Not my surname!

[Trifle]

My partner and I have been together for 15 years, have never married nor do we intend to. Both our boys have their fathers surname and, at the time of their registration had no idea how irritating I would come to find this. From their medical, dental, school, nursery, passport, post office accounts etc etc, there is nothing to relate me to them. As I am the one who ends up taking them to most appointments I have to give their name which is completely different to mine. I have mentioned to my partner how irritating I find this and suggested changing their names to mine but he sees this as a sleight on his manhood. With the benefit of hindsight I would advise anyone to give their children their own surname.

tallulah - I think in your position I'd start sending cards to dh's family with all the wrong names on - see what reponse that provokes (ever the stirrer me )

It was important to dp that our children had his surname as we're not married, it didn't matter to me. I like it though because it's unusaul and people always comment on it and never spell it properly.

I've never had any difficulty with appointments or anything with regard to them having a different surname.

We were told though that if dp and I were to get married we would have to have their birth certificates altered....... seems alot of hassel to me.

Jude- I've been very tempted!

Dp's witch of a mother told him last night that they intend to cut him out of their will (really!!!) if he changes his surname to my surname-his surname (hypehenated) as we've discussed. I've told him he is in increasing danger of this baby getting my surname alone just to send a loud and clear message to her that it is NONE of her business. I'm fuming!

I meant hyphenated. Can spell it, just got carried away with anger!

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Surely the only argument for taking a husband's name is historical. When marriage signified the woman leaving her family home and joining her new husband. She was leaving girlhood behind and becoming a woman.

Nowadays though, very few people "do" relationships this way round, but many still hark back to what is traditional - hence the confusion.

Taking your new husbands surname is symbolic of you joining with him in beginning your life together. However, if you've been living and sleeping together for months or years under different names, then why bother? If keeping your father's name is about asserting your independence then don't marry.

Personally I loved taking my husband's name and getting all my official papers changed. As well as my public vows, it was another way of publicly demonstrating that I was aligning myself with him.

If you think of it as taking on a new coat of arms or flying a flag from your home etc. In the same way that two different countries in battle might fight under a single colour. Or taking on a new football strip after a transfer - the metaphors are endless, but you get the idea.

Until only recently, in the north of Scotland, particularly in the Gaelic communities, it was tradtional to give the female children the first name of the father as well as the surname. I know a few Williaminas, Graeminas and Donaldinas. Similarly, many children are given their mother's or grandmother's maiden name as a middle name instead of a regular name.

bobsmum, that's interesting. Does it account for Nigella and her sister Thomasina I wonder? Bloss, oh these witches do have sad lives don't they? Your grandmother made me giggle though with the photo rearrangement. Not dissimilar to toddler behaviour in some ways.

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I know we're in a bit of a different position - dp and I are both women so can't get married (yet!), so we decided - after many long conversations about it - that ds (and this one I've got cooking!) would have a combination of both our surnames! It's really lovely - ds really is a bit of both of us! Neither of us feels left out (we were going to do it so that whoever didn't get pregnant the first time would contribute their surname, but we then thought it would inevitably leave one of us out).

The only complicated thing is everyone learning it, and the fact that our family now has 3 surnames - mine, dp's and ds's! But I really like ds's combination surname - have even been thinking about changing my name to his! And it's great that baby no. 2 will have the same name as his/her sibling.

IMO, there is nothing wrong with tradition. Breaking up traditional things in todays society seems like a hobby. Lets face it 'things are not progressing'. We are experiencing a moral & social breakdown in society due to dropping tradition. I expect this will have some people up in arms but I can't help thinking that this is true. I was proud to take on my married name, as one person put it 'aligning myself' with my DH.

Thats a lovely idea dot1!We might end up with some quite dodgy ones though if everyone does it.

A friend of mine (a deputy head teacher)has just got married. During the groom's speech, He said. "I would like to thank the new Mrs H for becoming my wife. She will still be called Ms J at school. Not only will this be easier for the children but I do not want my name to be used to strike the fear of God into young children!!"

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I have to say it.......yes. Without tradition we would be, not us as such. IUKWIM.

There have been some dodgy traditions in the past.... Some are better done away with so that we don't have to be the people that we always were IMHO. Not that you should throw the baby out with the bath water either, but some things are better changed.

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The UK is reknown throughout the world for...tradition. Good or bad. Alot of our traditions are the very backbone of our culture. I do not agree with all traditions. Life would be very boring if we all just accepted Just the hobby of throwing them all away seems sad. The US is a country which seems shun tradition as such and comes across as a bit tacky with no structure. TBH, would life be so bad if some of our more recent new traditions such as 'mums having to work to pay mortgage/bills etc', huge impersonal supermarkets taking over the high st shopkeepers, people having child after child and expecting the state to keep them. These are just some of the ways in which I think that tradition isn't such a bad thing after all.

What exactly do you mean by a tradition? Women with children have worked throughout British history - except a tiny minority of very wealthy women. The concept of the housewife is a very modern one, in fact. The High Street is another modern invention - people had everything made in the past, or made it themselves. It was pretty traditional to burn witches - a long history of that! Or for men to beat their wives - a very long tradition that continues to this day. Or for poor people to be put in workhouses and for their babies to be abandoned in the street. I think feminism has done women a huge service in making society rethink 'tradition' and look at equality and choices instead. And hooray for that, I say.

I have an even more complicated surname issue. My dh is of Indian extraction and traditionally when his family marry the wife and children take the man's first name as their surname, but the boys also have the family name (five syllables long and impossible to spell) usually as a middle name. In my husbands case his father made a mistake when registering the name and put the impossible family name at the end so in this country dh has to use the family name for formal things like his passport and his father's first name for everyday usage. As there was a choice of 3 names for me to take on marriage I was always going to have a different name from dh in some circumstances, I decided to keep my maiden name. My name is a fairly cool Irish one, the toughest cop in any cop movie usually has it, so I was happy to keep it anyway. It hasn't been a problem for the 12 years that we've been married so far. If anyone comments I usually just raise an eyebrow and suggest that they are mistaken in whatever assumption they've made.

Things should get more interesting in the future though as we have been approved to adopt a little girl who will keep her current surname until the adoption is finalised, so there will be plethora of surnames for the next few months. Getting through passport control to visit the in-laws in Malaysia should be interesting. I will definitely be bearing all the comments I've read so far in mind when we come to choose which surname to give her at the time of adoption.

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Bloss, Oxford is peculiarly weird in many ways. Honestly. Bonkers as all get out.

Wiltshire, which 'traditions' are you referring to? The UK's history is a melange of all sorts of cultures and traditions. Including wife-beating, workers' organisations, racism, doing the washing every Monday...which one do you want to pick?

wiltshire is the traditions you are talking about women stay at home while the man goes to work.
live off the land

Motherinferior, your comment reminds me of an encounter I once had in Milwaukee. A woman told me 'Oh, you're English. I just love your history.' I found myself thinking, 'Which history? The Peterloo Massacre?, Culloden? Children working down coal mines?'.

Surely no one could describe the US as tradition free? What about creationism? what about the right to bear arms? (clearly not the best of traditions, either of them)