I was willing to hyphenate my name if my husband was also will to hypenate. He wasn’t and he didn’t mind me keeping my name. Since we went off to Germany within a month it was much easier to keep it than to try to figure out how to get passports and credit cards changed without an address. We both have fairly short names that are constantly mispronounced or misspelled.
Miss Manners once suggested that kids have the mother’s name since they tend to deal more with the schools, the doctors and are more likely to have custody in the case of a divorce. We were in Germany when we had our oldest and I think it would have made their heads explode to have given the kids my last name. They had a hard enough time believing we were married with different last names.
Nearly everyone I knew my age or older kept their names, but for people younger than me it seems the majority have changed their names.
I wanted to keep my uncommon (Italian) last name when I married in 1980, but knew I would get flak from H’s family so I use it as my middle name. I love my H, but have regretted that choice. I don’t see the big deal with having the same name as the kids- my sister kept her name, has raised 2 kids who have my BIL’s last name and its NBD. So many people marry and divorce now, I have HS classmates who have had 4 different last names from multiple marriages. To me that is a lot more confusing than someone who keeps her original name.
My parents were divorced in the 1950’s, when divorce was not common. My mother remarried. It was a source of embarrassment and worry that my name did not match hers. Even when she sent me to the store to pick up something in her name, little things like that, as well as at school.
So 30 years ago I did change my name but it depressed me quite a bit. For that matter, so did the whole engagement ring thing. I didn’t wear it. Why do men give women engagement rings but not vice versa? My daughter’s formerly feminist friends seem to be posting photos of their engagement rings on Facebook.
I divorced a few years back and was so happy to reclaim my real name. I might have done that anyway, since the kids were all out of the nest.
The kids all have my maiden name as their middle name. One of them is going to include it legally, possibly hyphenated, as an adult.
I won’t change my name. My D has no intention of changing her last name. My friends who have married in the last 15 years have been around 75-25 no change/change.
I do somewhat regret not keeping my name 20 yrs ago. Mine was easy to say, easy to spell, but still somewhat unique. His is… well, we joke that we give you a door prize if you’re anywhere in the vicinity of getting it right. It’s short, but it’s a mouthful!! I was very young and SO in love… oh well, not the end of the world.
As a consolation though, my eldest son carries my maiden name as his first name. We decided to use the American spelling instead of the original however and that is a much bigger regret to me than not keeping my maiden name. Every few years I make sure to check in w/ DS on whether he wants to have the spelling legally changed… unfortunately he’s not interested.
Well, I didn’t choose my original surname (it was my dad’s), so when I had the option, I chose a new one for starting off my new nuclear family on marriage.
This strikes me as odd and makes me wonder how you pulled it off. Aren’t driver’s licenses and passports under one’s legal name?
I didn’t do the engagement ring in addition to not changing my name. Don’t buy into that concept either and don’t get me started on my rant on diamonds.
I didn’t change my last name and it is not difficult to have two different last names for schools or any other places. People might call me by my DH’s last name and I will answer that too.
I hope my future DIL won’t find it necessary to change hers.
I changed my name 19 years ago and would do it again. I was only 2 years into my career when I married so I didn’t have any substantial name recognition, LOL. I didn’t hate my former last name, in fact the two names are pretty similar (same number of syllables, both easy to spell and pronounce). It was an easy switch (except for going from the beginning of the alphabet to the end) and the right choice for me.
I use both last names, no hyphen. Have tended more towards using only DH’s in recent years, as medical offices cannot figure out how to alphabetize my records.
Alas, I am the fourth generation of women on my mom’s side to have been born a “W” and who also married a “W”!
In my circles 30 years ago, not one of my friends kept their name (which, by the way, was most likely carried down through male relatives, so don’t get the snark about that). We wanted our family to have one name. My name was so hard to pronounce, spell, etc., that I wasn’t at all heartbroken to be done with it.
D1 did not change her name-she’s published so much under it, it would not make sense. They adamantly insist they want no children.
D2 will likely at least use her name as a middle name or hypen it for business reasons. But I’m guessing that at least in her private life she will take the husband’s name in order for them and the kids to have the same last name.
I respect all choices in this regard and think the extremely judgmental tone that is seen from time to time on this subject is completely uncalled for, but then again, this is CC.
I changed my name because going through that change once 30 years ago has made everything since more convenient. No particular drama or emotion about it, my kids can change their names or not. But when I have a simple practical way to make things more convenient for my future self, I’ll take it.
An interesting anecdote that I didn’t recognize at the time:
When S1 was four years old, he had to have his tonsils out. Right before the procedure, the nurse in the hospital asked for DH’s name and then for my name. Of course we have different last names. She looked up at us and asked which one of us had custody. I responded that we both do.
It wasn’t until a few years later that I realized she assumed we were divorced.
One shouldn’t assume anything at all about names, especially in this day and age of blended families.
I changed my name (a zillion years ago) because I was sick of spelling my last name, having it pronounced incorrectly, and then after spelling it still having it spelled wrong. My husband’s name is super common and was just easy. Now when dd gets married she will change her name because she is sick of having a super common last name. If she marries her current boyfriend it will be going to a 4 letter last name and she likes that!
Now son … His gf may or may not change her name if they end up getting married. I actually love her last name. In a lot of ways I hope she keeps it. She will be going to med school so I think it may depend on how far along she is when they do eventually marry. I think it would be easier for her to just keep her name but her family is VERY traditional so I’m not sure.
I say do whatever you want, but be consistent. Do not use one name at home and another at work. Do not use one on the passport and another on the DL.
I just filled out some forms for a security clearance and was so glad I only have ONE name (always the same). Also, the program wouldn’t take a hyphen (wasn’t in my name but in my DL, and it kept getting rejected)
I used to do name changes for a court and you can’t believe the number of people who had to get a legal name change to change one letter of a name because they couldn’t get a passport. This was before 9/11 and there were a lot of people frustrated over an N missing on the birth certificate or an extra E in a name.
A friend got married and did change her name but at work continued to use her maiden name. Biggest issue? She couldn’t get frequent flier miles because the name on the ticket didn’t match her ‘new’ name (long before 9/11). She finally gave up and just changed everything.
I regret giving my daughter a 2 part (not hyphenated) first name, plus a middle name. All her stuff, including SSN, have 4 names. It screws up some things as some people think her middle initial is R (second of her first name) and some think it is A (her actual middle name). My niece and nephew have my sister’s last name as their middle name and since it is not a normal given name, many people think it is a hyphenated last name. It isn’t. It also doesn’t help that their last name is very common, so places are always looking for a way to differentiate them from the other John Browns out there.
My advice? Be consistent. No punctuation in the names. No cute spellings.
All of the supposedly “practical” reasons (want the whole nuclear family to have the same surname, preference regarding pronunciation, etc.) for the wife changing her surname could apply to the husband changing his surname, but the latter is rarely done even though it is theoretically not any different other than which spouse does it.
Regarding nuclear families who do not all have the same surname, that may be relatively common in some cultural traditions (although even in this case, the patrilineal surnames are favored over the matrilineal surnames): https://webpages.uncc.edu/mperez19/twolastnames.html
This is a similar case where there is no theoretical reason why kids could not be given the mother’s (versus the father’s) surname, but it just is not done very often in the US.
Agree, though it wasn’t the only reason I changed it.
I knew a couple in college who got engaged. They both already had the same (very common) last name. They got a lot of joking comments about who was going to take whose name. “You going to be Lisa Jones or Lisa Jones? Lisa Jones-Jones?” and on and on.
