I changed my middle name to my maiden name, in large part because I’m the last descendent in my father’s immediate family, and took my husband’s last name. But it’s ended up being hyphenated professionally because of a reference check where the potential employer called my previous employer and asked if Stradmom X had worked there and was told no and I almost didn’t get the job. (And it depends on who files it whether one name or the other is the primary)
Did not change my name 35 years ago and did not even consider it. I feel no need to provide a reason any more than my husband didn’t need a reason for not changing his name. Any issues with children’s name have been of little importance. We gave our child my husband’s name simply because he cared and I didn’t.
Didnt change it til we moved to Europe, thinking it would be easier for new friends and the grant admins to have one surname together (as spouse, I got $ and certain privileges.) Wasn’t thinking, cuz of course many women there kept their own birth surnames.
But as a friend said, lol, your choice is your husband’s or your father’s. Not much assertion there.
I am glad now to have his surname because his family is wonderful. My own is complex.
All 5 of our kids have my last name as their middle name. When our first son was born, we hyphenated the names. At about one week of age, he had to be hospitalized. The 17 character last name didn’t fit on any forms. I filed to have the name legally changed to remove the hyphen. Funny story is that I didn’t realize until literally 16 years later that SSA didn’t send me a replacement card for my son, they sent a card with a new number in the new name. We found out when we went for his learner’s permit. At least 5 people offered to buy the new number from me! but I went straight to SSA and canceled it…
H’s dad had his mother’s maiden name, apparently because his father was not her husband, so H has his grandmother’s name as well. I told him this was a good thing because her married name was so horrible that I would never have taken it myself, let alone give it to my children. H laughed and said that if that was his name, he’d have taken my name as well.
For me it was mostly for convenient and I hated my last name, no one could pronounce it. If you plan to have a family, it’s much easier to have everyone with the same last name, especially when travelling. Sure it takes a little bit of work up front, but after that it is so nice not to have to explain anything to anyone. We are “the X” and everyone knows it :-).
My sister kept her last name, she was divorced with 2 kids, one with a different father. Every time they travel, lots of questions and eye rolling from the custom officer.
I have a few friends who kept their last name because by the time they got married they have already public a lot of papers and they don’t want to lose that connection to their work. But most of my friends definitely keep their name.
Also, it’s the culture thing too, in my home country the wife doesn’t take the husband’s last name, but the kids do.
I never thought my identify is determined by my husband - it’s just so much easier to just have 1 last name for everyone, and one that everyone can pronounce.
Did we have the same co-worker? lol And his wife took his last name.
I changed my name 30 plus years ago, didn’t even consider not doing so. We are a family, this is my pack, and I was happy to shed my always mispronounced maiden name. Perhaps my husband would have taken my name if I was the one with the less weird last name, who knows? I can certainly see why someone would keep their maiden name for professional purposes or if they didn’t like their spouses name, or an assortment of reasons. But in my case, very glad to shed that name and be part of the pack!
To answer the OP’s question, tradition! Oh, never mind, @MWolf already answered the question.
I don’t even remember discussing it. When we got married 38 years ago wife didn’t change her name. Many people address me as “Mr Wife’sLastName”. Sometimes I don’t bother to correct them. Sometimes I tell them I kept my maiden name.
We have friends who combined their last names into a unique name. Sort of like Mr Jones married Miss Smith and they both became Mr & Mrs Smones. I thought it was kind of weird until I saw it on their license plate, SMONES Only then did it become real, and seemed kind of cool; definitely unique. (Not the actual names)
Like @busdriver11 I changed my always mispronounced maiden name to my husband’s common last name 35 years ago. Problem I didn’t anticipate is that it’s also a common woman’s first name. People (who do know me) often call me by my last name. Never know whether to roll with it or correct them.
As an amusing aside - when my sister-in-law got married, years ago in the USSR, her husband’s last name is very similar to her one. Imagine Brendan and Brandon. She was trying to change it, over the phone, on the old Soviet lines, and the officials on the other side could not understand what she wanted. “So, what’s your last name?”, “Brandon”, “To what surname would like to change it?”, “Brendan”, “so you don’t want to change it”, “No, I do want to change it, to Brendan”, “isn’t that what it is?” “No, it’s Brandon”, “that’s what I was saying, Brendan”. It took a while until the officials, who were non too bright to begin with, were able to finally comprehend what my sister-in-law wanted to do.
We hyphenated, after i was unable to convince my wife to keep her last name. Now she wishes that she did, but she’s published a lot, and has done too much under her hyphenated name to do that. I wouldn’t mid if our daughter decided to change her name from her hyphenated one to my wife’s former surname. I think that she should, since, in my father-in-law’s family, there are now only women, and my wife is the only one who didn’t outright change her name. On my side, there are plenty of families with my last name.
I changed mine when I got married 30 years ago. no regrets. I use my maiden name as my middle name. All my nieces and cousin’s daughters who have gotten married in the last 10 years have changed theirs, too.
One nephew and his wife combined their last names and made a new name. Their new last name is dumb. When they announced it after the ceremony everyone laughed. They could have combined their names differently so it wouldn’t be so ridiculous.
Now I’m curious as to what the dumb combined last name is…and wonder if they have regretted it, @emilybee!
I did not change my name when I married.
I am very attached to my last name. When I was in HS, some people called me by my last name instead of my first name. It is also clearly identifiable as an ethnic name. It’s also an uncommon name.
H’s last name is also an ethnic name, but says zero about my upbringing & origins and only says something about who I married.
So, zero motivation to make a name change.
The kids have his last name & everyone is fine with that. Sure, it got a little confusing at school or at the doctor’s office, but these were minor hurdles & not an unusual circumstance.
I have a memory of my mother signing her name Mrs. Thomas Smith (fake name for example) and then she switched in the late 70s to Mrs. Janet Smith or just Janet Smith. I don’t recall her ever taking up Ms.
When I married the first time I was appalled at the use of “Mrs. John Doe”, which was the Emily Post proper designation back then. I felt totally lost in that name and while my poor husband just wanted me to be happy, my blue blood relatives always wrote to me that way and I hated it.
We are friends with a couple who are both professors at Cal - When they got married they hyphenated their last names and both of them changed to that new last name. Being equal is a really big deal to them, even when he got the offer of professorship at Cal, he wouldn’t accept it unless she got the offer too. It’s a package deal for them. They are both brilliant in their field.
I am of Asian descent and women keep their last names after marriage. The children take the father surnames. When my D was in elementary school, her class had a high percentage of Asians. It was very amusing to see the classroom teacher tried to connect the mothers with their children since none of them shared the same surnames!
I used this as an excuse to not bother change my last name 30 years ago. Too much hassle with the paperwork. I joked that if we are still married after so many years, I’ll think about it. His family and friends sometimes address us both by his Caucasian last name. It does not bother me one bit. They have enough problem pronouncing my difficult first name as is.
That’s how they used to do it. You’d be Mrs. John Doe, because anyone who was anyone knew that you were the former Jane Smith, because they had read it in the society pages.
I collect old women’s magazines from the '40s and '50s, and many of the ads contain testimonials from “Mrs. John Doe” of Fancy Town, Ohio. My favorite is from “Mrs. John Doe, wife of a doctor.” That makes her testimonial so much more credible, apparently.
I was taught that one would remain “Mrs. John Doe” even after one was widowed. However, if you divorced, you’d become “Mrs. Jane Doe,” and that of course was scandalous, back in the day.
So. Many. Rules.
We usually think Europeans are more enlightened in these matters, but I’ve been following a Facebook friend who has lived in the south of France for maybe 10 years now, and she is still fighting with various organizations that just don’t seem to have an option for a married woman to have a different last name from her husband. She had a number of posts on how she called banks, schools, etc. and asked them to use her last name when writing to her personally, and they couldn’t understand what’s the big deal.
I kept my name after we got married 37 years ago, mostly for professional reasons. Then we moved 4 states away, had a couple of kids and it was just easier for all of us to have the same name. I like my maiden name much better than my married name. The married name is short, but not pretty and it starts with the same letter as my first name. My D changed her name when she got married because his name was better and closer to the front of the alphabet.
About those Emily Post rules…I still have a box of very nice stationery from some swanky place in New York. It is engraved Mrs. Husband’s Name in very fancy script. My mother thought it was something I should have. I’ve probably only used about 5-10 sheets in all these years and those were to elderly relatives.
It’s interesting to me that many people made conscious aesthetic choices in deciding to change their names or not.
My father’s name (and mine) is decidedly more prosaic and unlovely than my mother’s maiden name, or her mother’s maiden name, which is very much our “clan”. When I was 18 or 19, I asked her once if she ever minded changing her last name to my father’s name. She said, “Did I ever mind it? I hated it so much I almost didn’t marry him because of it!” Luckily for me, back in 1954 she sucked it up and went ahead with the marriage anyway, even though under the universal practice then it condemned her to an ugly last name for the rest of her life.