The only time changing your surname after marriage gets complicated
May 6, 2008 by blue milk
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That is so awesome. I love that quote from the ACLU comparing the surname tradition to dowries!
We just kept our names. We both like our names and our histories so it just felt natural to keep them.
that article made me *squeee*
the choice to get married was complicated and emotional for us, and i already wrote about it at my blog, but deciding what to do w/ our last names was far easier.
since i already have a child who’s father will never in a million years let her change her name (she currently has mine, HA!) unless it is to his, i wanted to keep mine. plus, i like my last name. i also wanted association, and asked him if we could both hyphenate.
he said yes w/ no hesitation.
and it is really cute/funny, b/c he already uses the hyphenated version in his email, and on his phone. when he put his new local number in my phone, he used it there, too. he wasn’t just on board w/ it, he is enthusiastic about it.
It’s so funny to me that this is considered a feminist issue.
Coming from a very patriarhal society (Arab) where women never change their last names, I don’t see it as a modern idea. As someone already suggested in comments to one of the previous posts on the subject: we (at least a large majority) carry our father’s names anyway.
I kept my last name of course and it shocked many of my friends (I live in Europe) and they thought it was such a brave move. Some even asked me how will my child know we’re related!??
Anyhow, just wanted to point out that, if this was the sole determining factor Arab men would be all considered feminists.
My sister in law asked when I was pregnant what our son’s name would be, because his Dad and I aren’t married (because obviously all children of married couples automatically have their father’s name, which is generally their mother’s name too). She wasn’t being judgemental, she’d just never ever thought about this, so I told her that kid’s can be called anything you like so long as it’s not offensive. I could, had the mood taken me, given the kid her surname. She found this fascinating.
The only difficulty is that I have to remember to look for his surname on the pockets they put notices in at childcare instead of my own. There’s also a lot more spelling it out for people, my name only has one spelling option, his has three or four possible right answers.
As for “how will he know we’re related?” Well he doesn’t know what any of our surnames are and he thinks my first name is Muuummm.
Great, good on him but shock freaking horror to how how hard it was – it wouldn’t be that hard in Aus though, would it?
We’ve had a few conversations about this (I was quite keen for Martin to take my name, which is slightly more distinctive than his and I was absolutely committed to keeping it) but in the end he definitely felt like it would turn him into a pussy-whipped pansy boy. Oh, hmm. No. He was worried his parents would be upset. One of those. (On an aside, Mr Bijon looks so fully metrosexual, doesn’t he? He looks like he’s about to break into earnest song.)
We hyphenated our kids’ names. I recently asked Fred if she’d like to drop one of those surnames before she starts school, but she likes being an R-J (I was genuinely quite cool with the idea of her picking either name). Una Pearl is in firm denial that she has any more names than just Una Pearl. Sometimes Fred has to check if I’m an R or a J, but aside from that there’s no consternation. Fred really likes that she and her sister are the same, and she seem to quite like the idea that Martin and I joined up to have her and our names joined up too.
They will also have excellent googleability when they grow up.
Hey pretty, I like the little tile thing.
Buday as in phonetically the name of a toilet, bidet?
Yeah, I would want to change that name too. I once met a man named Michael Butts and I couldn’t help but inform him that he could probably legally change it. At least for the kids’ sake.
There is no room on the birth certificate in Texas for a mother to keep her own name or have a different one than the father and baby. The assumption is that hers is the same. It’s precisely this type of battle I’m procrastinating – what a pain in the ass.
Not feminist at all. Just someone asking a bloated bureaucracy to think.
Yes, they were clearly asking for too much.
[...] Blue Milk [...]
“Yeah, I would want to change that name too. I once met a man named Michael Butts and I couldn’t help but inform him that he could probably legally change it. At least for the kids’ sake.”
It’s good to keep in mind that people with make-fun-able names already know it (if they’ve been to school at all) as well as the “risk” in passing those names along to children. Sometimes other things are more important.
(My husband’s surname is Butt. Yep, our baby has both our names.)
When I got married, I didn’t change my name. Father-in-law was pissed along the lines of ‘not good enough for you eh?’ but husband respected decision after I explained why (transfer of property etc, I’m not property.) A lot of people and officialdom find it hard to accept we are married. One especially obnoxious jobsworth kept refering to husband as ‘your common law husband’ emphasis on common. She then asked me directly ‘you’re a feminist then?’ like I had ideas totally above my station. Children have father’s name but I have to explain myself nearly every time: “Hi, I’m DT, JR’s mother.’ It might have been easier but bottom line is husband’s name is not my name. I had a great grandmoter who was exchanged as part of a land deal to a man twice her age. I didn’t want to repeat even a shadow of that.
I kept my name. As a feminist and someone getting married in the 21st century we never even considered another option.
We did discuss child’s surname. She has mine. The rationale? Until there is a time when no-one would ask why she has my name (the number of people who asked why, including my feminist friends was truly eye-opening), we have to show her there is a choice. If we were in an era where it was 50:50, I think I would be happy to go with with the more attractive name, but we are a long way from choosing on the base of aesthetics.
And although it may not sound very feminist to say so, i am generally the one at the Dr, the school etc and should we separate almost certainly the one with primary custody (i actually have a super ‘feminist’ husband, but I love these things and cant imagine not living with her’), so she may as well have my name. I always feel slightly bewildered when i meet single or separated women with children with a different surname.
I have come across so many great ways for determining children’s names when the married parents have different names. Coin toss, traditionalists (they go with teh fathers name), mixed families (they tend to take the mothers name), but the best one is the girl/boy decision. If it’s a girl it gets the mothers surname. If it’s a boy it get’s the fathers surname.
Most of the queries we have around changing kids names is because dad is absent and the family want nothing to do with him.
When it comes to changing name, there is no set precendent these days!