<p>Prompted by a confluence of some minor bumps clients of mine have recently experienced and recent strips from the comic(?) “Cathy”, a completely trivial question for the female spouses on the board:</p>
<p>Do you go by your maiden name or take your husband’s “married” name?</p>
<p>One would have thought this would be a non-issue at this late date. But as TheMom points out, it’s hardly a hyper-feminist issue either…it’s still a choice between two men’s names, your father’s or your husband’s.</p>
<p>TheMom: maiden.</p>
<p>Side story: when we were engaged, I found myself alone with my mother in-law to-be, who asked me what I thought of TheFutureMom keeping her own name. When I said that, if the tradition were reversed, I wouldn’t want to change my name, she said, “Of course not…your whole identity is wrapped up in it.” !!!</p>
<p>Me: Husband’s name. Though I love my maiden name and am proud of it, I also love my short, easy-to-pronounce married name that fits in the signature line on the check blank! I did enjoy looking up people and businesses with my family name on a trip to Ireland. I also like having the same name as my kids.</p>
<p>Maiden name. Lot of family pride around the name. And mother-in-law had already given up on me because a) I am not Catholic b) I asked for Dijon mustard at lunch one day.</p>
<p>When husband and I were first married [early 70s], I obtained a court order so that my personnel records at USPS would be maintained in my maiden name. H & I divorced 4.5 years later. </p>
<p>About 6 months after that, we were remarried [to each other]. I’d mellowed quite a bit, and my identity was no longer so wrapped up in my own name. We decided we wanted to have kids, so I figured I’d just make it easy on everyone.</p>
<p>Nowdays, we’re one of those odd families where everyone has the same last name. <g></g></p>
<p>I used to hyphenate my name but it was a PITA plus my inlaws gave me major crap constantly and I was too young to stand up to them.
My maiden name was also my fathers stepfather name ( who was kinda sketchy IMO-) and my father was supposedly planning on changing it to his birth father name- when he died.
My brother actually changed * his* name WHILE he was in the airforce! to our dads- birth fathers name.
So I use my husbands name and so do our kids- it is vaguely scandinavian- jewish sounding and spelled just like it is pronounced!</p>
<p>I was teased mercilessly by some of my more feminist friends when I took my husband’s name…but I didn’t take away mine…I just added his…and use it to introduce myself, but on my card it has all four names: first, middle, maiden and his…everyone’s happy. LOL</p>
<p>I did maiden name for years-- and then kind of morphed into common useage of married name because of kids. </p>
<p>Then I had to “decide” to be consistent with passport, drivers license & social security, family trust docs… So my official name is “First Maiden Married” (no hyphen.) </p>
<p>Seemed like the best compromise but it made me a little sad to “lose” my middle name which is a family name. (I am a rare woman because my original First, Middle & Last name make me a “Third”-- 3rd woman in my family to have that name.)</p>
<p>BUT-- I am a bit subversive because I still vote as my maiden name heheheh! Somehow they don’t care so I kept it there.</p>
<p>I don’t agree that the choice is nothing more than a choice of men’s names: for a woman facing this decision, the fact is that the maiden name is HER name, and has been her name for her entire life, wherever it came from. So IMO to make a change can reasonably be viewed as a significant and, for some, an unwelcome move.</p>
<p>my mom’s married name rhymed with her maiden name. Only had to change the first letter. Caught a lot of flack when filling out forms asking for her maiden name. So no rhyming names.</p>
<p>One of my friends went from Williams to Williams (so no one with the same last name).</p>
<p>Since both of my parents died when I was young, I always knew I would keep my parent’s name no matter what. daughter has first name , my last name , her father’s last name.</p>
<p>oh ya- I did change my middle name to my maiden name but as this part of the country doesn’t use their middle names- it doesn’t make difference in day to day and I expect when I go to Missouri this august ( !) I won’t correct the relatives when they call me by my firstnamemiddlename.</p>
<p>If I ever get engaged again (third times a charm) I insist that the wife takes my last name. The first two agreed to before we spilt up before actually getting married. I read somewhere that some husbands were taking the wife’s name. If any of my buddies ever did that, I would beat them to a pulp, and then tease them the rest of their lives and point it out to random strangers whereever we went in public. What is wrong with tradition?</p>
<p>Husband’s, divorced, then maiden (after which I knew I’d never change it again). Boy, was I wrong… After kids, I lost all names and just became ______'s Mom.</p>
<p>Husbands name. I really wanted to keep my maiden name but it was a hard to pronounce, easy to misspell name. My husbands name on the other hand is recognizable, easy to spell but not that common. I’m also glad we never did the hyphenated name, especially once we had kids. As someone that has filled out countless class lists and phone chains, those looong hypenated names are so much trouble. The best solution was friends of ours that combined their names to make a new one. (okay, this was the '70’s) Even though it’s true that a “family” name isn’t carried on, I like the idea of two people combining to become one.</p>
<p>Maiden, officially. When we married in the 70s, our friends were mildly scandalized (why get married???) and although I originally thought I’d change it, I decided not to (ah, peer pressure!) </p>
<p>Now I am very glad I kept it although H’s name is quite similar and people are always “helpfully” changing the typos they think they see or scratching their heads when they think they heard it wrong. MIL always referred to me as Mrs. XXX YYYY until D (at perhaps age 10) told her that mom always gets annoyed when she sees your letters addressed that way! But I generally use Mrs. YYYY when calling someone as D or S’s mom, unless they know me. I did jokingly threaten H for a while that since the first child took his name, the second would take mine. But never made good on it.</p>
<p>To each his own but for me it was a no-brainer. Maiden name. My mother-in-law did not acknowledge my choice for decades. She finally started using it after we had been married 25+ years. When my Dad was still alive he made the occasional sarcastic remark. My mother still doesn’t get it. Geez. </p>
<p>My husband and I debated hyphenating when our daughter was born but we concluded that it would be unwieldy. We decided that her middle name would be mine and her last would be my husband’s. When my daughter’s friends were small many of them called me Mrs.“Husband’s name”. They got the hang of using my real name post grammar school.</p>
<p>Kathiep - Before getting married we discussed a combination name as well. We had a group of friends who came up with some pretty interesting combinations for us at a party after a couple of bottles of wine. When my husband was young (and still believed that the political world was filled with honorable people) he thought of running for office…one combination of our names was Honest. That would have been fun.</p>
<p>My daughter recently mentioned that she is considering taking my last name after she graduates from college. I wonder how that will go down with the M-I-L. ;)</p>
<p>Maiden. Distincitive. Dates back to 1642 arrival in Maryland.</p>
<p>Plus H has a very simple last name; let’s use “Smith”. I have a very simple first name. I would have gone from a distinctive name to a name shared by thousands.</p>
<p>When we lived on Riverside Drive in New York, there were 5 “Tom Smith’s” on that street alone! We constantly took calls for other “Tom Smiths”.</p>