<p>Maiden (except when ordering pizza because H’s name is much easier to spell).</p>
<p>My wife and I had been married twenty plus years with her using my name when we did the first e-filing of our taxes. They were rejected because her name didn’t match her social security records. She had never really officially changed her name, and legally, she still has her maiden name. So on any documents that have reference to he SSN, like work records and paychecks, she has one name. On sooooo many other documents, she has my name. It’s very confusing.</p>
<p>Maiden name. Partly simply because it is mine- but in any case it would have been too much paperwork to change it. At the time I married, I was already a self-employed professional – so it wasn’t just driver’s license & social security, but multiple credit cards & bank accounts, letterhead, business cards, stationery, directory listings & advertising, state Bar records… and then what about my diplomas and certificates hanging on the wall? </p>
<p>My kids have their father’s last name. I split from my husband when my younger child was 6, so in the long run its just as well that I didn’t take his name.</p>
<p>Husband’s name. It is much easier to spell and pronounce than my maiden name. But I got married at 22 when I was just starting graduate school. If I had already used my maiden name professionally for a long period, I might have kept it (at least professionally).</p>
<p>My MIL never said she didn’t appreciate the fact, but she does ‘create’ a name for me when she writes checks to me; ie Given/Maiden/My-Her Husband’s.</p>
<p>I do tease her about it, but I also deposit the checks. :p</p>
<p>The bank is happy to deposit all checks.</p>
<p>What I found out early on, professionally-speaking, is that there is no LEGAL way to have 2 names - it has to be one or another. So its not so much that some women keep their names “professionally” as that they sometimes simply go by their husband’s names socially. That is, you can have your friends call you whatever you want - and you can call yourself whatever is convenient when you are on the phone to your child’s school – but its a big mess if you are going to try to use more than one name at the bank, and you can’t have legal identification issued under different names.</p>
<p>I kept my maiden name because it was so much a part of my professional identity that I didn’t want to lose it. Plus having only sisters, I felt it was a nod to my Dad. </p>
<p>The complication is that my husband’s first name rhymes with my surname and since he is often involved with my professional life, it leads to some pretty funny combinations, especially in Indonesia where names don’t follow the western paradigm. Here, a person is usually address by his/her first – or, frequently, only name. In my case, it usually comes out Mr. Margie. </p>
<p>The obstacle that I could never get over is how my son’s charmingly polite friends should address me. My son uses my husband’s name so I naturally became Mrs. X, which I don’t automatically respond to. Mr. Margie is much more all-purpose.</p>
<p>in my country women go by their maiden and married name at the same time. Normally it is in the format: First Name Maiden Name of Married Name - example: Alice Smith of Jones.</p>
<p>My kids’ friends always called me by my first name. </p>
<p>Although one of the funniest things that happened to me in my law career was when my son was about 10, and I was waiting in court. The local city attorney came up to me, did a double take, and said are you [son’s name]'s mom?? Turned out that our kids were in the same class at school… but I realized then that despite my goal of preserving my professional name and reputation, in the end, I would be best known as so-and-so’s mommy.</p>
<p>maiden name, though it’s easy to make fun of and I’ve never liked it all that much. Husband’s has way too many consonants and only others of his nationality get it right. Kids have his name, though.</p>
<p>Remember when the skyrocketing “illegitimate” birth rate was such a big flashpoint? One study showed that, in some states, legitimacy was determined by the mother’s last name - i.e., women who retained their maiden names were presumed to be unmarried when they gave birth. Several states followed this practice, including the 3 where my kids were born (MI, CT, and NY). I wondered how much of a blip in the results the married-but-maiden-named mothers were responsible for.</p>
<p>Husband’s name. Absolutely. I’m a very old fashioned kind of girl. When getting married, I wanted to create a family unit, and I couldn’t see doing that with different last names. I also wanted to show the kids that this was permanent and we were a family. </p>
<p>It might be just coincidence, but out of the five girls in our family, the three who took their husband’s names are still married. The two who didn’t are not.</p>
<p>That’s an interesting point. Two of my friends also decided to retain their own names when we were all getting married more than a quarter-century ago, and several did not. The three of us are still in our “starter” marriages, nomenclature notwithstanding, as are most but not all of those who chose otherwise.</p>
<p>SBmom: <a href=“I%20am%20a%20rare%20woman%20because%20my%20original%20First,%20Middle%20&%20Last%20name%20make%20me%20a%20%22Third%22–%203rd%20woman%20in%20my%20family%20to%20have%20that%20name.”>quote</a> [
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</p>
<p>cheers:
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<p>My maiden name was the name of my stepfather, who adopted me at my request when I was 16. (My father had died when I was 10.) My adopted name was also a historic MD family name; they arrived in southern MD in 1651. My adopted father’s mother was also from a historic MD family in which several women shared all the same names through generations. This was very confusing to me as I tried to learn the family history! ;-)</p>
<p>Outside of MD, however, my adopted name was difficult for people to pronounce, it was routinely misspelled, and it was sometimes made into a near-obscenity by those wanted to tease me. </p>
<p>My husband’s name is nearly equivalent to Smith, being the fifth most common name in the U.S. </p>
<p>I sometimes wish I’d kept my adopted name to be part of my sons’ names, since my adopted father had no sons, and there is only a cousin to carry on the name. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, overall I think I did the right thing to give my children an easy name, and they certainly have no fleeting angst over lost possibilities [only mom does].</p>
<p>Well, I kept my name because we already had a name in common–our first name! We did investigate combining our names. (Diptos was the funniest version–a new type of sugar!) Then, we gave our S a variant on our first names but not the same nickname. His last name is my middle name/M’s family name b/c the only cousin to have that last name had to take her H’s name when she got married (by law in the Philippines). One of S’s middle names is H’s and my surnames hyphenated. Confused, yet?</p>
<p>D’s first name is not a variant on our first names but shares the same middle name and surname as her brother. At first, it was difficult for people to understand, but with the increase in blended families, we’re not so different anymore.</p>
<p>Calmom’s post reminded me that when S was in grade school, his classmates would approach me with “Mrs. Ian, Mrs. Ian” (Ian being S’s nickname at that time) because they didn’t know my last name!</p>
<p>Alumother - sorry to hear you didn’t ‘pass mustard’ with m-in-law.</p>
<p>Maiden name. When I was married in 1979, it wasn’t unusual for women to keep their last name. I worked in an office where 5 out of the 6 women had done the same thing (all college educated). It has occasionally been awkward since I’ve had children. A friend in the same situation was at a teacher conference with her husband and later the teacher remarked that it was so nice to see that divorce had not torn their family apart (!). My situation is further complicated in that h’s first name could be male or female. Recently we hosted exchange students at our school and I was talking to another mom who remarked on the variety of families we have at our school. I agreed, and she went on to ask if I’d noticed that there was even a lesbian couple hosting (we had a list of names of all parents). I admitted that it surprised me that people would be so open (I know a lesbian couple in our school and they have kept a VERY low profile, most people think the mom is divorced and single) and then I had to say, “oh, that’s ME you’re thinking of. My husband’s name is —.” She was embarrassed, but I found it to be very funny. </p>
<p>It’s definitely not the norm where I live now, but among the women who did it, they were married around the same time (70’s and 80’s) and are college educated. I find myself explaining to people that there was an era in our history when it was quite normal for women to retain their original last name in marriage. I feel like I’m one of those costumed interpreters at a living history musem (and I guess that’s what I am).</p>
<p>Maiden name followed by husband’s name, no hyphen.<br>
I know of some families here whose kids have different surnames. Half have the mother’s (maiden) surname, half the dad’s surname. Very confusing. Then there are kids whose parents, instead of giving them hyphenated surnames, divided up their own surnames then combined two halves, but in different ways, so that one kid’s surname starts like mom’s and the other kid’s surname starts like dad’s. Even more confusing.</p>
<p>Marite–D has a friend from Cambridge with the half-combined name thing. ONly time I can recall hearing it. </p>
<p>Me? H’s name-23 at the time, wanted everyone to have the same name. D did offer to change his, but his is simpler. I did appreciate the offer.</p>
<p>I “legally” kept both names similar to Marite. My ss card indicates First Name, Middle Initial, Maiden name, Married name. I didn’t want to “give up” that part of me, but like boysmom, wanted to make our marriage a unit (of course that would logically mean that h. take on both names as well, but we never discussed it). </p>
<p>IRS didn’t like it, however. I got all kinds of hassles about 10 years after being married because I didn’t sign documents w/ both names. (They are not hyphinated,). I felt the second to last name could also be considered a middle name, in their eyes, and didn’t see what their problem was, but they kept hassling. Fine…I use both now for legal things, and only his for school and day to day things. </p>
<p>I also had an agent at the drivers license bureau ask me how I did that (kept my middle initial with two non-hyphinated last names) on my SS card. Evidentally she had tried to do the same, and SS wouldn’t allow it.
I wonder what SS does with individuals who have MANY last names (by cultural tradition).</p>
<p>I also wonder about Europeans who often have a plethora of first names.</p>
<p>When the hyphenated name trend started, some comedian (George Carlin? Johnny Carson?) did a very funny bit about what happens when the hyphenated kids get married and have kids. You know, you end up with Billy Smith-Weingrad Polanski-Antonelli and the like. I took my husband’s name, essentially for the same reasons as boysmom above, and because it was just simpler in many ways. I dropped the use of my middle name, and used my maiden name in its place (I think that was fairly common in some areas…my mother, a southerner, did the same.)</p>