Soooo... should I change my name?

[MamaMaiasaur]

I got married a few weeks ago and I am in an absolute quandry as to whether to change my name.

For

1. my husband has a nicer name than me
2. it would mean a lot to him
3. I would have the same name as my children (but I don't really mind having a different name)

Against

1. It goes against all my feminist principles
2. I can't imagine having a different name
3. It is unusual in my profession to change your name

its now getting difficult with dd as she announces herself as ***, she then asks daddy whats your name, he replys the same surname, then it comes to me and i just say hifi. there is only one male to carry our family name on (maiden) and i felt very strongly about keeping mine.

its now getting to be a bit of a palava tbh. i do worry when taking dd out of the country, adopted, mother not the same name.

i cant carry on family name so wtf was i thinking.

change it.

But why do people assume that children have to have their father's last name?

From the pov of your children - it is a hell of a lot easier at school/college when they get cheques from a mum with the same surname as you - or (stupid as my tutors apparently were) they assume you haven't paid for the textbook/trip/t-shirt, but oh look, we have one spare for some random unknown surname

I would go for the nicer name tbh and sod the rest of the options

Seeker - I gave the boys their Dads name as I felt all the odds were stacked in favour of the mother, so it was one way of trying to even things up. And, if I'm honest, having my own name, different from DH and DC has helped me keep my identity as me, not wife/mother.

Hiya, havn't read whole thread but just thought I'd throw my opinion in too! I changed my name. I regret it. I did it for dh, who I love massively, but now looking back I wish I'd kept my own name and made the LO's double-barrelled. I feel like having only my DH's name has not properly acknowledged the wonderful heritage I have from my family.

As I said, my children are hyphenated - and it has never been the slightest problem - even in a very socially mixed primary school. And as a family, the fact that we have three last names between us hasn't ever been a problems either. Actually the dcs love the fact that they probably the only people in the world with thie last name!

"Not really sure what the point of getting married is if it is not to become a unit." - I agree, but I don't find it necessary for it to be a unit identified by a single surname. I have no problem with people who call me "Mrs [dh's surname]" but I grew up in a family where, from the age of 7, my mum had a different surname from me because that's when she remarried. It has made not a single jot of a difference to me, and so for me these bonds do not relate to names. But other people are different and perfectly right for their own situation - there's no 'right' answer to this, only what is right for your family.

FWIW, my life would be simpler with dh's surname, once in a hotel in Sweden I was booked in with the memorable surname "Thickling" - most amusing! (And not correct).

I just have my grandmother phoning me up saying "now who do I make this cheque out to?" "I haven't changed my name, so the same person as before" "I find that very complicated" "Oh dear. It isn't". !

no. don't.

it's a mad idea.

it causes the dying out of hundreds of fabulous surnames.

a total waste.

let alone the whole 'ownership' debate...

When I'm asked 'is that Mrs Hissurname' I tend to tell them, truthfully, that Mrs Hissurname is dead. DP's mother died two years ago.

And oddly enough when I ring the Inferiorettes' school and say Hello this is Motherinferior, Inferiorette Mysurname Hissurname's mother, nobody sounds even remotely confused.

cue Philip Larkin...

Marrying left yor maiden name disused.
Its five light sounds no longer mean your face,
Your voice, and all your variants of grace;
For since you were so thankfully confused
By law with someone else, you cannot be
Semantically the same as that young beauty:
It was of her that these two words were used.

Now it's a phrase applicable to no one,
Lying just where you left it, scattered through
Old lists, old programmes, a school prize or two,
Packets of letters tied with tartan ribbon -
Then is it secentless, weightless, strengthless wholly
Untruthful? Try whispering it slowly.
No, it means you. Or, since your past and gone,

It means what we feel now about you then:
How beautiful you were, and near, and young,
So vivid, you might still be there among
Those first few days, unfingermarked again.
So your old name shelters our faithfulness,
Instead of losing shape and meaning less
With your depreciating luggage laiden.

but isn't your maiden name just another man's name - your dad's?

if YOU want to, then do it! i agree with Slur.

i changed mine, but my principles belong to me, not my name.

MI, I'm with you. Why should I change my name? It's MY name. I find the whole thing completely baffling.

The 'it's easier on the kids' argument is specious too - my mum married my dad and took his name, then remarried and took my stepfather's name, meaning that from when I was 10 or so, we had different surnames. Ought she to have kept my father's name so that she and I had the same name? What name, then, should she have given to the son she had with my stepfather? In the end, it made not a blind bit of difference to me/my school/whoever that we had different surnames - my only thought was that she could've saved herself a heap of trouble by sticking with her own name in the first place.

I double barrelled, which is common where I come from.

So I am mrs mysurname-hissurname.

There's also the what do you do when you get - ahem, gasp - divorced issue, of course, as Loveandsqualor's case illustrates.

A friend of mine changed her name first marriage round (actually she swapped surnames with her husband, for reasons too complicated to go into here), stuck with that surname when they divorced (especially since he had her real name) and then added her second husband's name, and now she's divorced that husband is back with just Husband Numero Uno's name.

I'm not married and ds has both our names. Bit of a mouthful, agreed, though so far he is known as my surname since HV and nursery staff etc generally meet me first.

I've never really understood the changing of names from a feminist viewpoint since I have known plenty of hardcore feminists - one very well known- who HAVE changed their names upon marriage.

My fathers surname is his mothers too, for complex poss feminist reasons.

What I find so depressing about this thread is the automatic assumption by so many that what is normal is by definition "natural". Try restating the proposition by reversing every gendered word. Thus, "Should I change my name to his?" becomes "Should I change my name to hers?" then ask yourself if this sounds wierd. If so, then I suggest the original proposition is wierd.

"when we get married, we do become someone else, men and women. We are no longer the independant, single carefree person we were before ......... a family with one collective surname."

Fine, but why is that surname almost ALWAYS his? Why? If he's so keen on becoming a "unit" with one surname let him change his and see just how deep that conviciton goes.

And the original poster said that she worried about not having the same name as her children. The assumtion that any children would automatically have HIS surname. Again, I ask the question, Why?

ummmm, is this a way of looking at it:

there's a value in having the children identifiable as being from the same tree (so that they don't inadvertently choose each other as marriage partners, i guess)

there's advantage in the wife taking the surname of the husband so that others know whose clan they are interacting with (and thus whose clan to give hospitality to and at what level)

there's advantage in sons having the same name as the father so that the estate can get passed on and the name can be kept alive (coats of arms, heraldry etc)

there's advantage in the 21st century female taking his name and giving it to the kids if she wants to underline his position in the family (which certainly gives benefits in terms of 'happy man don't stray')...

any more advantages?

why don't you double barrel

cycleboy1957 - I got the impression that the OP had the children already and that those children already had the OP's DH's surname, hence it was a statement of fact, rather than a prediction, that if she kept her own name she would have a different last name from the children. I may have got the wrong end of the stick entirely, mind you.

(personally, I gave DS DH's surname because (a) our names sound silly when double-barreled because one is a noun and one is an adjective (b) I think his surname is nicer, aesthetically (c) my surname is a bugger to find first names to go with (I can't think of any that I like with it, frankly)).

DW didn't. Bolshy cow.

I'm with expat on this one

I remember the editor at my newspaper expressing surprise that I was changing my name, I said since my name actually came from a bloke who left when I was one, dh's name seemed preferable since he had been around for eight years already

having said that I hated my maiden name, it was quite regional and no-one could spell it once I moved out of Yorkshire

I struggled with this a bit when I got married. Felt I ought to keep my name, but knew that it might be a hassle re having different name to my children etc.

But then I thought "hang on, I like my DH MUCH more than I like my father" who is a bit of a git and who I see v little of. I wondered what would be so fabulous and feminist about hanging on to the name of a bloke who frankly was as patriarchical (and fairly abusive) as can be.
So I changed it

Actually what I SHOULD have done was change my name to my MOTHER'S maiden name in my late teens (when I briefly considered doing so), and had I done that, I would have kept it. But I didn't, so there you go.

None of which helps you. Unless of course you think your dad is a prat, in which case I may have given you something else to think about