DarrenBarefoot.com

I am in the process of changing my name, assuming my husbands name. There are several reasons I chose to do this. First, I like the feeling of unity that comes with starting a new family under his name. Second, I have an older brother who can carry on my maiden name through his wife (who has assumed his name). Third, we have a production company under his name that he started and I have since joined, it’s nice to have the same name on the business cards. And finally, I hate my old last name. It is impossible to spell or say without a crash course, and everybody wrinkles their nose in an awful way when they try to spit it out. His name is much more pleasant. (Don’t tell my grandfather I said that!)

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I have a friend who legally changed her name so that her it was easier to travel with her kids across borders. Both parents having the same name as the kids, apparently helps alot. At the same time though, she hasn’t given up her maiden name professionally. She still works under her original name. just were government and banks are considered is she under her husbands name.

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I don’t really plan to get married, but I don’t really care either way. I don’t even use my real last name at work… :)

If it was important to a theoretical future husband, then I could change it.

Although I did try to convince a friend of mine with a cool last name to marry me for the free name change. ;)

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Beth:

Yes, I realize that having your dad’s last name is similarly patriarchal to taking your husbands, but that’s not something we have control over until we’re way older, and that would involve a legal name change.

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Like Miranda, I’m surprised that so many womeny opted to change their names. I would have thought that just the administrative work would turn people off.

My marriage was quite rapid. My husband and I decided to get married on a Friday night, told our parents on Saturday and we were married the following Friday at the Justice of the Peace. The topic of name change never came up and we avoided the whole crazy wedding planning.

I didn’t change my name, because, being French Canadian, I just couldn’t become a “Stewart”. The name is way too anglophone. Additionally, my mother-in-law is also called Christine. Having the same first and last name as my mother-in-law would simply have been too creepy.

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I kept my surname, partly because I like it, because it works for the name of my business, and mostly because my husband’s last name is McNamara. My poor kids didn’t learn to spell their own last names until well after all the other kids their age. And Safeway cashiers are forever mispronouncing it!

I do use McNamara as my last name when entering contests, so when a telemarketer calls up and asks for Mrs. McNamara (actually it’s usually Mrs. Mcnamamamamamama), I truthfully reply that there is no one here by that name.

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My sister changed her name when married, never got around to changing it back when divorced, then met someone (unrelated) with the same name which saved the hassle!

What happens with children of “maiden-married”?
If they marry another “maiden-married” does the name become “maiden-married-maiden-married”? :-)

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PS: Carla…I’m the woman who looked at you for a moment too long on the ferry last week. I was trying to place you. Now I remember!

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I think the Spanish have a great system for last names. As the About site explains “In general, a person born into a Spanish-speaking family is given a first name followed by two surnames, the first being the father’s family name (or, more precisely, the surname he gained from his father) followed by the mother’s family name (or, again more precisely, the surname she gained from her father).” So you keep your name when you marry, and your child takes first your hubby’s last name and followed by yours, with no hyphens.

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Japanese people who marry in Japan don’t have the option to not change names, one of them has to change. It can be the man, but usually is the woman. However, when a foreigner marries a Japanese person (as in my case) the foreigner doesn’t have to change their name.

I originally thought about hyphenating my name with my husband’s, but then decided it was too much hassle trying to get my passport changed. And, now, I’m actually glad that I didn’t. My name sticks out here, where as my husband’s family name is rather common.

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When I remarried I was able to legally become Mrs. Barefoot and also keep my original surname of Huxham. This way I would not have problems if I travelled with either my children or my step-children. I think I paid a small fee for this, but it was not difficult. In other words my legal surname of Barefoot is semi hidden… cheers, me

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From a practical standpoint, it seemed to make sense to change my name. My maiden name is of Polish heritage, 12 letters, 2 Z’s. My husband’s name is four letters and two of them are E.

But it just seemed like no big deal to do and the right thing to do at the time. We plan to not have children, so that isn’t the reason. It’s like another sign that he & I are a team. No logic involved in the decision.

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I’m surprised that — for me — the most obvious reason for keeping the original surname is email accounts and logins. So much of ones life is already set using the original surname, one might just as well keep it “for the duration” as it were.

My wife and I (okay, we’re not married, just shacked up for 18+ years) kept our surnames. We regularly get calls for Mr or Mrs MySurname or Mr or Mrs. HerSurname. I periodically reply “Mrs MySurname is dead … she died (pause for effect) one year ago today. Dear god, you are sicko playing a stunt like this on me. Who put you up to this?”

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I changed my name when I got married, and I’m happy that I did that. I like it when people instantly figure out that I’m married to this man whom I adore.

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I married relatively late (age 46) and at that point, I really identified with my surname, which is rather unusual. (In fact, my parents and I are the only ones with that name in our city of nearly half a million people.) My husband did not mind that I did not change my name–but I do not pointedly use my own last name with his extended family. If they want to address us as “Mr. & Mrs. HisLastName” that is fine with me.

It was not really a professional decision (that is, wanting to keep my professional identity) and since we did not plan to have children the issue of having the same or different surnames as the kids was irrelevant.

My husband is a different race than I (and has an obviously ethnic name) so we occasionally have people address him as “Mr. MyLastName” which is pretty funny. He gets a laugh out of it because he is, appearance-wise, so obviously NOT “Mr. My LastName.”

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I changed my name because it seemed like a good idea at the time. I didn’t at that time have a professional reputation to concern me, and it seemed to be important to my husband that I take his name. My maiden name was usually misspelled or mispronounced so I figured I could dodge that by changing, but now people have different mistakes about the new name. I guess I also feel like we’re more of a family when we all have the same last name.

In hindsight, though, it was such an administrative hassle that I don’t know for sure whether I’d do it again.

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I never even thought about changing… I was/am building a career under my current triple barrel and didn’t see any need to change… our children will have both last names with no hyphen and therefore will probably be known as my husband’s last name… this seems to mean more to him than it does to me, so I have deferred. I figure we can offer to buy them a name change for their 18th birthday it they want to trim their name down, but by giving them both they can use which ever one they prefer. Also a hyphen of both our odd-to-pronounce last names seems like too much of a burden to impose on a child who spends most of their childhood seeking their identity…

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When I was a little girl, I looked forward to getting married and getting a new last name. I was the kid who doodled her name with the last names of all the boys she liked in grade school. And when I first met my husband (seven years before we started dating), I had a crush on him. His last name is super hard to spell and so I memorized it.

When we finally got married, it wasn’t something I thought about. I was just what I was supposed to do. Honoured to do! Proud and excited to do.

So again, growing up I always thought that the wife is supposed to take her husband’s name. That’s just historical context. I realize that the times, they are a-changing; but if they change because people fear sexism, then they’ve changed for the wrong reason. They should change because the practice simply doesn’t make sense or simply isn’t practical anymore from a modern context. Which may be true! But it should not change because people are stepping out in fear against patriarchal sexism or some such dribble. It’s marriage for Pete’s sake! Doesn’t that suggest a following of the patriarchal code to some degree? Why not go all the way?

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Leading up to my wedding (just over seven years ago), one of my former bosses sent me an email that infuriated me. Upon learning I planned to take my husband’s surname, she wrote, “XXX is impossible to pronounce, let alone spell. If you give me the rationale behind your decision to change your name, maybe I can support it.”

I replied that I’d hoped she’d support me regardless.

It was, in some ways, a compromise for me. It was something that was important to my fiance’s mother. I was marrying into a family in which all the other children were arranged marriages, and they were still getting used to the fact that their son was not marrying within his culture.

But setting aside the family politics, I was never hung up on the whole ‘keep/change my surname issue’. In keeping my surname, I’d be taking my father’s name. If I were to take my mother’s maiden name, it would be her father’s name. And so on and so on.

I’m just as annoyed when someone tries to “force” me to make the women’s-lib-approved choice as I would be if I wasn’t allowed to have any choice at all.

Yes, my last name is routinely mangled, both in pronunciation and on paper. At the same time, I haven’t felt that it’s compromised my individual identity. In fact, my first and last name combination make my name — and identity — stand out more than they did before.

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There are many good reasons for not changing names on marriage. However, a relatively recent piece of advice from one Cary Tennis has this gem, which I think is probably a clincher:-

Feminism made it possible for women to declare themselves as exactly who they are. And I suppose it could be said that for all its gains, if women now slip back into the old, comfortable models, then to that extent the historical memory of feminism slips away. Refusing to take the old patriarchal name is a way of extending a certain idea of freedom into the future and into future generations. It is a powerful step. It is a reminder.

You, as a woman, having acquired and having been bequeathed certain gifts, a political dowry, as it were, are free to use this dowry as you see fit. But it does come with certain expectations. What are those expectations? Chiefly: freedom from unspoken bondage to family, work and society, freedom to make individual choices about how you present yourself to the world, what work you do and whom you associate with. Freedom from the assumption that the husband has the final say. Freedom from the assumption that in the end, all he has to do is put his foot down. Freedom from the historical assumption that the husband’s word in the house is law. It is not law. The law is the law and women can be lawyers and there is no other law, no household law in which man is king. Man is king no longer. That is the gift that you have been bequeathed: You are no longer subject to unspoken authority rooted in family. You are in all respects an independent operator.

Then the question is, might this general independence that has been granted to all women atrophy if not openly and vigorously exercised by women every chance they get, in every instance of public and private interaction, not just now but into the future for generations? Well, yes, of course there is that danger. People are lazy. We like to slip into something comfortable. So every time we encounter a woman who has a different last name from that of her husband we are reminded: Yes, you can do that. Whereas when we encounter a woman who has the same name as her husband, although this, too, was a choice, we are not reminded, oh, yes, you can do that. Not so much. We more slip into the historical slumber of the status quo.

Nonetheless, to take your husband’s name is also among your freedoms. You are absolutely free to make your own choice, and you cannot really make a bad choice because, either way, the important thing is that it is a free, conscious choice. My choice, the way I happen to be feeling today, would be to go on record celebrating the world-changing work of feminism and wary of the deeply rooted passions working against it that could so easily chip away at its gains. My choice would be to go ahead and choose a name that puts it in the record books, that puts one in the win column for feminism.

That way, when your kids say, Why do you have a different name from Daddy? you can tell them that there was a time when women were not free to choose what name to take, when women basically belonged to the man they married, when they had to obey him and, in fact, had to obey pretty much any man they saw on the street, whoever he may be, just because he was a man, much the same way that there was a time that black people belonged to white people and had to obey pretty much any white person at all, and could not choose their own names, but were given the names of the white people they belonged to.

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I would like to speak to Christine from posting number 28. I like the way you view your marriage and need some insight from you. How can we get in contact with each other ?

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I don’t think there are any easy answers to your question but I can offer some perspective on both sides of the issue. I got married for the first time at age 26. I decided I’d hyphenate my maiden name and my husband’s surname. After taking an entire day just to change my passport, I figured why bother with the rest of the ID and I kept my name for all other purposes except travel. Why did I do that? I don’t know I guess I just wasn’t feeling motivated. My dad has recently passed away and I think I was also feeling a real sense of attachment to MY name with no ‘attachments.’ We had two beautiful kids both of whom assumed their dad’s surname per North American tradition. I didn’t think hyphenating the kids names made sense. I think that trend just isn’t practical. At some point through the generations, someone’s surname would have to be dropped so I figured why start.

Well, crap happens. We divorced and practically speaking, I was thankful the only ID I needed to change was my passport. It made a really crappy process a little easier.

However while I was married to the EX, got was constantly referred to as ‘Mrs. Ex-Husband.’ Most of the time I didn’t bother correcting people if it was in social rather than business setting. We were after all, a family.

Fast forward 5 years after my divorce, I meet a wonderful guy and after a 3 years of sharing a home we decided to get married. And this time around, I decided to assume my new husband’s surname on all my ID except my passport (just so that I have two pieces of ID that identify me as my mother’s child, half owner in my home which we bought before we got married etc). Why did I assume my husband’s name THIS TIME? Well for what ever reason it makes me feel more ‘complete’ (I know that’s not the best word, but it’s hard to describe). We are a team and sharing his name communicates that to the world and reinforces it for me ever time it comes out of my mouth or I commit it to paper. One unit of two individuals who have decided they want to share their home, their lives and raise their children together. But I don’t view this as ‘changing’ my name. In Ontario, where I live, I can legally use any combination of my maiden and married names. So at work and at home and on the majority of my ID, I use ‘our’name and for my creative pursuits that will hopefully live on much longer than me I use both my maiden and husband’s name, no hyphen. I’ve also reminded my kids to make sure that both names make it on to my tombstone. I don’t think there is a right or wrong approach here. My decisions really had nothing to do with feminism. This is a really personal issue and I think each person needs to make the decision that feels right for them, and according to whatever cultural or religious values hold true for them as individuals. Family, friends and coworkers need to just support that. Funny enough I got more flack this time for changing it, than I did 15 years prior for NOT changing it. Some people actually thought my husband ‘made me’do it which is ridiculous. In fact any time I asked hime what he thought I should do he refused to comment other than to say he’d be fine either way and it was totally up to me. After I made my decision he did admit to being pleased that I decided to use his name but reiterated that had I not decided to, he would be fine with it.

My kids still use my Ex-husband’s surname so I still get referred to as “Mrs. Ex-husband” but I politely correct people and I don’t really have too many issues in that department.

However on another note, my current husband’s ex-wife has decided to keep his surname even though she has now remarried! I can’t imagine why, other than she doesn’t want to explain it professionally (she works in public education). Or perhaps she still has some weird attachment to my husband and therefore doesn’t want to give up his name. They didn’t have any children together so it’s not a case of wanting to have the same last name as the kids. I often wonder though how her current husband feels about her being called Mrs. ‘Someonelse.’ I guess she has her reasons. I’d love to hear how folks feel about that scenario… why keep your ex-husband’s name if you are remarried to someone else? How would the new husband feel? It’s not like she’s Pat Benetar and has made a name for herself internationally that she doesn’t want to change (Pat got “Benetar” from her ex but has been happily remarried to someonelse for over 20 years).

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When I married over 20 years ago I did not want to change my surname. It is very personal - a part of me. After the arguments that ensued with my fiance I compromised (?) and changed it. The next 3 years were spent unthinkingly signing my maiden name half the time. I always had to be conscious of what I was doing whenever I wrote my/his name. Now that we are divorced I quickly changed back to my own name. I liked his name better but it was not me. I am now with a man who only wants me to be myself and is not hung up on the macho idea of needing a woman to change her name. My children carry their father’s name. In that I acquiesce to our partriarchal society.

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