I agree about the professional people using their name.
Funny that the answering service wouldn’t call for specific doc; there are lots of MDs married to other MDs. However some of that is caller laziness. I would pull their chain too.
I have a MD friend who did keep her last name, but is regularly known as Mrs J (H’s name) - so I introduce her as Mrs B-J (so they realize she is the children’s mother, but she has her professional name).
Once my friend (who kept her maiden name) was pictured with her children in the newspaper and they mis-identified her because I guess Linda couldn’t get through to the photographer that she is the children’s mother and she kept a different name. In the South…
I will never wrap my head around the idea that a name makes a family unit “complete.” To each their own of course but I have this weird idea that it is love, not names, that make family.
But then again I’ve disowned some people with my surname so…
And btw I’ve even been told, to my face in the 2010s, that I didn’t change my last name because I don’t really love him, think it’s not going to work, etc. Even by his family. No one has said a word to him about not changing his last name, of course.
I can give a list of reasons about why I didn’t change my name but they’re all excuses. It really came down to: I don’t see the point in it and I like my last name. The ritual has always seemed weird to me and I decided that at a very, very young age- well before I started dating. Again, this is what was right for me and I don’t give a hoot about what anyone else does.
Also the different last name from your parents thing. Really, that is an issue in this day and age?? My sister grew up living primarily with her mom, step dad, and brothers and was the only one with a different last name. No one was confused when she introduced them as her mom, dad, and brothers. At least half of my friends did not share the same surname as their parents due to divorce and remarriage or other things.
Then again I live in an area where we introduce people by their first names. I love that.
I don’t use my maiden name as part of my name on Facebook because it’s not the name I use, and negates my actual middle name. But I do have it listed as alternate name “Jane Doe (Jane Smith)” so if someone isn’t sure which “Jane” I am, they can click on my page and see it. If they don’t want to bother, we probably didn’t know each other that well in the first place.
I interviewed a candidate about a year and a half ago whose first name was hyphenated and his last name was two hyphenated names (both parents had hyphenated last names and gave him both)
Think: Jon-Paul Miller-Ward Nichols-Freedman.
Interesting discussion, but I’m just popping in to remind everyone of the reason for starting this thread. No matter what name you choose/adopt, stick with it. The exact form. Don’t use your middle initial on one form of ID and your whole middle name on another. If you change your name upon marriage, think about whether you are going to use your middle name, maiden name, initials for either, or none of the above. And stick with it, precisely.
Hmm, if a man changes his last name, what is his original name called? “Maiden name” doesn’t seem to fit. “Birth name”, maybe? I sense the potential need for some paperwork to change official forms…
@3bm103 Re: post #37-really? “Seems to me to be more of a commitment to one family unit?”
My one DIL, also a professional as is your DIL, did not take my son’s name. He was perfectly fine with that. Perhaps he had his mother as a reference point. I’ve been married almost 38 years, only having used the name I was given at birth. Family unit intact. Imagine that.
I added my husband’s name and usually go by first name “new” last name. I sign legal documents first/middle/maiden/last which sometimes gets confusing. Pay checks from pastor job made out to first/last but moonlighting job is made out to first/maiden/last and I am that way on their schedules and other documents. Tax forms and drivers license are first/middle initial/maiden initial/last name.
I’m amused at how angry some people seem to have gotten by my opinion. It’s just that: my opinion. I was glad to take his name and feel that it makes a difference to the level of commitment. You don’t have to agree. I’m not insulted that others seem to think I’m wrong and crazy.
P.S. My sons would also have been fine with their wives keeping their names. As I would have been, had I been entitled to an opinion. I was actually amused that two professional women in their early 30s took such an old fashioned stance. Glad they did not succumb to the peer pressure to do otherwise but did what was right for them.
I still think going into marriage with the idea that keeping the maiden name means they won’t have to change back does not reflect a very positive attitude on the change. Now, if you keep it for whatever other reasons make sense to you, that’s fine.
Where I work, we have two African immigrant families. Nobody changes their names when they get married, AND each child has their own set of unique names. And these are people from a very patriarchal country. But somehow women get to keep their birth names intact, which honestly I think should be the norm. As mentioned above, women taking their husband’s name was more a sign of ownership than “love”. You’d think in this day and age women would be encouraged to keep their own names instead of bowing to an outdated tradition.
If that’s what you meant, I would agree. But that is not what I got from what you wrote.
I remember a secretary at the company I worked for when I got married questioning why I wasn’t changing my name. Didn’t I want people to know I was his wife, yadda, yadda, yadda. During the time I knew her, she went by three different names: her first married name, changed it back to her own name upon divorce, her second married name. Who knows how many she’s had since then! Meanwhile, it is 30 years later and I am still married to the same man. And still have my own name.
When S was born, I figured he would have H’s last name, although my name is much less common, and “dying out” in the US since my F only had daughters. We’d picked out a first and middle name, and H insisted on adding my name to it. It sounds very distinguished when read firstname MI MI lastname, but due to the near impossibility of inserting two middle names on forms, S has pretty much dropped my named, which was his second middle name. I don’t know where that stands legally. I’ll have to ask him what it says on his passport.
It means a different level of commitment to take your husband’s name? O…k. And we wonder why women in so many workplaces are still treated as second-class citizens. Interesting that women don’t demand a “different level of commitment” from their husbands.
The level of commitment I have for my H has nothing at all to do with my name. It has to do with my love and support when he’s going through tough times, just as his “level of commitment” has to do with his being willing to support me as I change my diet for health reasons. It has to do with how we raise our daughter. Our names, or lack of changing them, aren’t even part of the equation.
If anything I see the peer pressure to take the husband’s last name as very strong. D is constantly correcting wedding vendors who seem to assume that she will change her name. All of her HS classmates ( except one) who have married so far have made a big show of " I’m now Mrshusbands name" and don’t get that she is not. FWIW I read the New York Times wedding section every Sunday and many of the women there change their names. And most have professional careers.
Genealogists tracking paternal lines might not be too thrilled, but I see people keeping their " maiden" names, hyphenating, or combining their names to make a completely new one.
I originally hyphenated my name, but because it was very cumbersome, I changed my middle name to my maiden name, by the time we started having kids.
My sister changed her name, and my brother changed his last name to our fathers birth fathers name.
While he was in the military no less!
Our fathers parents divorced while he was very young and when his mother remarried not long after, he was raised with his stepfathers surname, although it wasn’t clear if he was actually adopted by his stepfather. I barely remember even meeting his birth dad, and stepgrandpa actually kind of creeped me out, so I don’t have an emotional attachment to either name, and Ive shared the last name of H for over 30 yrs. I have heard of problems when you don’t share the last name, but I don’t think that is a reason to change it or not, necessarily.
My brother’s reasoning for changing his name was that Dad had always wanted to change his name back to his birthname( which was German, rather than English). Dad died when he was 45, before he got around to doing so.
While my MIL made a fuss when I originally hyphenated my name, she barely blinked when D opted not to change her name when she married last year.
We all can evolve!
I think it’s silly to say the simplest thing to do is not change it. Every member of the family having a different name isn’t simpler. If that’s your preference it certainly does no harm, but it’s not any simpler. Again, unless it has career ramifications.
I just don’t have my sense of identity tied up in my surname. My identity is in my first name. I felt when I became a wife that I was transitioning to a different person, in a good way, and was happy to have a new last name to reflect that. I don’t look at it as “his” name or him putting his stamp on me, but it did feel nice to be welcomed into his family and to have them be willing to share their name with me. I thought that was a nice thing, just like it’s nice for H to feel like a part of my family in his own ways. If people don’t want to change, I have no opinions either way on that, it has to be what makes you feel good. If you feel like changing your name means your husband owns you, then for heavens sake I wouldnt want you to do that! That’s just not how I feel about it for myself, it makes me feel good. If it’s not what you want, I fully support people not changing. But, really, people have been changing their names after marriage for how many hundreds of years? It is really not such a complicated matter once you’ve decided what you want to do… I don’t get complaining about the paperwork. Getting married was more work than changing my name. Don’t be absurd. If you don’t want to change your name just because the paperwork is such a hassle, good luck buying a house!
Did you actually read what I wrote? I said not changing your name JUST because the paperwork is too complicated is absurd if you expect to get a mortgage and buy a house, because there’s a lot more paperwork for that. Obviously you had very good reasons for not wanting to change your name paperwork aside, not the least of which is that you simply didn’t want to! Don’t look for reasons to be offended.
I didn’t change my name 38 years ago. The night we announced our engagement to my family, we ordered (well, my father ordered) champagne, and after glass or two, I couldn’t pronounce my married name!! My first name starts with J and my married name with Z, and somehow my mouth didn’t make that transition comfortably. So I kept my name and it’s been quite easy. The worst part was making play dates for my kids (who have their dad’s last name) and having to say, “Hi, this is Very Happy. I’m First Last’s mother, and First would love to have a play date.” By the time I got all out they had no idea who was calling.
