My mother has always been called by her middle name, and her legal signature is firstinitial middlename, as in E[lizabeth] Anne Consolation. This causes FAR more confusion than the fact that H and S have his last name and I have my own. Some entities insist on calling her Elizabeth A rather than E Anne. She has to remember how to sign things for them, and when I call pretending to be her–she’s hard of hearing, and I do some business on the phone for her-- I have to remember to respond to Elizabeth affirmatively.
My S’s teachers always seemed to know I was his mother. I volunteered a lot, or maybe I was too assertive, LOL. I didn’t care if little kid’s called me Mrs. X. (Besides, my name is unusual and although actually very simple, people find it difficult to pronounce as a result.) Older people I might correct, then I’d add “but don’t worry about it” with a smile. Honestly, it is so common for couples to have different last names that fewer and fewer people seem to make that assumption.
There is no longer any stress around Mrs or Miss, thank doG. Ms was invented to take care of that, and is always correct!
LOL about Ms. We lived in Germany in the 80s and I could not convince them that Ms. was now a correct usage and that in fact since I was married it was now the more correct usage. In Germany traditionally Frau was for married women (and originally only for upper class women!) and Fräulein for unmarried ones, but in 1972 they switched to just calling all adult women Frau. The “lein” is a diminutive ending so it comes off as particularly demeaning.
I don’t think anyone at my kid’s school had trouble figuring out how to match up parents and kids. There were probably more kids with at least one unmatching parent name than not.
I moved ther about three weeks after getting married. They though it was okay for me to have kept my name, but I was obviously a Frau. I had no problem adhering to German norms when we were speaking in German, but I don’t think I convinced many of my friends that if they were speaking English that Ms was the word to use if you didn’t know someone’s marital status. Or even better start off by saying, “How would you like to be addressed?”
I changed my name when I married 37 years ago. I wanted to keep my name but felt a lot of pressure from H’s family. Kept my maiden name as middle. I really wish I had not changed my name. Everyone would have gotten over it.
D was married 2 years ago and never considered changing her name. SIL is from a South American country so no one in his family thought that was unusual at all.
It’s interesting (to me at least) that this thread seems not to reflect demographic trends that are very strongly evident in my real-world social circles. I am in my early 60s and got married in the early 80s, as did most of my contemporaries. (Some have been married a few more times since.) In my age cohort – the people I knew in high school, college, law school – hardly any of the women changed their names when they got married. None of our close friends who are married have the same last name. (A cousin exactly my age is married to a hard-core Evangelical. She changed her name. But she hated her father so much, she changed her first name – which resembled her father’s – too.) When our kids were in school (and we knew the other parents), there would usually be only one or two same-last-name parents in the class. Mothers with different last names were the rule, not the exception, and siblings with different last names (and the same parents) were not uncommon.
One very good friend from college did decide to change her name when she married – her family was very traditional, and her husband was meaningfully older than she – but the change didn’t stick. I don’t know what her passport says, but if you call her office you have to ask for her original name or they won’t know who you are talking about.
However, with people as little as 5 years older or younger, and especially people 10 years or more younger (i.e., people now in their 40s and early 50s), the custom of a woman taking her spouse’s name seemed to have come roaring back. Most of the women I know from that age cohort use their spouse’s last name if they are married. Millennials, however, seem to be swinging back the other way. Some of my kids’ friends and friends’ kids are changing their names, but most aren’t. My daughter-in-law isn’t. My daughter won’t.
My wife has a lot of brand equity in her name. The only people who ever called her by my last name were her parents, who did that way longer than made any sense. Of course, a good portion of the world, especially its skilled tradespeople, call me Mr. Her Name. And I answer to it. Our kids have my last name and her last name as a middle name, without a hyphen. It has been fine.
One funny thing is that my clan identification is strongly matrilineal. I consider myself a member of the M___ family – my maternal grandmother’s maiden name.
I wonder how much regionality, location (urban/suburban), as well as educational levels and political leanings come into play. I got married in the 80s and not changing one’s name might not have been the majority but was quite common and a total non-issue.
@doschicos That is a good question. For my part of New England, wealthy, suburban, educated, liberal, churches with rainbow flags, it is rare to keep a maiden name. I might know five to ten couples that have separate names.
Anyone else in New England notice a trend? We have @NEPatsGirl (Mass) and @CTmom2018 (CT?) as name changers also.
I got married in 1985 and kept my last name. My sister and sisters-in-law, one married in the 1970s, the others in the 1990s, all took their husbands’ last names. We all have or had careers. However, I was the only one of us not working at the time of the marriage. I couldn’t work overseas and then was in professional school upon return to the United States. One thing about my profession (and perhaps others) is that it’s very difficult to change the name under which one is licensed (such as after a divorce), so this is yet another reason I’m glad I kept my name.
Low income, factory town I grew up in- women almost always took last names.
Liberal city I live in now- few change their name.
Most of my friends from undergrad have kept/are going to keep their last name.
Mr R & both of his brothers all got married within a year of each other. One SIL & I kept our names, the other took her husband’s. 1st SIL and I are very liberal and not religious. Other SIL is very religious, moderate-conservative, and believes in very traditional gender roles.
Education really seems the determining factor around here- at least more strongly correlated than other things.
I’m a New Englander and have lived most of my adult life in the northeast. I find it fairly common, @gearmom, more so, however, among urban than suburban, and more so among working woman than SAHMs.
As an aside (far from scientific), the woman I know who have kept their maiden names are all still married to their original partners. Can’t say the same for those who changed their names. Kind of interesting to think about…maybe has something to do with less traditionally defined gender roles? :-? :-??
Every person I know took their husbands name and the vast majority of them are still happily married to their original partners. No second marriages.
Correlating a happy marriage to what name to keep seems a bit of a stretch to me.
@doschicos So it looks like urban, secular, older, previous children, more popular to keep maiden names. Where we are with working educated mothers, the trend is to take the husband’s last name. If you look further into the study, Catholics tend to change and Jewish women tend to keep. That is probably a big factor in our area. I bet the urban also has a higher Hispanic population which could also contribute based on custom?
I was often called “[daughter’s name] Mom.” I didn’t mind being my daughters’ property for awhile!
@gearmom, I’m nonreligious, was born in a small town but live in a suburb, was married young, and am the third child in my family but was the first to marry.
