The More Things (and Names) Change…
Truth: The majority of people a new bride encounters will assume she has changed her name or is planning to do so in the near future. Yes, people are still making this assumption. Whether you decide to change your name after marriage is entirely up to you, and you shouldn’t give in to the pressure to rush down to the nearest Social Security office with marriage license in hand if that’s not who you are. But know that no matter what post-wedding name scheme you settle on, there’s a 100% chance someone out there will think it’s wrong, wrong, wrong.
Here are some examples of the kind of comments you might get based on your choices:
well this is what I see from it a women that is fully satisfied by a man will want to take his last name. Highly intelligent sexual women likes to be “owned” by a dominant man. (source)
I do want to share a common last name with my partner if/when I marry. I feel that it establishes a couple as a family upon introduction. (source)
I’m afraid that women who change their names are blindly promoting women as second-class persons, though I suspect that they themselves don’t think they are doing this. (source)
In some prison cultures, inmates are given numbers and their names are taken from them. One purpose of this practice is to strip away a sense of importance and humanity from the inmates….the tradition of women giving up their names is equally damning. (source)
I always have to chuckle a little when people get their panties in a twist because someone close to them has chosen not to change his or her name after marrying. Once upon a time, a woman wouldn’t necessarily legally change her name after marriage. This did not present much of a logistical problem as wives did not have a great deal of legal clout outside of their ability to influence their husbands’ decisions. Upon marrying, only a woman’s social title changed.
In casual situations where her husband was not present, she might be referred to as Miss Maidenname, which is also the name that would appear at the top of her personal stationery. In a formal setting, she would be called Mrs. Husbandsname. If she happened to have earned a professional title, she might be Dr. Maidenname. A fictional bride might be Miss Jane Doe, Mrs. John Smith, or Dr. Jane Doe, but seldom Mrs. Jane Smith. Mrs. John Smith was in its entirety a title rather than a name.
The bad news is, of course, that you’re going to catch some flack whether or not you change your name after marriage. The good news is that there aren’t any hard and fast etiquette rules surrounding post-marital name changes. Women who do decide to change their last names have it easy because almost all of the forms they’ll encounter will be tailored toward individuals with two X chromosomes.
In a way, this is your chance to get creative…changing your name will never be this easy again. Hate your last name? Ditch it! Want to make up some funky combination of both of your names? Do it!
Here are some of the more popular options:
• Mrs. Husbandslastname
• Ms. Husbandslastname
• Mrs. Husbandslastlastname – Wifesname
• Mrs. Wifesname – Husbandsname
• Ms. Wifesname – Husbandsname
• Ms. Wifesname
• Mrs. Wifesname
• Mr. Wifesname
You can also become Mrs. Nameyoumadeuptogether, though you and your spouse may end up spending a lot more time filling out petitions and affidavits than you ever thought possible. Being that some states still reject the idea that any man would want to change his name to his partner’s, new husbands looking to update their identities frequently find themselves victim to wrist cramps.
Like I said above, however you handle the name change question, the one constant you’ll come up against is that someone, at some point is going to think you made the wrong decision. Change your name, and you’ll be accused of bowing to an antiquated tradition. Keep your name, and you’re too progressive. Your spouse’s parents may feel cheated out of a namesake. Your grandmother may accuse you of betraying your lineage. Whatever. Feel free to tell those people who make the mistake of voicing their empty criticisms that it’s none of their beeswax.
Excerpted in part from my book iDo
I think there is no wrong answer, so long as the answer arrived at has been carefully considered and agreed upon by both parties. If I were to marry my boyfriend tomorrow, I wouldn’t take his last name, because it rhymes with my first name and it makes me cringe. Silly? Perhaps. But I also have a great deal of attachment t my last name as it is, and it represents an aspect of my heritage he doesn’t share.
Now, I wouldn’t mind our kids having his last name, nor would I mind being referred to as Mrs. Hislastname in social situations.
I have friends who both took Herlastname-Hislastname as their names when they married, and I respect that decsion. But they (she, especially) get really bent out of shape when someone calls either of them Mr. or Mrs. Hislastname. I understand the desire, but I also think you have to give people a little slack when you’ve decided on something non-traditional. Just my opinion, though.
You forgot *Ms.* Hername-Hisname, which is my preference. My husband likes to crack jokes about his “maiden name”, given that he hyphenated as well. We each came to the marriage with less than common names, and I like knowing that if there’s someone else with that name in anyone’s database, it’s him or our daughter. But yeah… I would have to say that most of the time we just get called Hisname.
oh, and if you hyphenate, brace yourself for “but what will your children do when THEY get married?” (I figure that’s up to THEM to figure out.)
@Kate Good point! I’ll add it in! I’m not sure why people worry so much about what the kids will do when they get married… my response would be that they’ll probably make their own decisions about what names to use. Because, really, I don’t base a lot of my life decisions on how it will affect my children when they get married. It seems such an odd thing to think about.
To me the decision was such an easy one I (I kept my last name) that I’ve never felt the need to think about it again. If it’s offended someone, I don’t know about the offense. If I have to think about it further than that, I’d wonder why anyone would feel such an impact about my name choice that they’d have to exert themselves to pass a judgment about it. Life’s just way too short to spend more of it in line, waiting to change my name over on my passport, drivers’ license, social insurance card, credit cards, etc. etc. etc.
My decision to change my name was easy, because my maiden name was unusual, ugly and very close to a common insult. I was delighted to marry Mr. Bradley and take his name, and, later, Mr. Anderson’s. Now it looks as though Mr. _____ and I may choose to share our lives, but this time around I’ll keep Anderson, as I have established my professional reputation under that name.
Huh. In my culture (I’m a Malaysian Malay), there is none of this adoption of the husband’s name whatsoever. Our name is usually tacked with our father’s name at the end (e.g. X bin/binti Y); bin denoting male, binti for female. We have no surnames, which makes filling in forms in other countries (or scientific journal citation) quite difficult.
:p
However, a number of those who married foreigners, particularly Westerner, did adopt their husband’s name, but I doubt this name change is made official. The Chinese ladies in my country may choose to be called Mrs Husband’s-surname, or Madam Maiden-Surname. Some of the Indian ladies may asked to be called Mrs Husband’s-Name (very few have surnames).