be to give my child the name Jones or my maiden name Smith if I didn’t want the child to have Peter’s name for some reasons. Why would I give them my first husband’s name?? Tom has left the scene. How would his parents feel about a random unconnected child carrying their family name??

If you want to split hairs and argue Tom’s name isn’t really Brown because it’s the name his mother took when she married his dad etc etc then that’s fine. It’s not a rabbit hole I’d bother going down.

So close: If I marry a man called Tom Brown and change my name from Eastie Smith to Brown then I have taken his name upon marriage. It’s not difficult.

Exactly, and that then becomes your name. Yours.

Men don’t need to agree to a name if they aren’t married to the mother.

My mum did just this. Was married to my eldest siblings dad. Had a child, Divorced, Then had 2 more of us with my dad and we all had the 1st husbands last name.
My Oldest siblings kids have their other parents name and my other sibling has given their children the first husbands name, same as they have.
So mums ex husbands name is being carried on by people not related to him and my dad's surname has stopped at him.

How did your Dad feel about that, did he get a say?

It is also your name in perpetuity unless you make a no active choice not to have it. The fact it works this way is a reflection of the historical tradition in English law that a wife was given the rank and status from her husband upon marriage and never loses them.

Thos is why the Queen Mother never lost the status of Queen (consort) and why Sarah continued to be known as Duchess of York and Diana Princess of Wales after divorce. They did some silly modern made-up thing with removing the word ‘the’ from the start of the titles so that if either son remarried there would be a distinction, but they had no mr Janick for depriving a divorced wife of her rank. Similarly, there is no mechanism for depriving women of their married surname. It belongs to them absolutely and definitively. No one can take it away from them against their will.

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It's like you've almost got it.

If you marry a man called Tom Brown and change your name from Smith to Brown....Brown is now YOUR NAME. It's still his name, but it's also yours. It now belongs to you just as much as it belongs to.him.

If you divorce Tom Brown, your name remains Brown, unless you choose otherwise. Because it's your name. It is absolutely misogynistic to hold the opinion that it was, is and always be his name, and not yours.

If you then have children with Mr Jones, you can call them Jones. You can be Ms Smith again and call them Smith, if you like. But you can also keep YOUR name of Brown and call them that. Because it's YOUR NAME.

Are you following? We don't rent or borrow names from men. If we choose to change name on marriage, we OWN that name. It doesn't need to be returned.

Not sure why this is such a difficult concept.

When i was pregnant with DD1 I still had my exhusbands name and wasnt married to DH yet, I then realised as we were unmarried at that point that baby would have my surname which was exH name. I changed that sharpish, no chance was a baby that had nothing to do with him have his name even if just till registered.

Not sure why this is such a difficult concept

It's genuinely blowing my mind that multiple posters seem to not understand this simple concept.

Well some places charge you to replace your documents with your new name - no it doesn't cost you anything to say that you want to be know as X instead of Y. But some places charge you for replacing/updating your information - like an admin fee was my point.

She is giving them her name. It's not only her ex husband's name it's her name too.
What do you think she should have named them?

I assume that having the same last name as my child would make travel abroad easier, not that we've done any. Also stop at least some people asking 'are you Mum?'

I also realised I couldn't change DCs name without other parent agreeing.

In your friend's case she might feel it's better and easier for the kids to have the same (or almost the same) last name as each other.

This might sound obvious but remember the kids were born one at a time so perhaps what seemed right with the second kind of set a precedent which would have been odder to change for the later two.

Why does he get a say. If Jane Smith married to Tom Brown and her sons were both Brown then " her" name of Smith stops with her. Happens all the time and no one eve thinks of it

She gave their kids her first husband’s name. Of course he should get a say in this.

Why? It's her name. She chose to change it upon marriage and keep it upon divorce or do you think it's only her name for the duration of the marriage?

I was assuming she had married that poster’s Dad? That would make keeping your first husband’s name quite weird.
Maybe not, though.

Why didn't you give them your name?

I knew a man who ended up with his former stepfather's surname. He hasn't seen his stepfather since he was three. It's a long Dutch surname that British people struggle to pronounce or spell correctly.

However, I don't think most people would argue that it's not his "real" name and that he shouldn't be able to pass it down to his children if he and his wife both want to. I've only seen people get uncomfortable about what women do with their surnames, not men.

I didn’t say I was a feminist or that I actually care. Did I ? I couldn’t actually care less if my kids have a different name than me