Amal Alamuddin has changed her name professionally

[EhricLovesTheBhrothers]

I'm actually disappointed. Her choice blah blah but honestly. Successful women who change their names professionally always strike me as either stupid or coerced and I'm sure that's unfair I'm not really but honestly why be so committed to the concept of the obliteration of the unmarried self that you allow it to impact on your professional reputation and renown?

As has been said before, societally we seem to have come to a choice as women that we choose to stick with our birth names or change to a new name. And I think its good to have a choice, which hasn't always been the case, but I completely agree with other posters who say for this to be the societal level playing field that I personally would want to see, men should be having the same discussions.

I absolutely guarantee you my Dh was not down the pub with his mates before our weddings saying "ooh, shall I change my name, am I oppressed by a patriarchal naming convention, I just want our family to have the same name" etc.

BTW, the latter arguments of the "single family brand" has always really surprised me. I don't have the same name as my children. They have hugely over-developed antennae for the slightest perceived injustice they could have a good whinge about and even they have never been remotely concerned about it.

I do think they would've struggled with different names in us politics, yes.

"A lot of woman would have relished the opportunity to call themselves Mrs Clooney."

Not me.

buffy. I won't say if I think of that as a demotion or not.

Leaving aside the feminist angle, I much prefer Alamuddin.

Amal Alamuddin sounds much better than Amal Clooney and I think George Alamuddin has a ring to it too.

I changed my name when I married, both at work and at home. I was proud to be married to my husband and to share his name, and to be known as his wife and I still am.

I don't see it as being inferior, anti feminism or anything like that - my name, my choice. If she wants to be known as Mrs Clooney then surely that's up to her, whatever the reasons.

'Also, could we please declare a moratium on a)referring to a woman's birth surname as her father's rather than hers and b)people suggesting that feminism is all about choice so this isn't an issue, anything a woman chooses to do is feminist, there are bigger issues etc'

Sign me up!

So, who, if any of you, chose your own name?

My name was given to me by my parents. My parents deemed it so that I would also share their surname. My fathers surname. The same surname my mother was happy to adopt from my father.

My name was given to me. I had no choice or say in the matter. I've often wondered what the hell I'd have called myself, given the opportunity.

I haven't changed my first name, because that (I believe) would hurt my parents feelings. I changed my surname when I married because I love my husband; I liked it; it meant that our children had the same surname as their father and their mother and therefore identified us as a family. (Most probably the same thought process that my parents and my husbands parents went through.)

But changing my name didn't change me. Changing my domestic circumstances changed me. But I don't remember my name changing how I was perceived in any part of my life.

What Voyager so eloquently said.

Plus Chunderella's final paragraph.

I did both. Kept my maiden name professionally and my husband's name for general use. I didn't see it as a feminist issue just a practical one. Same name as kids for travel/school etc and existing name to make sure I wasn't forgotten professionally. The Doughty Street (her Chambers) website has crashed since the story broke.

Chunderella. None of us did chose. But not many of us hit our 18th birthday & then change our name because we hate it. Or change it just because we can. To many, changing your name due to marriage is the first opportunity to think about it. Whether we decide to change it or not is our decision. It doesn't change our DNA or how we should be perceived as women.

I'm Mrs Cockhead and so's my husband!

The argument that you don't choose your name anyway, you get it from your father etc., is specious because what is unequal here is the inequality between men and women on marriage.

Both a man and a woman get given a name at birth, usually their father's (though increasingly not necessarily). Both a man and a woman generally have that name for their whole life unless they change it as adults.

So it is unequal that when a man and a woman get married, the man's name is overwhelmingly likely to become the family name, while the woman changes hers. His name also "just" came from his dad, he also didn't get to choose it. His name is equally irrelevant to anything. Why then do women tend to change their names and men don't? That inequality has nothing to do with the fact you are given a name at birth, and everything to do with the existing unequal power balance. Just because that unequal power balance is often not overt, stated or enacted through force, doesn't mean it isn't there.

I'm Ms Cockhead actually.

This is what i find confusing sometimes about feminism or women's rights, it is her RIGHT to be called whatever she bloody well choses! it is not the right of other women to dictate as to what another woman should call herself. It doesn't matter wether we think its stupid, the name 'Clooney' is stupid or whatever else that is her prerogative, some women just get tired of their maiden name and like a change.

We've spent hundreds of years being dictated to by men, now it seems we must suffer being dictated to by other women.