<p>Not a parent, hope that I won’t be one soon, but here goes:</p>
<p>My mom took my dad’s name when they married, then went back to maiden when they divorced five years later. She remarried, then kept her maiden name - said that’s what she wanted to do all along. Much better marriage. SSA gave her all kinds of trouble when she married - “You need to call us when you change your name.” Her response? “I’m not chattel. I’m keeping my maiden name.”</p>
<p>Would love to have my grandmother’s maiden name, which goes back to 1613 (Virginia).</p>
<p>I kept my maiden name; it’s very much the norm where we live, so no confusion/repurcussions for the kids…not that I expected it to be a problem.</p>
<p>Took H’s last name which was close to my maiden name (same initials!). My parents had 2 daughters, so my sister and I gave our boys our maiden name as a middle name. It works well as a middle name which is good because I use it too. My first and original middle name go together sort of like Pegyy Sue or Betty Jo, so it’s been no problem. I use a nickname in person.</p>
<p>In 72 it was “acceptable” to keep your maiden name where I lived, but H was in the military and we were going out of the country. The keepers of the records just couldn’t deal with me keeping my maiden name so I changed it. </p>
<p>I have friends who kept their maiden names but most of them had already established themselves professionally when they married.</p>
<p>I thought it would be easier to keep my maiden name in 85 because of career and I grew up in the 70’s. I carried a copy of marriage certificate for yrs because lots of places refused to accept that I could be married w/o my h’s last name. I guess we just lived in the sticks.
I registered at hosp w/h’s last name so that son would be listed w/the correct (dad’s) last name when I gave birth.<br>
Work=maiden. I qave up and started going by married name when son was in middle school for all social functions. Wanted passport to have H’s swiss name (we were going to Germany & I read Swiss better than Hispanic last name) but the postal emp wouldn’t let me do that w/o driver’s license in Swiss last name. Driver’s license & Passport is Mom Maiden Husband. SS is still maiden. Taxes are maiden husband. Mail is both. Sometimes I forget who I am. Hi, this is LA Swiss, ooops This is LA Brown.
If I had it to do over I would have just changed all at once. But now after over 20 yrs in career-just keep revolving name.</p>
<p>MIL did not understand but she is gone :(.</p>
<p>Married name is Swiss but most think son & I are Native American.(brown skin, name has an object in it). Once someone thought husb & I adopted son and took his last name.</p>
<p>Well, when my husband and I married, I didn’t change my name, and he didn’t change his. When people get weird about it (surprisingly often), I just tell them I didn’t change it so as to confuse people about who I really am. We gave both kids my last name as their middle name and put all three names on most forms, which meant no one ever questioned that I was really their mom. Strangely, though, lots of teachers assumed that DH and I were divorced because I used a different name. </p>
<p>My MIL (now deceased) had three dozen glasses engraved with DH’s last initial as a wedding present. Over the years, she gave me many monogrammed gifts. All of them with DH’s last name. My mother, OTOH, told me that if I changed my last name she’d disown me. (Not a big deal–the inheritance was ultimately $518.) </p>
<p>These days I have fun with people who ask about my name. “No, I didn’t change my name—and neither did my husband.” They usually sputter something about “but he’s not supposed to” and I just keep asking them “why not?” until they grind to a halt.</p>
<p>Out of curiosity: when a woman keeps her maiden name, and then her daughter marries, does she keep her maiden name? Thus having the same last name as her father, but not her mother or husband?</p>
<p>Let’s see, I kept my father’s name. My mother kept her father’s name. Her mother took her husband’s name. My sister kept our father’s name; my step-sister kept my father’s (not hers) name. In my family, the mothers’ surnames make regular appearances as middle names. For example, my sister’s D has her great-grandmother’s maiden name as her middle name (it was also our father’s middle name).</p>
<p>I took my husband’s name. It is much more unique than my maiden name (in a good way), although phone solicitors seem to have difficulty pronouncing it. Also, I was really, really tired of being at the beginning of the alphabet - now I’m close to the end.</p>
<p>W took my last name. Both Daughters took Mom’s maiden name as middle name.<br>
I wish I could claim I thought of it at the time, but it occured to me later that there was a way of naming the children that was equal to both sexes even though the children will continue to get all of their mitochondrial DNA from their mothers. Each of us would carry a family name from both parents. One name would represent the whole line of our female ancestors through our mothers but not their male ancestors and the other name would represent our male predecessors on the father’s side. If a woman bore only sons her matrinymic would die out with the sons who carried it. If a man had only daughters his patrinym would die out with the girls. I realise this has only a little to do with the question posed, we still haven’t settled what the daughters will do when married. But the matriarchal name would continue into her children. And wouldn’t it make life easier for the geneologists?</p>
<p>Maiden name. I don’t go out of my way to correct people, especially people who know me through my kids, who call me "Mrs. Husband’s Name, but I always call myself by my maiden name. It’s who I am. (My husband didn’t seem to mind either way, but my parents and in-laws were mildly scandalized.)</p>
<p>Maiden name. My parents never believed it was legal not to take my husband’s name but I just saw no reason to change it. I did have trouble registering to vote at the start (had to explain to the SF registrar of voters that neither Miss nor Mrs. worked. They wrote in Ms, which was still new to the language at the time) and an insurance agent once announced at the top of his lungs in a huge office: “It’s ok, I’ll just explain we’ve got a women’s libber here!” when there wasn’t enough space to write both our names on the form.</p>
<p>About 10 years ago, my husband’s travel agent booked a European trip and wrongly assumed I shared my husband’s name – frantic calls and, a half hour before leaving for the airport, I was digging through my closet for a copy of our marriage license to show along with my passport.</p>
<p>In my mother’s family and in the southern area where she was born it was common to skip a step and just not give female children middle names. They could then easily become upon the believed to be inevitable marriage “Julie Finch Lokspelder” or whatever. Seemed to make sense. So my parents continued the tradition with my younger sisters, both born in England, and on the appropriate blank for middle name my mother wrote “None”. That’s right. For years and years their middle name was None, usually pronounced by school authorities as containing long vowel sounds- as in No-nee. Drove my mom bug eating nuts.</p>
<p>Mi esposa. Same. Born in Texas with no middle name so , first- maiden- my last name. Daughter -ahah! First (my mom’s first name)- Middle (my W’s mom’s maiden name)- my last.</p>
<p>Husband’s name. My father died when I was five. Mom remarried, and her husband legally adopted me. The marriage was a nightmare, mother divorced and remarried again, but I was still running around with my first step-father’s name through adolescence, and I wasn’t very fond of him.
I was actually happy to give up that name! New name, new life.</p>
<p>Interesting discussion. For initials, I prefer to use first initial, middle initial, married last initial (maiden name gets dropped). For legal documents I write the whole shebang, though.</p>
<p>Because my maiden name is unpronounceable to nearly everyone who’s ever seen it, I’d looked forward throughout my youth to marrying someone with a conventional, simple last name to acquire. Because my maiden name is unique, I’d also always assumed I’d keep it as a middle name to state in combination with my married name. I ended up marrying a man who could give me everything I was looking for in a husband except a common last name. Saying my maiden name followed by my married name would have been quite a mouthful, and so I decided to go just with my husband’s last name. At least his name is pronounced phonetically!</p>
<p>What an interesting thread! I took my husband’s name when we married in the 70’s, and have had it for 30+ years, much longer than I had my maiden one. It wasn’t really a big issue for either of us, or our mothers (not that we would have cared what they thought!) It certainly isn’t because I’m old fashioned either because I’m far from that! It’s funny because most of our close friends married shortly after college, as we did. I don’t know what kind of coincidence this is but every couple where the wife took her husband’s name has now been married over 30 years. Every couple whose wife kept her maiden name has divorced. Interesting. Of all of our current large circle of friends and colleagues, I can’t think of one couple where the wife has kept her name. I find this intriguing because they represent many age groups, professions, levels of education, etc. There doesn’t seem to be any common denominator.</p>
<p>I’ve always had the name I was born with, through my first marriage/divorce and my current marriage. I was first wed in the late '70s and had a devil of a time explaining to people that I was associated with that guy who had a different last name. It was never a question when I married my now-husband: it’s my name, it’s always been my name, I’m keeping it. He considered changing <em>his</em> name, but we both decided it wasn’t necessary. Our oldest S was 4 months old at our wedding; I’d decided it was no big deal to give our kids their father’s family name. If someone refers to me as “Mrs. Hisname”, I know they mean me and I answer, I’m not pedantic about it. And to associate myself with my kids, I introduce myself as “Diane Lastname, Greg Hisname’s mother” and it never seems to be a problem. People are pretty used to it now, unlike 30 years ago when I had to have an elevator speech to give to people who didn’t get it.</p>
<p>I’ve never thought to call it my “maiden name”, but I guess that’s what it’s formally known as, huh?</p>
<p>My last name is actually my EX-husband’s last name. When we were married I was very young so it really wasn’t too difficult to change it. I was named after my mother who has horrible credit, so it was a relief for me to be able to remove her records from mine (it is amazing what even a last name change will do). When we divorced I was fairly well established and didn’t want to go through the credit reporting discrepancies again so I told him that I was going to keep it. He didn’t care, but his mother was upset–oh well, she was upset that we were married in the first place. ;)</p>
<p>I hadn’t really thought too much about it until my bf and I moved in together the end of last year. The other day we were at the vet’s and she automatically called me Mrs “bf last name”. I didn’t correct her because it really didn’t matter, but even though I know we will probably marry someday I don’t know if I’d want to take his name. Of course I wouldn’t want to keep my ex’s name out of respect, and I don’t want to go back to the maiden name so I guess I’ll just make one up and have it legally changed. ;)</p>
<p>Input from a child: my mom kept her maiden name but my parents went further. I have both of their last names with no hyphen (which I think is some south american custom and which nobody can manage to spell or pronounce correctly).</p>