I'm a newly married man and agonising about what we should do about surnames.

[MaleMan81]

My wife and I got married a few months ago. She hasn't changed her surname to mine, and I've been saying to her that I'm not sure I agree with the idea of a woman taking a man's name. And that's how we have left it.

I think we both would be very happy with this decision if children were never going to be part of the picture.

However she recently became pregnant, and although we are both thrilled and excited, I have started to think that if we are going to become a family it would make us all feel more united if we both had the same surname as our child. My wife agrees with this.

So the options as I see it are - she takes my name, I take her name, or we do that terribly modern thing of meshing together our surnames to make a whole new name!

Now I would like to think of myself as a thoroughly enlightened man who is a feminist, but the problem I'm having is that her surname sounds a tiny bit silly, and is the kind of name that would be gift to bullies in any environment. I don't want to write her actual name, but a surname that would provoke a similar reaction might be something like "Awkwardly". What is worse is that my first name rhymes with her surname, which would give me a name which would at the very least cause raised eyebrows I imagine.

In comparison my surname is more normal with no real meaning, and is something along the lines of "Bailey".

The only meshed version of our names that really scans property actually sounds even worse than her surname, and not something I would want to saddle a child with.

So that leaves me favouring my own surname simply because it sounds more normal, and works better with both our first names. And to be fair my wife has said that she was a bit embarassed by her surname as she was growing up, although now she is fine with it.

I would like to think that if it was her with the normal sounding name and me with the odd name, then I would be happy to change my name to hers. But I'm worried that subconsciously I am simply imposing my name on her as is "tradition" and automatically favouring my own name.

I am also aware that her taking my name is the "normal" and "expected" thing to happen, and is the easy option in terms of acceptance in society. And I must also admit that I am generally a quiet person who doesn't like to draw attention to myself - which is exactly what would happen if I did what is seen (by society at least) as something reasonably radical like taking my wife's name.

I'm just confused and going around in circles now. What have others done?

I know some argue that a child where parents have a different surname, should be given the mothers.

This is because practically a lot of relationships do break down, and most of those children end up living with their mother. So that is the pragmatic solution.

"So surnames are not women's names.

They are men's names that have been given by men either through birth or marriage."

And that is the case in perpetuity?

So a woman who chooses to keep her father's name and pass that name on to her children, that is still a "man's name"?

So my BIL who took his wife's name when they got married didn't really take her name, but really just took her Dad's name because she has no name of her own?

It is a weird counsel of despair to insist that women have no surnames and cannot ever have surnames.

That they can't ever take the name that they were given and make it their own.

I agree that surnames are men's names traditionally. Men were the head of the household so it was their name that was used. Or not used if they wanted to withhold protection.

But if men are no longer the head of the household, why continue with the tradition ? Or is it that men still really are seen as the head of the household ?

And it's certainly not traditional in Scotland yet it's become so ingrained that it's accepted as being traditional. Women always retained their names so much so that headstones, until relatively recently, had women buried as 'Mary Jones, wife of Peter Smith' and vice versa.

Why continue with a tradition that treated women as lesser ? And whilst I appreciate that some make the decision after considering all the options, the fact remains that most simply choose to continue with tradition.

I think the whole family should have your 'normal' sounding surname.
I loved your post, especially your name rhyming with your wive's surname.. Made me chuckle.

"I suppose inventing my own might have been more mine!"

Would it though?

DH wanted to do this when we married, but I wasn't keen because I wanted to keep the name I was known by, the name I had used when establishing myself as an adult and a professional.

The thing I hate about women changing their names is that it makes them invisible to people who used to know them.

On the list of people planning to attend my recent secondary school reunion I had difficulty placing a lot of the women because they had changed their names and so weren't so easily recognisable.

That's a pretty big disadvantage in world that works on the basis of social connections.

If women are going to invent their own names, they should do it long before most of them get married.

To a degree, but assuming a happy and equal relationship between two people it's a level playing field.

Maybe this makes me a bad feminist but I'm sorry, I don't really want to make decisions on the naming of my children based on years of argument rather than making a decision that suited us as a new family. I started at a level playing field. Did we think his surname, or my surname, worked best with our chosen first name? His. End of.

Everyone should just do what they feel comfortable with, whether that's a woman taking her husband's name, a woman keeping her name, a child having both surnames, any scenario.

I have one surname and my husband and children another. It creates no problems at all.

I think it's odd that a lot of people seem to assume that a woman who is confident/principled enough etc to decide that she won't either get married or change her name, which still goes against current norms, then just rolls over and lets the DC have their dad's surname without any discussion about it

I've kept my maiden name. Hell will freeze before I change it. If we have a child they will probably have their father's surname but my surname as a middle name.

We have discussed this; its important to my DH for his name to continue. I would probably rather my child had my name but when it comes down to it, it wasn't so important that I upset him and it just isn't worth the argument over it.

Having looked at both our family histories though I don't necessarily feel its as important as I once did. In both our families there are traditions where other family names have been passed down.

In DH family, there is a very unusual surname beginning with S that 'ends' with a marriage in 1858. This surname is used as a middle name for one of their sons. The surname disappears for a generation, but in the generation after there is something of an 'interesting' family situation where one cousin ends up with his cousins wife (after her husband does the dirty on her). So the illegitimate son, ended up with his grandfather's middle name - his great grandmother's maiden - as his middle name too. His eldest daughter (my DH's aunt) was also given this middle name. So the family name is effectively still 'alive' 156 years after it should of ceased in the family. We are seriously considering using it if we have a child too.

In my own family we also had a similar thing, though it didn't last as long though. The original surname 'ends' with a marriage in 1869. It was then given to one of the children as a middle name but the child sadly died. However my great grandmother revived her mother's name and infant brother's middle name as a middle name for one of her sons. My great uncle died in 1970 and I don't think any of his family retained the name. But thats still 101 years after the name should have been lost.

So I am not so worried about whether my name has to be passed directly. Its entirely possible that we might have a girl - in which case she may go down the traditional route and change her name upon marriage; but of course she still would have her middle name so my name could easily 'outlive' my husband's. And who is to say that she wouldn't choose to pass on a family name through a middle name?

My point is, that family traditions and the passing down of names is always purely down to the marriage and the influence of the mother still could be significant.

Oh, and my father is also related to a scottish clan where passing the name through the mother was done to preserve the clan's very existence in some cases.

I think it is significant that many women, with the benefit of hindsight, or the experiences of inequality that seem to only show themselves after children are born, would do things differently.

There is so much pressure on women to conform, even to the nice things, that we don't seem to question things as much when we are younger. So logically I might know that marriage is a tradition that resulted in women transferring from one man to another as a possession but as a young woman, I was conditioned to want the big white wedding, the romantic proposal, my father giving me away, my husband giving me his name. All of which involve me being a possession to be given away and losing my identify.

Giving my children my partner's name may seem to be a lovely gesture but not when you consider why it arose as a tradition. Why, as a woman, would I want to support such a tradition or not take a stand against it ?

gladvent think Wilcox but not the Wilcox bit. Actually she might have used both names. Either way it's a nightmare as I'm also ginger.

My parents must have hated me

"To a degree, but assuming a happy and equal relationship between two people it's a level playing field."

It's not though, is it?

The happy and equal relationship between those two people doesn't cancel out the massive inequality of the society in which both were raised.

My children have my husband's surname because that's what we decided, but it's not lost on me that most couples like us "just happen" to find it more convenient for the man's name to be used for one spurious reason or another.

I sometimes feel like I really let the side (and my children) down by buying into the new tradition of women having different names from their children and men's names still getting carried on.

Well said JoinYourPlayfellows. Odd argument, where does that stop? By that token the man doesn't actually have his own name either - because it's his Dad's. Oh no, hang on, actually it's his grandad's and was just bestowed on his dad too! Oh no hang on...

If the surname the man got from his dad is then HIS, then the surname the woman got from her dad is then HERS.

But to answer the OP. This is what we did, because we wanted a family name too but didn't want to prioritise one over the other. We used my DH's middle name as our surname, and my surname as our middle name.

(This worked as DH had a middle name which worked as a surname - and coincidentally my surname was also a boy's name - but that was kind of by the by).

So something like:

Me: Petronella Jane John

Him: Ptolemy Forbes Jones.

Me married name: Petronella John Forbes.
Him married name: Ptolemy John Forbes.

So - although his original surname got lost completely from the new names...he got to have a name from his side for the new surname. By contrast, I got to have my original surname in our names, but not to have this as the surname.

It meant we both had to change our names by deed poll, so it felt very equal and as if we really were forming a new family, far more so than the getting married bit. Note that the 'John' is just OUR middle name - it's not a double barrel, the children are just 'Forbes'. (Obv not real names!)

How about something like that OP?

Wow, that's really nice Talkative.

There's another great example of how mumsnetters often "believe two impossible things before breakfast" showing on this thread.

Premise A (on "how to be a feminist-lite threads) "A good way to preserve a woman's last name is to use it as a middle name for the children"

Premise B (on baby name threads) "it doesn't matter how bonkers or embarrassing the middle name you give your children is, nobody ever uses it"

The best bit was that shortly after we changed it, DH was in a big starched-shirts meeting in work - very male-dominated and quite old fashioned industry, think engineering type stuff- and at the end it was 'Any Other Business?' and DH put his hand up and said 'Yes, just to let you know I've got married and so have now changed my name, email will now be... blah blah'. Cue some red-faced splutters from a lot of fiftysomething manager types and rather a deathly silence before the chairman said 'Well - um... how very modern - and the congratulations started. Heheheh!! He is a pesky little feminist is Mr. Jim

I still don't understand why women have the silly surnames and men have an overwhelming urge to not 'lose' their name. One rule for the men and another for the wimmin.

Surely any man who views women as equal and not as possessions will understand that her surname is hers and equally valid, and indeed, more practical as a choice of surname for their child ? It all seems to be women having to accommodate men and their pride or sense of ownership.

Following that argument logically on, join, it's as wrong to give children their mother's name too. Sharing a surname, by many of the arguments on this thread, implies ownership. No parents owns a child; they are their own, individual person. So if I called my DC Jane Thurlow, that wouldn't be her name because Thurlow is my name. We're better off then making up every child's surname so it is at least individual and belongs to no one.

I'm not denying that centuries of tradition have seen women treated as chattels passed from father to husband and that taking a husband's surname was part of that. I'm pro all woman making their own decision on their surnames on marriage.

What does rile me is the unspoken belief under a lot of opinions relating to children having their mother's surname that mother's, women, are intrinsically the better parent. That somehow the children are more theirs - especially when comments along the lines of "I carried this child for 9 months, I have birth to this child, I have more right to give it my name than you do" get trundled out, comments that seem to suggest that men deliberately aren't getting pregnant and having children. My child is no more my child than she is my partner's child just because I was the one who puked for 9 months.

All surnames are possesive. All surnames are ultimately given by a parent. There's an inequality in surnames that no amount of arguing between men and women's names is going to get around, unless children get given their own newly created surname.

X-posting - I disagree that it's "more practical" for a child to have their mother's surname. It shouldn't make any difference, unless you are working from the assumption that it is the woman who is going to cut down on her work and do the bulk of the childcare...?

If anything, society as it stands today would assume that a child with a different surname to their father wasn't that man's child. They wouldn't assume that of a child with a different surname to its mother. So if anything it's more practical for a child to have their dad's surname.

Middle names are great ways to trace family history. I've found them very helpful on numerous occasions. Sometimes if its a surname and others if its an unusual first name thats been passed on.

Certainly without the S surname in DH's family, we would never have unravelled the secret of DH's grandfather's illegitmacy and how his father was his mother's cousin (we have subsequently been able back this up with other evidence).

Middle names can definitely be important.

mother's husbands cousin even.

Brilliant, Jim.

You are right, Join - I suppose I was thinking something anyone had created would be more theirs than something they'd inherited, but certainly professional reputation was a big reason not to change my name.

Which is why it's extra nice both Jim and Mr Jim had to have that professional conversation!

But Thurlow, it's equally wrong for a man to demand that he gets to pass on his surname as a sop because he didn't get to carry the baby and give birth. And the world needs to know it's his child. Or for women to appease men and give them a place that biology dictated belonged to women.

I wholly agree that men are equally capable of parenting but until they do, until they do the medical appointments as the norm, until they do the school enrolment and PTA attendance, until they do the dirty nappies, until they become the SAHP, until they stop abandoning their children, until they stop walking out on their families, then the logical thing is for the primary care giver to use their surname and what do you know ? It still happens to be women that that role falls to as a default.