@Mom22039 - I certainly agree with your first point and in fact I do even more than this.
I give full names even though I did (patriarchally 
- I make fun of myself but I do think itâs because of the patriarchy) take DHâs name, and we all have the same name.
Our surname is common, so often there are other kids in whatever group who share it. So I say, âThis is Jane Smith, mother of Bill Smithâ lest there be confusion with Bob Smith who is also on the team.
Our estate attorneyâs practice mailed draft documents to husband and me addressed to Mr. His-first-name Our-last-name and Mrs. My-first-name Our-last-name. At least I was Mrs. Mary Smith and not Mrs. Bob Smith, but I still found myself offended. Iâll have a word about it. I think Ms. should be the default.
@HouseChatte, thatâs coincidental - we should be receiving similar draft documents any day now. Iâll see how the attorneyâs practice addresses the envelope and report back!
Fingers crossed your attorney is practicing in this century, Ms. @MaineLonghorn !
At school I - and all of the other married female teachers - go my Mrs. The unmarried female teachers are Ms. Iâve yet to hear a single complaint TBH - not from kids or adults. Once again, I learn something new on this board (that people are offended by it).
Iâm pretty sure when we signed up we got to select the title of our choice (as some go by Dr, male and female, if they have the degree for it).
I know kids each year ask what I want to be called. I tell them as long as they donât use âidiotâ or âmoronâ or any equivalent, it doesnât matter. They can choose what they like and weâll get along fine. I let them choose what they want to be called too and work hard to memorize their preferences. Sometimes itâs their name or something related to their name. Other times itâs completely different. The most memorable was a young lad (high schooler) who wanted to be called, âBlueberry.â Fine by me. I wonder if he kept that post graduation⊠havenât heard back from him yet.
@Creekland preferences of others donât offend me a bit, and âBlueberryâ is adorable. Like you, I think everyoneâs decision should be used and respected. I guess what bothered me was to have someone not use what I consider to be a more neutral default (Ms. rather than Mrs.) in a business setting.
It never bothered me when people with whom my husband worked used Mrs. They were being polite and professional, I saw my contact with them as based on my being married to him â I actually felt the Mrs. title fit well in the context.
I like both titles, Ms. or Mrs., but lean towards Ms. and have a different comfort zone depending on the circumstances.
Iâm just happy when people spell my first name correctly which really isnât hard at all but most people donât pay attention and get it wrong. 
@Scipio re: #237 - I donât live in the biotech world. But I also donât live in a bubble. A lot of people are still most definitely using Miss and Mrs. And I donât know a single female teacher in our area that goes by Ms! Iâm sure there are some but not any that I know.
Nearly all the female teachers at our school go by âMsâ including me.
My single niece, a 5th grade teacher, goes by Ms. My married sister (not the nieceâs mom) is an 8th grade teacher at the same school. She goes by Mrs. I think that is fairly normal in that part of the country.
My uncle got married in the mid '70âs. His wife kept her name. The kids had their dadâs last name. She started teaching Kindegarten in the 80âs and went by Mrs. her last name, the Mrs. to indicate she was married I guess. I asked her once if she used Ms or Mrs and she said Mrs and that it didnât bother her, so ok whatever.
We have friends who are in their 60âs, each kept their own name when they got married. They hyphenated the names for their kids to moms last name-dadâs last name. (letâs say Smith-Jones) Their sonâs girlfriend (last name White) just had a baby. The babies last name is hyphenated to babyâs momâs last name-daddyâs dadâs (grandpaâs) last name, so the momâs last name replaced the dadâs momâs last name (White-Jones).
My D is unmarried and teaches kindergarten and goes by Miss Last Name. When I help in her classroom I am Mrs Last Name. This doesnât bother my D and it doesnât bother me.
The only request I have is when a family doesnât share a family name they not go ballistic when someone makes a mistake. We had a family at our school (and I happened to work with the husband too) and the wife was Ms. X and the husband Mr Y and the kids X-Y. If you called the kids just âthe Y kidsâ or called the mother Ms Y, she had a fit. Sheâd cross out name tags with a big ugly swipe and write in XXXXX on hers, or if theyâd written Mrs. X-Y (like her kidsâ name) sheâd cross off the Y.
It was really ridiculous. Neither name was common or special, they were just two last names.
My sister doesnât have the same last name as her husband or kids, but she just politely corrects people and says âHello, nice to meet you, but my last name is Z.â If someone uses Miss Z or Mrs. Z, she usually just lets it go.
Women have more choices now than they used to, and thatâs great. I think feminists should pay attention to the fact that men still donât have the same choices. Itâs still very unusual for a man to change his last name to his wifeâs, or to stay home with kids while she works. Girls playing with toy robots are OK and often encouraged, but if a boy plays with dolls, we start thinking about transgender surgery in his future. If the society had moved away from these types of prejudice, we wouldnât be having these discussions, it would have been just a choice husband and wife both make.
Speaking of married women in schools generally being referred to as âMrs.â across the board while single teachers are referred to as âMs.ââŠis this only true with regards to married teachers who changed their names?
I have always thought that the title Ms. is neutral and can be used with any womanâs name scenario, but that âMrs.â is ONLY used with the surname of the man a woman marries when she does change her name to his. (i,e, Mrs. denotes the female counterpart of the man who carries that surname.) I had never heard the term âMrs.â used as a title for a married woman in combination with her unchanged/given surname until I moved here. I always assumed that if a woman is of a mind to keep her name she is also non-traditional enough to not want the title âMrs.â
So when people called me âMrs. inthegardenâ (especially in school settings) I assumed that either people didnât know that my husband has a different name, or that people didnât know (what I assumed to be) the correct usage (Ms. being rarely used at all here) or maybe that people were just uncomfortable using the term Ms. and refused to do it. So it has kind of irked me a little when (usually in schools) people who knew my husband had a different name would still call me âMrs. inthegardenâ though I rarely cared enough to speak up about it. Am I incorrect in assuming this? (Talking about the formal, evolving etiquitte rules of titles, here, not judging whether or not to change a name. Maybe my assumption about this has been wrong!)
@yucca10, on some levels I agree with you (my daughter used to take a lot of ballet and itâs difficult for boys in ballet, for example).
I realize thereâs stigma and SOME roadblocks for men to make certain untraditional choices , in some cases more than for women to make untraditional choices, but a man CAN change his name or be a stay-at-home dad. But I think there might be more opportunities for men to be stay-at-home dads if there were fewer glass ceilings for thier wives/female partners. If women were paid the same as men, (and also if traditonally âfemaleâ professions were better-paid for men and women both) then more men could be freed from the burden of being the primary wage-earners or to stay in âmaleâ professions.
I believe for every stigma a man currently deals with in the present for making choices usually considered âfemaleâ, women have had to suffer social stigmas just as, or more severe in past generations and to persevere through it without economics or law or politics on our side. For generations women were ostracised and punished for being âtomboysâ. Women were refused admittance to all kinds of professional schools, but pushed for it anyway. Suffragettes were jeered at and rejected and thrown in jailed and had to go on hunger strikes to be taken seriously. And we still donât have wage parity or other equal opportunities. So, if men want to lift stigmas and roadblocks well, men should go to work to change things, not just expect things to change magically. Women have never had the option to have things changed for them automatically.
Sorry for all the grammar/spelling mistakes! I donât write quickly and well without a LOT of editing!
I wonder how much less money and time would have been spent on changeover to Real IDs if everyone simply kept the names they were given at birth.
There is nothing sweeter to my ear than a little girl called me Ms. âfirstnameâ (i feel super respected AND adored). I am pretty casual and most of the time my kidsâ friends just called me by my first name. Once in a while a kid would call me Mrs. âlastnameâ, which i also like.
I am 100% sure i got out of a traffic ticket because, not sure what possessed me that day, I kept say this to the woman cop âI am so sorry Ms., I was so confused I messed up. Yes Ms. I am sorry Ms.â The cop was all smiling. I have always called the cop âofficerâ. I had no idea why that time i didnât call her âofficerâ. DH said âshe loved you b/c you called her Ms! Why did you call her that anyway?â I had no idea LOL
@inthegarden re: using âMrs.â only when the woman uses the husbandâs surname - this is what I have also believed to be true. Your post is a perfect example of why I wish we would just use Ms. or Mr. It shouldnât be such a complicated thing!
^This! In most things, Iâm all for people just doing what suits them best. Iâm all for myriad choices without too many value judgements. In the past, a womanâs marriage status affected every realm of her life so it made sense to convey it with her name. Today, I feel itâs not the general publicâs concern; not something to âwearâ in public under all circumstances. Somehow men have been able to communicate marital status when they wanted to without it being attached to their names, and surely women can too. I donât judge other women for choosing the âMrsâ designation but I wish we could just simplyfy things with âMs.â It seems more private, as well as simpler.