Giving baby HIS name - losing my feminist card?

[Artemi]

Hi there, posting as genuinely unsure what to do re: future DC's surname.

DH and I both kept our surnames on marriage, which was important to me for reasons of feminist principle.

DH offered to take my surname but I refused as I'm not close to my family (particularly my dad who is a total arse) and it's not even a particularly nice name
We did consider both double barrelling but frankly cba and we never got round to it

Anyway, I feel like on principle I "should" give DC my surname.

However I genuinely think his surname is nicer, and it makes sense for DC to share the surname of the supportive extended family

I'm not totally opposed to double barrelling but feel like I'd be doing it purely on principle.
One of my friends mentioned giving DC both surnames (no hyphen) so my name is on official documents but can be dropped for day-to-day use if wanted (is this a thing?) or to give one surname as a middle name (his would work well as it can be a boy's first name)

DH is happy with whatever I choose.
I'm scared if I give them a clunky double barrelled name I'll regret the actual name, but if I give them the nicer surname I'll constantly feel defensive about making an "unfeminist" choice

In hindsight, I really wish I'd changed my surname by deed poll before marriage and could then happily pass that on to future DC. I thought I'd made peace with my surname, reclaimed it as "mine" rather than my difficult father's, but evidently not ..
😁

From comments I've had, both in real and life and on MN, some women think changing their name is a sort of protective factor against divorce - I've been told that not changing my name shows I'm not committed to the marriage and women often say they changed their name because they wanted to be 'one family' or 'one unit' with the implication that you're less so if you have two different names.

would be yet another woman who has taken her husband's name, and I want to be a small drop in the changing tide away from that assumption
__
I don't understand this argument when you are using your father's name. Surely that is also carrying on the patriarchy? Or even more so especially as you don't like the name and don't get on with your father. The name you are using is no more 'your name ' than your husband's name would be. Less so in fact because it would be your choice.

@GOW56 "The name you are using is no more 'your name ' than your husband's name would be. Less so in fact because it would be your choice."
The husband's name is also his father's. But the woman's name has been hers since birth. All her achievements and accomplishments and experiences are attached to the name. And, crucially, giving it to her daughter will chip away at the patriarchal hegemony.

Your surname is just your fathers, fathers, fathers (etc) surname. It's not a win for a woman to keep 'her' surname. It's just another man's name albeit our fathers. The only way if you care enough to break the cycle is invent a whole new name imho.

I see the feminism angle as each person in a relationship has the freedom to choose what their own last name will be- and for there to not be any expectation that the surname of the child must be the mans.
It would be ideal if that choice was socially expected, and over time it would become common for children to have either name. Or both names.

But that doesn't mean individuals have to overcorrect and lose that element of choice just to try and even up the percentage of children who will carry on their mothers name.

My partner had a nicer name, with a simpler spelling. Mine is difficult in the UK and I don't like double barrelled names. So the best choice was to give the children his surname. The choice was there and even if it aligns with the patriarchal tradition, it was still a choice- and the choice is what makes it feminist for me.

I said further upthread that hyphenating wasn't an option as either way made a clunky name that no one would want to be saddled with. It doesn't run smoothly off the tongue either way round and would be annoyingly long. As I said yesterday, going with his surname wasn't a feminist decision but I don't pretend it was, sometimes going with the patriarchy is just easier.

Just to echo @Precipice : feminism is about women's liberation, not choice.

This is true. Half of marriages end in divorce- I have no idea why any woman would change her name on marriage- it’s so old fashioned and patriarchal.

I think it's because as a society we have a romanticised notion of families all sharing a surname - this is considered the norm. So even if a woman has misgivings about it from a feminist standpoint, when it comes down to the decision of whether she changes to his or he changes to hers, she's far more used to the idea compared to him who's probably never even had to consider it, and there may be fear that his family would take it as a deliberate snub whereas nobody would question it if she did it, so it just feels like the path of least resistance.

I agree that it would be great if there was a shift in societal norms, but I understand why individuals would decide against being one of the trailblazers.

I do wonder what the brothers of women with difficult, hard to spell, clunky,embarrassing last names do!

I surprised people when I changed my name to my husband's, but my reasoning is if I have the choice of having my father's name or my husbands, I'd rather take the name of the man I chose rather than was lumbered with. Same goes for my children

Your name isn't your father's name though @WideOpenSpaces its yours, it was given to you. Same as your husband's was given to him, yet he gets to keep his. The logic just doesn't add up.

@ExtremelyDetermined I see where you're coming from.
But for me, I don't have a connection to my fathers family and I do to my husbands. Feminism is about choice after all

I relate to a lot of your post. DP has a huge extended family, who I love. All the women changed their name, so each generation has scores of “Jacksons” (not their name but you get the idea). It was very important to me however that DS has my surname. It makes me a little bit sad sometimes that he’s not a Jackson by name when the “Browns”(my family) are a bit rubbish. But it doesn’t change his relationship with the family and I still refer to his “Jackson” qualities or him being a little Jackson when he’s fulfilling a family stereotype. But I admit I get a big feminist kick out of him sharing my surname.

Give one of the surnames as a middle name so both are in there.

@CurlewKate
If it helps, I had a last name that was hard to spell and pronounce in the UK and I have three married brothers.
One kept the name and his wife also took it.
One took his husbands name (it was the better name) and their son also has that name
One kept his name but added hers on too, his wife kept her name and the children have her name.

Pretty sure the wives all preferred those 'ugly-sounding names' to their birth names. Each woman's birth name is ugly only compared to the man's birth name.

I've never understood why people are so opposed to creating a fresh new surname and family line - one that their children can have as theirs. Seems like the easiest thing to do if you're already happy to go through the process of changing your name to the man's name. Both of you may as well have a new shiny name but we know men typically 'like their names' and are attached to them, as opposed to women.

Hmmm, I wonder why...

I don't understand why your name was your father's name, but your husband's name was his own?

If I could have been bothered with the faff of name changing, I'd totally have made up a new one. But it's my name. It has a story and a history, and that story is part of how my children came to be born.

Not incidentally, my husband has a very normal, common British name (let's say Davies) while I have a weird, clunky, partially anglicised non-British one. I was never going to pretend that my children are 100% white-bread Davieses and deny the 50% that has a more convoluted and interesting history.

My surname is only one generation old. My grandfather had the more obviously foreign version, my dad's version is partially anglicised. I've been to the tiny nothingy village in Eastern Europe that originally gave my ancestors that name sometime in the early 19th century.

my daughter travelled with me, and it was an amazing thing to see her standing in the place where half of her surname originated, 200 years ago.

Keeping our own names, as women, is part of what tells the world that we are people on an equal footing to men, that we don't lose our identities and subsume ourselves to a man when we marry him, and that our daughters' stories matter as much as our sons'.

I agree with you and your posts on here so far @rumbusiness My post was more for those who're happy to change their names but seem to object to an entirely new name which would still rid them of the plague of their surnames and past memories/family relationships.

Personally, I'm in favour of a totally new name with a new family - starts afresh and leaves all the energy of the past behind, no baggage, etc. Also removes the seemingly hard decision of whose name the children should take.

Second choice is each to their birth name and keep their identity.

Also agree with @CurlewKate

If you plan on having another child you could give one your surname with your dh's as a middle name and then switch it around for number two. That's what I did.

Personally I think children should be named after their mother, it seems practical to me for a myriad of reasons.

The narrative around names is so fascinating. For example, people talk about a name being "lost" if a family only has girls. As if women have no permanence or history- they are just transitory beings who vanish when they die, while men's lives echo down the generations. My mother became quite a successful artist late in life, and chose to paint under a name we didn't recognise. Turned out it was her mother's maiden name....

I've got a kiddo with my surname as surname and dad's surname as middle name. I've also got a kid with both surnames as surname but no hyphen who I refer to with my surname. It makes no practical difference. My first child had dads surname not mine and the assumptions made about my lifestyle and the personal questions I have been asked because we do not share a surname are noticeable.

The thing with double barrel that put me off was what happens if they have a child with a double barrel partner and then my grandchild had a quadruple barrel surname?