Late night thoughts... women changing surnames after marriage

[FatJan]

Not sure if this is the right board as I'm not fully sure where I'm going with this yet! Feels vaguely right, but happy for it to be moved.

Basically, I was scrolling through social media this evening and clicked on a post from a girl I knew at school which had got lots of comments.

As I scrolled down the post, I saw a load of comments from women whose names I didn't recognise.

I thought it was a bit strange I didn't recognise/couldn't remember who they were because the post was about something that happened at the school, and they were all talking as if they'd been there.

Suddenly I realised that I did actually know all of the women - they were all girls from our year.

I hadn't realised because they've all got married and now have their husbands' surnames.

It gave me a weird and not particularly pleasant feeling.

I haven't followed these ladies' lives over the years as they weren't in my close friendship circle, but I remember them well and how they were as children and teenagers.

Something about the fact that the identities they had when they were young no longer exist (on paper anyway) and they all have their husbands' names now made me feel a bit upset, which surprised me.

I'm trying to explore that feeling and I thought writing it down/sharing it might be a good place to start.

Obviously being happily married isn't a bad thing, so I think it's more the (perceived) loss of old identity thing that has given me a jolt, probably linked to the fact that men get to keep theirs.

I think it was also related to the fact it wasn't just one woman with a new name, it was the entire friendship group. It made it seem like the 'thing' to do, and I suppose it is, although I'm not sure how I feel about that. Some of the girls were very outspoken feminist types and to see them all as wives now with their husbands' name was a bit unexpected.

To be honest, I've been very in-my-head with the Sarah and Sabina cases and the ongoing discussions around things women go through that men don't, and this might be impacting the way I responded emotionally to that particular post.

Does the above make sense at all? Has anyone noticed or felt something similar?

I took DH's name, we've been married a long time and the only women I knew then who didn't take their husband's name were our GPs.
Then about 10yrs ago, a relative died and I started thinking about when my parents die, their surname would be lost and I felt I'd lost a small bit of my identity, it wasn't really that the name belonged to my husband, more that it belonged to my in laws and I'd been taken over by their family. So I added my unmarried name back as a middle name, which I use all the time, I didn't want to double barrel.

@EerilyDisembodied Can you provide something to back up the claim that men owned their wives?

Heh. I hated my name - it was one of the things I was bullied for badly at school - and so as soon as I could I changed both my first and last name by deed poll and have never regretted it. I think there is nothing wrong with changing names to one you feel reflects/represents you as you are now - no one should feel obliged to be the person they were at primary school - and I think we should normalise doing it more often.

Something I have seen, which I think is nice, are both halves of a couple changing their surnames upon marriage to a shared new creation, to represent the new family they are forming. I love that idea and would love to see that more.

I changed my surname on marriage without thinking, really. DH would probably have taken mine and definitely wouldn't have minded me keeping mine. Double barrelled would have been... odd... it just doesn't really happen in our social circle and our surnames are so boring (think Smith-Jones or Brown-Williams) that it'd be a bit like, why did we feel we needed to conserve them both? But also, to me , zi felt changing surname denoted our new legal status, and felt grown up... I expect to use my married name for way longer than I used the surname I had as a child (12 years and counting, and I'm only early 30s)... I like it, I like the way it sounds, I would probably keep it if we separated.

We all have to be called something but I'd give it more consideration if I were marrying now.

[quote CBUK2K2]@EerilyDisembodied Can you provide something to back up the claim that men owned their wives?[/quote]
Women couldn't survive without a man. Couldn't own property, have a bank account,m, couldn't legally end a marriage only the man could that. Read Invisible Women, great book

FuckingFlumps The default position of a woman taking a man’s name, and the children given his name is a patriarchal tradition.

You can be a feminist and change your name, but changing your name to a man’s is not a feminist choice.

When men change their names to their wives as often as women do, when everyone equally makes a choice based in their options rather than what is expected or what family or social opposition they might face, then it will be a neutral decision.

I was excited to change my name when I married my husband. It was symbolic of our connection, our marriage and our commitment.

Plus, i hated my old surname and I'd changed my name as a teenager when my parents divorced anyway so i wasnt massively connected to my old name.

But I'll be honest, i dont understand the hand wringing over this. Change it, dont change it why do you care what other people choose to do?

@FuckingFlumps It's a societal norm? If I meet a child who doesn't have the fathers name I assume they are not his children or that they are not married.

I cant see many men forcing their partner to take a name if they really didn't want to but marriages are full of little compromises and it doesn't seem like the biggest sacrifice if youre choosing to spend a lifetime with a person.

I agree OP. I kept my name because it's me. Doesn't bother me in the slightest that I have a different surname to my kids. In fact I quite like my independence from the lot of them 😆

I definitely class myself as (am!) a feminist and a strong woman. I changed my name on marriage because I wanted us all to have the same family name. I didn’t mind it being me that changed, because I didn’t feel that it said anything at all about my “identity” other than a name change.

Also at work, I had no concerns about professional loss of recognition - there are fewer females about, and my first name is relatively unusual; I’ve only this year - 20 years later - started working occasionally with someone of the same first name. So nobody was ever going to get me mixed up. But I know this is a good issue for others, and might possibly have affected my decision.

I still think of my self as a “prev-surname”, as well as (probably more than) a “new-surname”, though I think of our nuclear family and me as “the new-surnames” and with a strong family identity). My side of the family have quite a strong and clear presence, there are more of them as well than my h’s family. Also I’m the higher earner by quite a long way. I don’t know if any of that was relevant- I just knew that I didn’t feel I lost any of my identity at all with the new name. I didn’t feel like I became “owned”. I don’t think anything could make me feel like that. I felt like I added my new family to my identity, and formed a new part of myself that was the “new-surname” family. I don’t feel that our nuclear family is more part of my husbands family than mine, just because the name is the same. They don’t try to claim additional ownership. I’d laugh if they did!

I do recognise though that the surname change can make people feel that way, and that there’s clearly history and good reasons behind that. I also heard, a few years after my marriage, about the “keeping your old surname as a middle name” thing, and I wonder if i might have done that? But I love having a family surname, it doesn’t shake my identity at all, I don’t feel any loss of “power”. And yes it is the result of a sexist society that i think it might have felt like loss of power for my husband to have changed his name. It wouldn’t have ever been something he’d ever thought about doing, and I think it would have felt very uncomfortable for him. It didn’t feel uncomfortable for me because of centuries of tradition- which came from a bad place of ownership then, but for me does not imply that now.

It didn’t occur to me (or DH) that I’d change my name. Our DC have my surname as a middle name. Not for one second have I felt less married, or us less ‘a family’.

@EdgeOfTheSky

FuckingFlumps The default position of a woman taking a man’s name, and the children given his name is a patriarchal tradition.

You can be a feminist and change your name, but changing your name to a man’s is not a feminist choice.

When men change their names to their wives as often as women do, when everyone equally makes a choice based in their options rather than what is expected or what family or social opposition they might face, then it will be a neutral decision.

Yes I know I've acknowledged that it's a tradition but as I've said you cannot know that they changed it for that reason. I'd be pretty cross if someone assumed I'd changed my name because that's what was always done.

I could just as easily have chosen a new name related to no one at all. However I like my husbands name so chose to use that rather than think of a new name.

It's odd to assume these days that a women didn't make a conscious choice about what name they would use.

My maiden name was difficult to spell and unusual, a clear link to the father who looked on me as a possession. I’ve changed my name on each marriage and finally back to the name my DC share.

I only changed my passport as I'd heard it could be difficult travelling with my DCs who have my husbands name. Now they are older I have changed my name back in my passport to my maiden name (which was easier than I thought it would be).

However two of my DCs think it's outrageous that they have dad's name not mine and one is actually considering changing their surname to mine.

I wasn't actually bothered which name the DC had, as my husbands name is extremely rare and likely to die out I thought it would be nice if they took his name.

@PraiseBee You realise at this time pretty much no one could own property, because we all lived in such poverty?

To claim a woman couldn't own X is meaningless.

It's the same with voting, only men owning property could vote before 1918 meaning very few men could vote also.

I've been married twice, have kept my name and also gave my name to my dc.

My Dad actually encouraged me to keep my name and also asked if he could not 'give me away'
Fat chance I would have let him but he's a great father!!

It's very interesting/ telling that lots of times people mention changing to have the same name as potential children. Why is it that children can't take the mum's surname, and then if men feel strongly about it they can switch? Seems a non-sequitur that women must change if they want to match their kids.

I was just thinking the exact same thing!

[quote CBUK2K2]@foxgoosefinch Because to most people it's tradition, its about showing a commitment and that it's a serious life choice. It shows the joining of two families.

Why do lots of women want to wear a big white dress and have an over priced party?

One of the most depressing things I've header around this is that the man and children should take the mothers name so when they got divorced the children wouldn't have to change their names.[/quote]
Changing one’s name wasn’t originally either a tradition, or to show commitment, though. It was a legal convention/compulsion that derived from male ownership of women. Women had no legal personhood after marriage until very recently, in historical terms - they were subsumed into their husband’s legal personhood. It wasn’t until 1881 that a married woman could even legally own property as a person in her own right.

I don’t care about lots of “traditions” - and I definitely don’t care about a wedding and a big dress! No problem if you do! There’s no reason why others have to, though.

My daughter has both mine and her father’s surnames together and it’s never caused a moment’s issue, at school or travelling or anywhere else.

Most people change it so they can have the same name as their kids. (If they have any)

Err - you can do that without changing your name - me and ex have one child named after us each, eldest has his surname, youngest has mine. I was expecting it to be a problem, but it's not even registered as an issue (except for one slightly longer questioning session at immigration coming into the UK once)

[quote CBUK2K2]@PraiseBee You realise at this time pretty much no one could own property, because we all lived in such poverty?

To claim a woman couldn't own X is meaningless.

It's the same with voting, only men owning property could vote before 1918 meaning very few men could vote also.[/quote]
None of that is historically true.

Surely in most cases a woman's birth name is from her father so don't see how it's some big statement to keep a maiden name.

Of course it is feminist to retain your name and identity. Taking your husband’s name is a perfectly legitimate choice but it is in no way a feminist choice.

So keeping a name that may have come from an abusive, manipulative, narcissistic father is a feminist choice but choosing to change it to match that of a man you love and respect isn't a feminist choice?

You can choose another surname at any time by deed poll, or even create a new one for both of you on marriage - this is common amongst young people in Sweden, for example; and I know a few young couples here who have done that. There are lots of other countries that have different naming conventions.

How does changing your name mea you loose your identify, its a chose people make and something they do because they want to , you don't suddenly become another person , I would struggle to remember all the surnames of people from school that were not in my friendship group, when you have kids you then have to give them a surname, so does one of the parents then loose their identity because their child can onky have one name , yes you can double barrel but your child then will struggle.
Its a choice no one is forced to do it