Where is it written that you DON'T become Mrs X?

[MsChnandlerBong]

We got married in March. I didn't change my name. We have received MANY Christmas cards addressed to Mr & Mrs Whatever. I didn't change my name.

When I tell people "Oh, I haven't changed my name", they tell me that actually I did. I got married and LEGALLY my name has now changed. Now I know this isn't true but I would love to point people at a piece of legislation or something! It's beginning to irritate me. I am NOT Mrs hisname. I'm, as I've been for forty years, Ms My name. Help me!

sashh

I think it is actually social etiquette, from the past.
ie Technically, married women do not automatically change their names, and have to provide documentation if they want to be known by their married name (ie if they want to amend their passport or bank account). In the past many women would not have had a bank account, or passport, or have a profession, (for which they may prefer to continue to use their own name), and yes, I am going back many years.
So social etiquette is that married womem were address as Mrs DH Initials, DH LastName; A widow was addresses as Mrs DH Initials, DH Lastname , and divorced was Mrs Her Initials, DH Lastname, and I well remember my widowed MIL getting annoyed because she had a letter addressed to her as Mrs (Her Initials) DH Lastname, which to her indicated divorced rather than widowed.
So I suspect it is older women who do this, rather than younger people.
Nowdays, all this is gone, and I try to address everyone the way they have asked to be addressed.

You should see the mess that has happened to my DH who has taken my last name!

You don't change your name, and even if you do, it's still not necessarily your legal name.
Case in point: my daughter has an EU passport from a different country. She married in the UK and took her husband's name. She is officially Mrs Hisname.

Earlier this year she applied for a new passport from her country, but they would not accept her name as Mrs Hisname. She would have to officially change it in that country in order for it to be recognised, a process that takes several weeks.
As she needed her new passport urgently, she applied for it in her birth name and got it.

Good grief Lamahaha what a massive fag!

tobee

Thank you.

Just to add to milveycrohn only very close friends and family would know the given name of a woman, she would be Miss herfather's name, unless she had an older sister then it would be Miss her initial herfather's name.

You could live next to a woman for 50 years and not know her given name.

I remember the registrar saying 'congratulations, Mrs hisname'. (this is many years ago now). And I remember thinking something along the lines of 'sod that!' Changing name is serious wife-work and I don't do that.

on returning to work after the honeymoon one person asked me 'what do we call you now?' - perfectly reasonable request. I said 'same as before', he laughed and that was the end of it.

now in a different area, where I think most people assume we aren't married due to our different surnames. No-one seems bothered!

I suspect that depends on the country. So if it's a country where marriage does not automatically lead to an easier name change, then yes, your dd would have struggled.

In the English legal system, the point is that if you get married and wish to change your name, you can do so with a great deal less hassle and fuss than if you wake up one morning and decide right, from now on my name is Fanny Longbottom and I want all my documents to reflect that change.

And certainly, sometimes this process will be done automatically for you although I think that is happening less. When applying for a new passport from my home country recently, they automatically issued it in my DH's Name. That was a pain, you can imagine....

And whoever said people meant it kindly - bullshit. For very old people it can be difficult to remember and understand but for anyone else it's completely ridiculous that it's so difficult and I simply cannot understand why it's so hard. The only reason I can think of is that these people think that women not taking their DHs' names are wrong. So they're passively aggressively making sure you know that they think you're in the wrong and being a bit silly.

Are they definitely being rude on purpose? When I'm writing a stack of Christmas cards I won't necessarily remember different people's special rules. Like I sometimes forget that one person is Dr X not Mrs X because she's just X to me in daily life and when I am writing Mr & Mrs a hundred times, I sometimes forget.

I kept my maiden name for many years, until we had a child in hospital and it caused lots of low level confusion that I couldn't be arsed with to have a different name to my child. People got it wrong all the time. My old aunties always addressed letters as if I had changed my name, I wasn't much bothered, it wasn't a dig, it was just how they thought letters were written. DH got an Esq. from some, which he always found hilarious.

Are you sure it is a deliberate attack on you?

Yes, it's deliberate. It's because they disapprove. I have been told it's "disrespectful" to my husband to not take his name, so they address me as Mrs Hisname to make a point.

I changed my name as my original surname should have been something else. Both my parents had changed their names and it felt a bit false.
Anyway knowing my views people still express surprise to me that I changed my name. After the wedding it felt like I was constantly explaining something rather personal.

Just a little irrelevant anecdote. My mother got divorced when I was 3, so, 1954.

She was a feminist who had ideas of her own, far ahead of her time; it was she who sought that divorce. She already owned her own house and had a job and was perhaps the first single mother in my country which was rather scandalous as the time. She was also all of 34 when she had me, and recently married, so had held off from getting married a long time.

She immediately changed her name and title back to Miss Hername. I continued to be Firstname Dad'sname.

All through school this was a matter of extreme embarrassment to me because people who didn't know the background assumed I was illegitimate, didn't have a dad, was a bastard or something. I was embarrassed at her having a different name from mine, even though I lived with her, and her being a Miss.

Being a single working mother, and on top of that having Miss as a title -- it was very cutting edge in those days.

My mum always send my Xmas card to Mrs husband first name husband last name.

I have told her I don't like this but she does it anyway, says it's 'proper etiquette'.

We both know it's because she doesn't like me very much and enjoys pissing me off. Of course it's rude to use a name for someone that isn't their name, and they've asked you not to use.

Of course women have been complaining about this for years, also with Mrs/miss/ms but just Mr for men, always always told it doesn't matter, so what, be relaxed, it's 'proper' etc etc

Contrast with another group who wants different names/ words used for them and it's interesting the difference in how society accepts or dismisses the requests.

When I'm writing a stack of Christmas cards I won't necessarily remember different people's special rules.

Never ceases to amaze me how people can remember their friends' names, nicknames and preferred diminutives. They can remember a man's title if he's Dr or Professor or whatever. They can remember how many children they have, usually the children's names, and a pretty good sense of how old those children are. And yet, bizarrely, a woman's surname is just sooooooo hard to remember? Weird.

It is shocking that this still prevails; this idea that it's polite and respectful or whatever it's deemed to be. Feels like we've made little progress since Victorian times if this is any part of society's attitude in 2019.

I didn't change names when I married and just use Ms Myname. PILs found out about six years after we married and went ballistic. 'Isn't our name good enough' type of thing ! Subsequently divorced so didn't need to change anything but I am due to marry again next year and will no doubt have to explain. New in-laws are lovely people though so I am sure they will be fine.

One thing that does drive me mad is that NHS has all my records in Mrs Myname. I've never been a Mrs, I don't know how this arrived on my record and I've spent years correcting it on every form to no avail.

Contrast with another group who wants different names/ words used for them and it's interesting the difference in how society accepts or dismisses the requests.

Many prominent members of that other group are born male. It's no coincidence that requests from that group are heeded whilst requests from born-female wives are ignored.

When I'm writing a stack of Christmas cards I won't necessarily remember different people's special rules.

Have you considered noting the "special rules" in your address book? This is not beyond the wit of woman.

My experience of university fundraising departments (usually termed "Alumni Management" or similar) is that they are very careful to note and respect addressing preferences and will spend considerable money on tools like Raiser's Edge to help them record these things. The risk of annoying a well-heeled and generous alumnus/a isn't worth taking when the consequences are that that alumnus/a may decide they no longer want to give tens of thousands towards that new fellowship fund or hundreds of thousands to refit that lab suite.

If a university can manage this at scale to ensure that begging letters have correctly-named envelopes, individuals can write in their address books. It's not like you are having to remember counterintuitive pronouns in real-time, you are writing in a book once and reading back what you have written.

I’ve received Christmas cards which have been addressed with my maiden name. I am divorced but I’ve not changed my name as I want to have the same surname as my kids. Pisses me off how dare people change my name!!

It's misogyny wallpaper. Really pissed me off. I get lots of post for MIL at this time of year.

It's not just how I'm addressed, but how people sign cards. I would say 9/10 are written by women. But they invariably sign the man's name first, then theirs, then children in age order. Surely if you write the card, your name comes first.

I made a stand. I addressed them all to the woman first, then the man.

OK perhaps I worded it incorrectly about marriage being permission to use the husband's name - I meant that it counts as a legal document of name change (in the UK, at least) if you wish it to be.

If I write Christmas cards, which I generally don't, I start with the person I know the best and everyone else follows on from that.

Have you considered noting the "special rules" in your address book? This is not beyond the wit of woman.

Or have a database and do a mail merge for the envelopes?

Hmm, isn't being his-named as bad as being dead-named or mis-gendered? Perhaps we need to start involving the police, sending them round to see what our friends are thinking when they do that and hold them in custody for a few hours...

Shame we're just too nice.

Aaah, the classic "pesky feminists get so worked up about small things when the world has much higher problems" post. It had to come.

Anyone read the crucible?! An entre play about a man who ultimately thinks his name and what it means is important. But that's a man I guess....