why do people assume me and DH would have the same last name?

[vanfurgston]

its been happening a lot recently. and there is always an Oh wen i correct them. i thought we had moved past all that

vanfurgston, I live in the States, recently married, have a career started well before meeting hubby, and most people assume that I did NOT change my name. I did change it, because it mattered to DH, as he is the last of his family, and I wanted to have the same names for all kids and family.

So I find it strange that you deal with the opposite! I will say that if I had known how pesky and bothersome it is to get a name changed, I may not have done it.

I did experiment with combining our names, but the results were laughable! One version sounded like a medical condition.

Also, I see no problem with changing ones name if that's what you want to do.

Also, people tend to assume you do what they would do, or did. That's where most assumptions come from, I think.

And where I live, it's very Spanish, and it's common for couples to combine their names.

hmm Toxic they all points worth pondering. i also remember jemima khan saying she changed her name so she cud have same name as her childern. and it only recently occurred to me, that the kids cud have had a combination last name.
such is the yoke of convention its difficult to shake isnt it

and i completely agree with your statement "Also, people tend to assume you do what they would do, or did" that hadnt occured to me

people assume so because the majority of married people do have the same surname. You might not like that idea, but it is a fact. I would consider myself a feminist in lots of ways, but I chose to take my DH's surname as a token of us belonging together . It does not signify that I belong to him or have lost my identity. He could have equally have taken my surname. No big deal.

vanfurgston, just if you decide to give the kids combined names, that you consider how they will get alphabetized. Often in English, we use the last listed family name, but in Spanish speaking countries it's the first listed family name that's most significant. Gabriel Garcia Marquez is properly listed under Garcia.

But remember, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet!

Ok I am going to throw a real spanner in the works. I use both dh's surname and my surname and we are NOT MARRIED!! Just depends how I feel. We consider ourselves married for all intents and purposes. Any occasion that has an official form I will just fill in the part where it asks if you are known by any other names. So I use "my" name on first bit and "his" name on also know as.

This is a really interesting discussion. I'm wondering what those of you who kept your last name once married have done about your children's last name ( if you have them). In my experience of friends who keep their name, they have all given the children the father's last name, which in someways seems to highlight the gender inequality. If you give your child a double barreled last name, what do they do if they then get married? I'm not sure that keeping the name you got from your father rather than changing it to be the same as your husband's and children's is a feminist act but I am interested to see what people think.

Toxic my children r all hypothetical :) but i do ponder a lot on the hypothetical problems they may face
one option is to come up with a mixture of the names. my DH didnt have his dads or mums name as his last name, his is totally unique as are all his sibs but they are still a very close family.
it does seem unfair to me that the names of men are immutable and dnt change unless they want to change them (p.diddy)

marriage shd have no bearing on names IMO. i do consider it a feminist thing lilo and thats how i honestly feel
but i may b wrong

I'm not sure that keeping the name you got from your father rather than changing it to be the same as your husband's and children's is a feminist act but I am interested to see what people think
*I can never quite get that argument. To my mind, my name is my name. Ok, so I may have the same surname as my dad - and there's another feminist argument there - but most men also have their father's surname and no one ever refers to it as their father's name and suggests they should change it.

We are not married and the boys have dp's surname. I did go through a phase of not liking this but ds1 is almost 7 now and it doesn't seem to matter. I gave ds2 a middle name from my family so he is named after both sides. I suppose there's no ideal solution really.*

people assume so because the majority of married people do have the same surname. You might not like that idea, but it is a fact. I would consider myself a feminist in lots of ways, but I chose to take my DH's surname as a token of us belonging together . It does not signify that I belong to him or have lost my identity. He could have equally have taken my surname. No big deal.

It's interesting how many people say that, but I've yet to meet a man who did take his wife's surname.

Vanfurgston - we have two children. Eldest has my name, youngest has dh's.

it may not be feminist to keep your father's name or any other given birth name.
but to change your name on marriage to that of your husband's, to my mind, thats not feminist at all.
where i come from and a generation previous alot of girls have/had two female names i.e. the sir name is also female but on marriage they still change/d their names to that of their DPs.
its decreasing now, and i thought that was a step in the right direction.

Yama that sounds very reasonable to me

"people assume so because the majority of married people do have the same surname. You might not like that idea, but it is a fact. I would consider myself a feminist in lots of ways, but I chose to take my DH's surname as a token of us belonging together . It does not signify that I belong to him or have lost my identity. He could have equally have taken my surname. No big deal."

Same here. But we did get married over 30 years ago. In all honesty it didn't occur to me not to take my husband's name as a surname. I just find it easier this way as all of us have the same surname. Having a double barrelled name wouldn't have worked as my maiden name was three syllables and my married name is two. Also 30 years ago double barrelled names were considered pretentious.

I only know three people in RL who haven't changed their surnames, but admit to making the mistake of assuming they have taken their husband's name simply because the vast majority of people I know still do.

i dnt agree with the argument of belonging
and i have also never met a man who changed his surname

I know of two men who changed their surnames. One was a colleague of a friend (who double-barrelled his name, as did his wife) and the other was the ex-husband of a friend, they blended their names together to make a new surname when they got married. They both kept the blended surname when they divorced and indeed his subsequent wife and son both took the blended surname I think, certainly the son did because my friend used to get calls about him occasionally from people assuming she must be his mother.

It's an area with no right answer, but fortunately now people can more-or-less please themselves with little more than the inconvenience of people assuming they have a different surname to the one they actually do have (or, as I do occasionally, spontaneously be unable to find a colleague in the phone book at work because she has 'vanished' without trace). To me it would have been utterly bizarre to have changed my name when I got married; I would have no more considered it than I would changing my first name at the same time. Of course it is my father's surname, but to me it is mine. Equally many of my friends did change their name, considering the feminist and practical implications of so doing. Entirely their choice.

I wonder what people's reactions would be to a man who change his surname to his wife's. I think it happens occasionally in aristocratic circles but that's about it?

I know of a couple (friends of a friend) who both changed their name on marriage, not to double-barrel or to blend but just to a name they preferred. I think it did have a family connection but I don't remember what already.

His name was a teasing-in-the-playground kind of name, (similar teasability to being called Gaylord) so I can see why they didn't want to keep it for their children, but I don't know what was wrong with changing just to her name.

People assume it because most women do change their name upon marriage.
It's therefore reasonable for them to assume this as the default position while accepting that the women may correct them.

It's no big deal, is it? Just correct people when they do it. Don't see what the fuss is about.

Nobody has to change their name, anyway; there's absolutely no reason to do so. It's personal preference.

I really don't understand changing name to partner's if unmarried, though. If you like traditional marriage-y stuff, get married.
Also, legally it means nothing. People aren't somehow legally married because they call themselves their dp's surname. I'm not suggesting that the people who have said they've done that here think that it does so please don't think that I am. Not at all-but there are people out there who are so dumb that they think that it does.
Just like a woman who is married who keeps her maiden is as married as one who takes her dh's.

I can understand feminism not liking marriage because of it being a patriarchal institution and robbing of women's individuality, but all this fuss over something that:
women don't HAVE to do as regards marriage itself e.g. being given away, taking dh's surname, I really do not get.

As for being an argument for registered partnerships, if these partnerships are legally same as marriage, why have two systems i.e. marriage and registered partnerships because people have problems with things they don't have to do like changing their name?

It's marriage itself that is oppressive to women from the point of view of certain feminists, not what women are named. Getting upset over what your name is is like getting upset over what the colour the ties on your straitjacket is.

My brother in law changed his name to my sister's and if they ever had children they would go by my sister's last name. For them it is not a feminist issue but due to a very poor relationship with his family and a good one with our family.

I guess I think about it as a family name and when I got married my core family shifted from being my mum, dad and sisters to me, my husband and any kids we had. For me it wasn't too much of a question as I always thought my last name was awful, except for the fact that it is unusual and will probably not continue, which if the kids get the partner's surname it doesn't anyway.

Yuma's approach is an interesting one, what would you do if you have an odd number of kids? Also I wonder if there would be any subconscious division along name lines, I find it hard already with two girls to not divide them up the same way each time, I am still bfeeding dd2 though maybe that will become easier.

I agree that there is no perfect answer but my mind if you were aiming for gender equality you would come up with a completely new name for the new family, with both parties letting go of their historical connections.

"It's marriage itself that is oppressive to women from the point of view of certain feminists"

Only if you are married to the wrong man. I don't feel oppressed.

Just thinking ahead. How will the way women don't change surnames, men changing to their wife's name or even both changing names entirely affect future generations researching their family trees?

it wouldn't affect family treeing as far as i can figure it. your name is your name - your parents name are their names on birth certificates - it is what it is.

marriage is oppressive as much as any long term relationship is - is isn't by virtue alone oppressive

I no expert on family trees but it strikes me that it has always been much easier to trace people who do not change their name (men).

My fil feels a strong connection to his name and has traced it back centuries. To me though, his failure to feel connected to those relatives who do not share his name but are equally related in terms of blood is laughable.

I'm not saying that marriage is oppressive for everybody that is married, but for those that feel that it is oppressive it's laughable (in a hollow kind of way) that what your surname is matters.
Similarly, if a person is in a happy marriage, I also can't see why it's such a big deal unless for professional reasons, of course.

Change it or not. It's just personal preference at the end of the day. You're still married- for better or worse- whichever way you look at it.

know of two men who changed their surnames. One was a colleague of a friend (who double-barrelled his name, as did his wife) and the other was the ex-husband of a friend, they blended their names together to make a new surname when they got married.

I know a couple of men who've double-barrelled with their wife's name. Their wives are also double barrelled. I don't know any who've taken their wives name as the only family surname though. I've often heard people say "we just wanted a family name. We could just as easily chosen to both have my name." No one ever does though.

girls myname, boys hisname!

In these days of blended families, lots of kids have different lastnames to siblings - I have a friend who changed her name on marriage each time - 4 so far, and 3 lots of kids lastnames too!