Title and name when married

[Nicknamegoeshere]

So when I marry OH I am remaining Miss Family Name. I'm 40 and divorced, this will be my second marriage.

My mum is shocked at this and says I will be Mrs Husband's Surname. She thinks anything else is "disrespectful".

My in-laws are less judgemental but also just assumed I'd become Mrs Husband's Surname.

The idea gives me the rage!

I know we're going to get cards to Mr and Mrs... eurgh!!!

To all those quoting me AGAIN I was pointing out the whole ludicrousness of all surnames coming from the male line. The OP’s choice always involved a male lineage. It wasn’t meant to be a serious statement in itself.

But being serious, I do think it is easier for surnames to come down the female line. It is easier because, on average, children tend to stay with their mothers and mothers do more caring duties eg. booking doctors appts, passport applications etc everywhere where having the same surname is useful.

So from an entirely practical viewpoint, in general, with families splitting up more, it is easier for surnames to go down the female line.

OP if you are not going to have a family, it doesn’t matter a jot which of your male-line relatives and ex-relatives surnames you have. I would go with the surname I like the sound of the best.

I felt really proud to take my husband's name, but I wouldn't knock any wives who want to keep their own. He did actually offer to take my name, but I preferred the tradition of taking his. I like that we all 4 have the same surname, too. 😊

@AlwaysLatte

I felt really proud to take my husband's name, but I wouldn't knock any wives who want to keep their own. He did actually offer to take my name, but I preferred the tradition of taking his. I like that we all 4 have the same surname, too. 😊

“Proud” is a strange word. Do you see marriage as an achievement?

As for liking the tradition - it stems from women not being considered anything but property. How can anyone like that?!

You can enjoy the tradition of the name change without any type of ownership in the relationship, and ours is very healthily 50/50 with no-one 'owning' anyone. People celebrate Christmas without having to believe in God. But it's a tradition. There are lots of traditions. Yes I was proud to take his name but as I said he offered to take mine and he would have been equally proud to take mine if we had done it that way.

And yes, both DH and I see our marriage as an achievement.

I took my first husband's name as I was ridiculously young and stupid. I didn't even think about it. I am now back to Miss Family Name and I bloody love it!! I am 20 years older and wiser getting married second time around

@Zandathepanda My father is still alive but he is most certainly NOT giving me away!!!! Eurgh!!

My fiancé and I have a daughter. Her surname is double-barrelled both of our surnames.

@Nicknamegoeshere

I took my first husband's name as I was ridiculously young and stupid. I didn't even think about it. I am now back to Miss Family Name and I bloody love it!! I am 20 years older and wiser getting married second time around

I took my first husband’s name (tacked it on, rather than replaced) because he was from a non EU country and we had to do the whole home office, spouse visa, indefinite leave to remain stuff. I didn’t want to arouse any suspicions by not using his name (we were a genuine couple, but perhaps we would’ve just lived together and not married if that had been an available option?)

His name is cooler than mine and even on divorce I liked him more than my father, so saw no reason to revert (especially as it was now my professionally known-as name yadda yadda).

Anyway, you have sound reasons for keeping with your current name (you like it! That’s enough!) and you will just learn to ignore all the mislabelled envelopes.
The names that relatives write really aren’t about you and STBDH personally. they are just about the people writing the envelopes themselves.

One of my best friends sends me cards addressed to ‘Ms firstname, ‘maiden’name-husbandone-two-three’
so quadruple barrelled

I assume it’s her commentary on our friendship predating and existing through all my 3 marriages (she was my witness at weddings 1 and 3)

Hope your wedding goes swimmingly and your marriage is full of love and friendship!

Haven’t RTFT yet but on the subject of making your surname, and your children’s, double barrelled, what will happen if your child marries another person with a double barrelled surname (and wants to follow your example)?
When I was pregnant, I wanted there to be an alternative option to my surname, my partner’s or double barrelled but I didn’t find one. I read about this man’s concept some years later but it would need others to follow suit to make it work.
Imagine, to start, there was a brother and sister surname Smith and a brother and sister surname Jones and they had children with the opposite sex sibling. The surname of the children of Man Smith and Woman Jones would then be Smith-Jones
and the surname of the children of Man Jones and Woman Smith would be Jones-Smith.
Then the children of the next generation would carry the first part of their father’s surname and the second part of their mother’s surname so that the surnames didn’t get bigger and bigger.
So Man Jones-Smith had children with Woman Brown-White then their kids would be Jones-White.
And Man Smith-Jones had kids with Woman White-Brown would be Smith-Brown.

EyesOpening I think you're over-thinking this, they'll just pick whichever two names sound best together for them.

@Pthagonal

EyesOpening I think you're over-thinking this, they'll just pick whichever two names sound best together for them.

I’m not overthinking, I’m asking (about what two double barrelled surnamed people would do) The other system of new surnames is what someone else proffered and I thought was interesting.

I was fascinated to read the PP about female surnames, like Brewster being the feminine of Brewer, Baxter the feminine of Baker, etc. I had never come across that before.
I kept my own name on marriage in 1981. Partly because I have always been a radfem, and partly because, at the hospital where I worked, I would have become the third doctor with DH’s surname, and the switchboard operator had enough trouble distinguishing which of the first two it was that callers wanted to bleep!

Im Ms Maiden Name, can't subscribe to the overtones of ownership changing name implies. It baffles me that it's still something women choose to do, but there we go. My in laws still refer to me as Mrs DH's surname on cards which can't get het up about, annoyingly on the occasional cheque too, thankfully we can quite easily alter my initial into my DHs so it can be paid into his bank instead!

I wish they would just do away with Miss/Mrs. Men Don't have different titles depending on marriage so why do women?

Personally I'd want the same surname as my children, until they are adults. Then I'd just pick whichever surname felt best for me.

EyesOpen, I've already described my tongue-in-check answer to this upthread. If my sons end up in heterosexual marriages, odds are their partners will just take their double-barrelled now without even pausing to think about it. My daughter is likely to keep her surname no matter who she marries, but when it comes to her children I suspect she and her partner will pick whatever sounds best.

(I'd be happiest if they all just took whatever combo sounds best, or drew from a tradition in which keeping both family lines in names was normal, but as ever on these sorts of threads I'm reminded that my choices are still in the minority. Therefore I suspect that my recently-created double-barrelled name will get passed down untouched a few times, at least.)

I fully expect my kids to go with whatever combination is phonetically most pleasing to them (or pick something else entirely). They will get no pressure from me in any direction (can’t guarantee I’ll write the correct choice on an envelope tho, I already call people by the wrong first names and have even called our dogs, ‘cats’ before now.

I did see your previous comment TartrazineCustard but it does seem a bit strange to me, to start something that would be awkward to continue although obviously your children aren’t obliged to. No disrespect to what you chose to do, that’s your prerogative of course, it just gets me thinking. It does seems more of a common occurrence nowadays so other people might have a different thinking about where to go from there.

I've been married a long time and kept my surname and took his, without hyphenating. I am a Mrs, I attempted Ms early on, but got fed up of correcting people. I do get the hump when getting letters addressed to Mr and Mrs Spider, I certainly didn't take his first name on marriage.

@EdgeOfACoin

I cannot reach back in time and alter the fact that my parents, and their forebears perpetuated a sexist surnaming convention, any more than I can retrospectively make female suffrage happen earlier.

This.

However, as I've mentioned before on these sorts of threads, there are surnames which come from women.

Baxter is the feminine form of Baker.
Brewster is the feminine form of Brewer.
Webster is the feminine form of Webber.

How interesting! Do you know any more?

Can of worms time!

I grew up with a non-British surname which nobody could spell. The record was eight wrongs spellings on letters to my parents in a fortnight.

So for my degree and my profession I used my mother's maiden name, with a deed-poll and everything. It's four letters long and I've never had it said or spelled wrong yet.

Then I married a man with a difficult surname, not quite as bad as my original name but liable to misspelling and mispronunciation even though British, and like a fool I took that name instead of the short-and-sweet. (I was young and foolish, ok?) I kept both surnames on my passport, one for work and one for family things so it would be the same as the children.

After the divorce I would have gone over to the four-letter name altogether, except that the bank seemed totally incapable of actually doing it: they were still saying "yes yes" and not doing it. And I cba to wrestle with the driving licence people; I'll do it when I have to renew it. My passport still has both names and when I asked they said that was ok.

NonnyMouse1337
Strange how the vast majority of men would never take their wife's name and would balk at the suggestion. I wonder why...

And than got I married to a man with a long name that didn't fit on some computer-forms, and uttered a despairing wail. So he took my name. His mother would mind terribly (he was the only one with that name in the whole world apart from her, I suspect) but he has been NC with her for years and so she doesn't know. And what she doesn't know won't hurt her.

I would absolutely hate to receive post addressed to Mrs Hisname and it's one of the main reasons I don't want to get married. If we do get married it'll be for legal reasons only and we won't tell anyone about it.

Out of interest OP - why did you decide to get married?

Good on you OP. Taking a man's name is akin to saying he has ownership of you. Before we married my DH's family just never mentioned me on a card, tho we lived together for over 10 yrs. Since we married they address cards to 'Mr and Mrs HIS FULL FIRST NAME AS WELL AS SURNAME'. Makes me laugh and my blood boil at the same time. They aren't too old to understand - their age group started the Women's Liberation Movement. They choose to see women as appendages to men. Maybe you could ask your mum why this matters to her, in a non-confrontational, interested way. Often people don't fully realise what they're asking of you.

nancywhisky I don't know any other specifically female-derived surnames. 'Spinster' is a female spinner. Also I think 'Tapster' was the name for the person who ran the alehouse, which was often a woman.

The suffix -ster denoted a woman. However, it's use died out and was replaced by -stress, as in seamstress and songstress.

I admit, I'm not 100% sure when the titles Master and Mister came into common usage, as I would have thought that would be confusing!

@carlaCox For financial reasons mostly. I have savings and OH does not, I also have greater earning capacity. We have a new daughter together and currently in rented. The reality is that if anything were to happen to me my OH wouldn't be able to afford the rent on his own.