Something tells me that the split on “should be legally required” is skewed heavily by gender.

Stuff like this might have the unintentional effect of making young women (or any women) decide to just not get married at all.  Something like a name change might seem minor enough to not be a deal-breaker, but I remember when I was about 15 and I had a wacko Sunday school teacher who told me that that women must obey their husbands (fortunately people like her were very rare in my church, and I doubt anyone else would have agreed with her).  Anyway, when she said that, I wondered why, if she were really right, why any woman would ever get married at all.  If my only option was a marriage like that, I would certainly choose to stay single forever.  Fortunately, marriage doesn’t have to be as “traditional” anymore so I have the choice of something better.

Maybe all we can do is weather the storm, and believe that this social conservatism is dying out, and just making a lot of fuss as it goes.

I think that’s always the case. And as far as storms go, this one really isn’t all that bad by even recent historical standards. I read Nixonland last summer (and I know you’ve mentioned it here) and was struck by how many US cities were in flames because of full-on riots in the streets over housing legislation. The mobs we’re seeing today, while certainly worrisome, are nothing like that. Don’t get me wrong—I’m terrified that we’re going to have another Tim McVeigh before this is all over—but just as the people who freaked over that civil rights movement died off and left a more progressive generation behind them, the same will happen to these people. My goal is to stay on the progressive edge as I get older, and so far I’m on track. When I was 25, I listened to Rush Limbaugh. Now I’m 40, and I’d punch him in the face if I got the chance. By the time I hit 60, I’ll probably be Ralph Nader’s lookalike, without the self-destructive tendencies.

Something tells me that the split on “should be legally required” is skewed heavily by gender.

Frankly, I’m not totally convinced of that - or at least I think it would be less skewed than what “something” tells you.

But I also couldn’t find any info on it, and seriously, they had to have that info somewhere. Anyone find it?

Really? “Required by law” to take their husband’s name? REALLY?

My wife took my name. That was HER CHOICE (my own opinion is the she made that choice because she came from a fairly dysfunctional family and was ready to be disasociated w/them). Almost all of our friends kept their names when they got married. These people who say that a woman should have to take her husband’s name are idiots.

Are there any states which require a woman change her name when she gets married?  What about when she gets divorced?  How hard is it to change back?  Is the idea that the wife take the husbands whole name, like Mrs. Whoever She Marries, or just his last name?  Where did this tradition come from anyway?  It’s got to be a religious thing, with the woman’s total submersion in her husband’s identity.

That being the case I’m not surprised that so many people think a woman should be legally required to take her husband’s name.  Look at the other absurd things religious people believe.

Has anybody had luck locating the study online?  It would be interesting to see if there’s a demographic breakdown of the results.  In particular, I’m pretty curious about how the Hispanic immigrant population results compare to the rest, as women in Latin America do not generally change their names upon marriage.

Right now I’m bothered by the fact that in some places, women can change their name for free if they’re getting married, but men still have to pay the fee.

I don’t know. I wouldn’t expect a woman to take my name if she didn’t want to. After all, what’s in a name? Would it even be a topic of discussion? I mean, if she wants to do it, she can do the paper work and whatnot.

If I were getting married and the bride insisted, I’d probably take her name. But I have trouble imagining a situation like that. Why would anyone insist?

According to the Cleveland Leader, the fifty percent quoted is fifty percent of female respondents.  Twenty nine percent of total respondents said it would be better for women to keep their own name. 

http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/10969

Here’s the quote from the Cleveland Leader:  “half of female respondents to a new survey in the U.S. said that the government should mandate women to take their husbands’ surname upon marriage.”

Males should be branded, upon marriage, with a tattoo of the woman’s choice, and be forced to adopt a hairstyle that she has decided for him.

I would be willing to bet that this is connected to people’s concern about the divorce rate.  I bet a lot of the respondents have a misguided belief that taking the same name contributes to the stability of a marriage.  I wonder if there were any questions asked about whether people think it is good to have the same name, regardless of whether the couple adopts the bride’s or the groom’s name? (Not that I am necessarily too naive about how that would come out, unfortunately.)

Sadly, my husband wishes that I would take his last name.  After a decade-and-a-half together, it STILL bothers him that we don’t have the same last name.  And it bothers me that he feels entitled enough to ask me to change my name.

I think he thinks we’ll seem more unified and more like a family if we have the same name.  I kind of get that.  But what bugs me is that he can’t see why I would view changing my name as a badge of second class citizenship, which it clearly is.  After all, for all his grumbling, he isn’t exactly rushing down to the city hall to change his precious name.  I have never been able to tease out what the hell his thought process is, though I think ultimately the thought process is, “You’re the chick and the chicks are the ones who change their names.”

Anyway, I told him before we got married and again just recently that this issue is non-negotiable.  While I realize everyone’s situation is different, I wish more women felt able to draw that line in the sand.  After all, what’s he gonna do? Call off our relationship over what I choose to call myself?

Back in about 1970 when I said something to the effect that I wanted to keep my name after marriage, a professor proclaimed me a Lucy Stoner.

Had to go back to the suffragette years to find a reference.

I wanted to keep my name, not because it’s any great shakes (I think it’s somewhat boring), heaven forbid because it was my father’s, but because it was mine and me.

But also because I saw my mother suffer and suffocate in a “typical” 1950s marriage, when women were expected to give up their identities as well as their names.

And that scared me straight out of marriage, more than the name change. About half my friends retained their professional names, those without a profession, but with children changed their names.

If you have children this is more complicated, but not much more.

And I love, love, love all those complete strangers for a mandate on other people’s names. But if they think they own your uterus, why not take that extra step to your very own name?

Are there any states which require a woman change her name when she gets married?  What about when she gets divorced?  How hard is it to change back?  Is the idea that the wife take the husbands whole name, like Mrs. Whoever She Marries, or just his last name?  Where did this tradition come from anyway?  It’s got to be a religious thing, with the woman’s total submersion in her husband’s identity.

It’s not required by any law in any state, it’s purely a social custom.

despite our fondest hopes about the meaning of the Obama election, the culture war isn’t going away

Obama’s election was a victory in the Civil War.  We have another 100 years of the Culture War to look forward to.

The other news stories I am finding don’t break out the percentage by gender, but say “half of all participants”. Naturally none link back to an abstract of the study, let alone the study itself.

Anyway, I told him before we got married and again just recently that this issue is non-negotiable.

“Just recently”? He thinks you’ll change your mind after fifteen years? And yeah, I think you are right about his thought process: he’s The Man, so he’s the one whose name rules, and your not changing your name is a subtle affront because it suggests on some level of his brain that he’s not in charge. Fuck that shit.

And this is an example of why I suspect the results are skewed by gender; men are more emotionally invested than women in the woman changing her name.

Has anyone has any luck finding the study? I’m curious what the questions were the were asked, since according to the results, very few/none selected ‘it doesn’t matter either way/should depend on the couple’. I’m curious if the study allowed that as a potential response, and also how the ‘legally required’ question was phrased.

Same name vs take the husband’s name is an interesting point - several couples in my circle decided to combine their last names into a brand new one, and then both changed their name to that. Personally, I think that’s cute - symbolizing starting a new family by taking a new ‘family name’ (as last names are sometimes known).

It seems so weird to me that this is even a debate.  My mother took my father’s name, but she always told me I had a beautiful name and I shouldn’t change it.  Her sister kept her name when she married, and I think my mother kind of regretted changing hers (they had no brothers, so the name, which is an unusual one, dies with them).  I guess I grew up with the notion that taking your husband’s name was one of those old-fashioned things women didn’t have to bother with anymore, like the menstrual-pad girdles in Judy Blume books.

My husband and I are both in the comics industry, and recently we were on a panel of comic-book couples at a convention.  Afterward, two college-age kids who had been in the audience approached me.  They were engaged.  The guy noted that only one of the couples on the panel had the same last name.  He wanted to know why the rest of us hadn’t changed our names; was it because we’d already established ourselves in the industry when we got married?  I said that was part of it, but I wouldn’t have changed my name anyway, because it was my name.  I got the distinct impression that the name-changing issue was a point of contention between the two of them, and that the guy had just been a little bit pwned.

But they were so young!  And so nerdy!  Where’d they get those retrograde ideas in the first place?

I just want to note, one need not invoke the “famous author” clause in an example.  I’ve worked with many women who published research articles under their own name then married afterwards.  In all these cases, keeping their name was simple career necessity, since it would be impossible for prospective labs/universities to corroborate their publication history if their work was published under two different names, and effectively make their academic career that much harder.

What’s really distressing about this news - Laura Hamilton, the study’s lead author says that when respondents were asked why they thought women should change their last names, “they told us that women should lose their own identity when they marry and become a part of the man and his family.”

I’m all for women losing their identity and becoming part of mine under the right circumstances.

Those circumstances involve things like plane crashes in the Andes.  Until then, I’ll stick with getting a dog if I want slavish devotion.

I have one friend who had felt that her family name was going to die out with her, because she had taken her husband’s name when she married and retaken her family name when she divorced, so all her kids had his name, and she had only sisters, all of whom took their husband’s name.

When her son got married, both he and his wife took his mother’s maiden name rather than either of their own (current) surnames.

As a gay man, I assumed that when I married we’d each keep our names, but my husband wants to take my last name to distance himself from his family as soon as our marriage is recognized here in Illinois (either as a marriage or a civil union.)

Or, slightly more seriously, my last name is something I picked up from some guy who abandoned his wife and three children and split to Australia when I was five.  I don’t see any particular need to make it an icon, and I especially wouldn’t expect a woman I was capable of loving to particularly respect it.

Perhaps it’s different for more meaningful family lines?

What really bugs me is seeing e-mail addresses where the women don’t even give their own names. They are chips_girlfriend and richardsmom (made-up examples; I don’t want to go back to the forums where I saw these).

Also amusing (from quite another social stratum): the serial surnames of Pamela Beryl Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman. I’m sure you can find even longer instances.

Sadly, my husband wishes that I would take his last name.  After a decade-and-a-half together, it STILL bothers him that we don’t have the same last name.  And it bothers me that he feels entitled enough to ask me to change my name.

I don’t understand why it’s so hard to shame men about this.  A lot of men are apparently a total brick wall on the subject.  It seems to me that all you have to say is, “I’m not naming myself after you, you aren’t my architect.”  And if he pulls out the “we all need the same name” card, tell him he’s free to change his to yours.  After that, you’d think the discussion would be over, but a shocking number of women find themselves in your position, with men who simply won’t see how nasty it is to insist that your wife be named after you.

Same name vs take the husband’s name is an interesting point - several couples in my circle decided to combine their last names into a brand new one, and then both changed their name to that.

I vaguely know the now-wife of a rave DJ who went by the name Anabolic Frolic. He had a long and difficult to spell last name, and she wasn’t very attached to her family, so on marriage they changed their last names to Frolic. How awesome is that?

The complicated-with-children argument is really just a “but but but WHAT ABOUT TEH CHILDREN” distraction. We split the kids’ last names by gender and, granted that I live in California, nobody other than my mom has ever really appeared to notice, much less given a shit, although my husband occasionally gets called Mr. Mythago when the girls’ schools have occasion to talk to him.

To be charitable, I suspect that in a lot of these surveys, people don’t fully think through their answers to questions in the form of “It should be legally required that . . . .”  People may simply interpret the question as: “It would be nice if the government strongly encouraged that . . . .”  In other words, I suspect people don’t think about what “legal requirement” means and what it entails, such as the kind of sanctions would apply if people didn’t follow the requirement, how often would we want to enforce these sanctions, whatever it may be, and so on.  Because many people may not think about these details, the question “it should be legally required that” basically just turns into a question about the intensity of one’s personal feeling on the issue.

That said . . . what the fuck is wrong with people?!?!

I honestly am shocked at how much pressure women my age still feel.  Like I said, in the circles I run in, people don’t go to great lengths to separate the married from the unmarried.  I’ve dated men who were pro-marriage and men who weren’t, but not a one seemed to think that the name change was even desirable.  The idea that you would is alien to me in a lot of ways.  And yet, apparently most of the country sees things completely differently, and a lot of men—-men my age!—-feel emasculated without their wives running up the flag of surrender.

How hard is it to change back?

When my mom got divorced, they wrote it into the divorce agreement, so it’s pretty easy if you do it that way.  My then-stepfather threw a total fit, by the way.  Again, I’m baffled.  Who gives a shit?

I did that Amanda, he told me his brothers would never forgive him.

Bwahahaha! Okay, I’m sorry, that’s about the lamest one ever. “Honey, I’d love to, but I’m bro-whipped.”

Congratulations on your upcoming anniversary, though!

I don’t understand why it’s so hard to shame men about this.  A lot of men are apparently a total brick wall on the subject.  It seems to me that all you have to say is, “I’m not naming myself after you, you aren’t my architect.” And if he pulls out the “we all need the same name” card, tell him he’s free to change his to yours.  After that, you’d think the discussion would be over, but a shocking number of women find themselves in your position, with men who simply won’t see how nasty it is to insist that your wife be named after you.

I know two feminists who have been married, both of which took on a hyphenated name.  For one, the husband did the same, and for the second, the husband kept his.  I always wondered about the conversation they had about *that*, given that the feminist in question is an intelligent and extremely sarcastic woman.

But she’s also pretty girly about a lot of things, so I don’t know how she sees the issue.

This whole family combination-we should all share the last name-thing could be easily solved by the husband taking the wife’s last name or doing a combo/new name altogether thing.

My children have their father’s name as a middle name and my name as a last name. Quite simply, I am the primary caretaker. I enroll them in school, accompany them to the doctor, etc. It makes more sense that they have my last name. I don’t see why it is so hard.

It’s really dismayed me the number of women I know who changed their names immediately upon getting married, no debate, no nothing.  One of my sisters has had five different surnames in her life, and not once has she even considered not taking the latest husband’s name.  I can’t think of a single one of my peers from high school/college who are now married who have kept their names.

And just to be clear, I’m perfectly aware that it’s their choice, but damn if it doesn’t seem like a backlash.

We split the kids’ last names by gender and, granted that I live in California, nobody other than my mom has ever really appeared to notice, much less given a shit, although my husband occasionally gets called Mr. Mythago when the girls’ schools have occasion to talk to him.

I think that’s a great compromise, but at the link at Feministing, I found out that it’s actually illegal in some places.  In DC, a couple that wanted to name the baby after the mother—-which I think should be the default for common sense reasons—-had to sue because the government wouldn’t let them.  That is fucked up.  But it proves your point exactly, mythago.  Women who change their names often give a shrug and say, “Oh it’s just a name, I wasn’t that attached” spin to it.  Well, if it’s just a name, then why is it so fucking important that men get to name their wives and their kids after themselves.  If it’s not a big deal, why do so many men get bent out of shape?  If it’s not a big deal, how come it’s against the law?

It is a big deal.  But women are stuck in this position where they’re expected to make a big change to placate their husbands and their family and their community, and because it’s embarrassing to have to do such a thing, it’s easier to shrug it off. 

Which I don’t really mind.  Shrugging it off is a classic female survival strategy.

Right now I’m bothered by the fact that in some places, women can change their name for free if they’re getting married, but men still have to pay the fee.
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Comment #8: BenYitzhak on 08/12 at 02:34 PM

Is this one of those situations on the Internet where someone is being wry, ironic, sarcastic or whatever and lacking the body/tonal cues, someone (me, here, which by the way I think I rarely do but then how would I know?) misreads it?

Or are you serious?

Of all the itty bitty “privileges” women get in our patriarchy to provide the appearance of a token fraction of balancing offset of male privilege, this one is way down the list of any I’d take umbrage at if I didn’t think it obtuse at best to gainsay any of them—or it would be, were I in a score-settling mood, if I could think of any actual privileges women get at all. I guess this one is the only one on said list at the moment.

But geez, changing one’s name is inherently a hassle. Such a deal, a woman “gets” to change her name—not to any name she might want, but only to the one that happens to come with some guy she can see herself devoting her foreseeable life to sharing with. Under special marriage rules, I guess it’s easier for her to do this one restricted change—but mainly because she has an irreproachable excuse for all the inconvenience any name change imposes both on her and everyone else in our necessarily bureaucratic world.

Now, is this really a privilege you’d appropriate—along with the associated strong social expectation, which apparently some people (lots, until you get down the brass tacks of how it would actually work in real life) think should become an actual legal requirement, that you have to actually do it whether in a particular case you’d really want to or not?

You, and the discussion about whether any states already mandate name-changing (as said above, apparently none do—yet) do raise a question of my own though—

Insofar as marriage does include relatively easy name-changing in its Package O’ Privilege, do the relevant laws mandate that only a woman marrying a man can do it (if she wants to, as of now anyway) or are the laws written or liable to be interpreted in a gender-neutral fashion, so that either spouse can take the last name of the other?

Or for that matter—can’t a couple just as well choose a new, third name for both of them and have the name-change process under marriage rules apply to both of them simultaneously?

I don’t know of a lot of real-life instances of the latter; the idea was mentioned in Joe Haldeman’s Forever War—William Mandella, the protagonist, has that last name because his parents were hippies who decided choosing such a third name would be both more symbolic of their chosen life as a family and more fair. (Also, evidently, they didn’t know how to spell “mandala” and neither did the clerk who processed their marriage license…) Unless Haldeman was indulging in massive poetic license this implies that such things are, or were in the 1960s, perfectly legal though not customary in at least some states. (I forget if the Mandellas were supposed to be New York or California hippies).

Anyway I have no idea if the legal aspects of the name change were exactly what any woman would get to/have to do in a customary case. (Being hippies the Mandallas probably blew off some steps anyway…)

And where are the libertarians now that we need them? Or rather it seems to me that here is a case where any sensible American would be a libertarian—people should just be free to choose any darn name they want, anytime they want for any reason. I guess I’m not much of a libertarian after all since I accept that society may and indeed must have some rules about procedure, both because it is after all a hassle for everyone and because we wouldn’t want it to become a way of covering up fraud or helping felons elude justice. But what business has the state, or any social entity, forbidding or compelling anyone to do anything with their name?

Wives and children are the husband’s/father’s property.  Why wouldn’t they have his name?

/snark

Also, it’s not just men who give you grief—I had a co-worker who was all dramatic when I got back from my honeymoon and she said, “So what is it now?  Mrs….?” and I said, “Oh, I didn’t change my name.”  “WHAT?!?!?!  What will the school do when you pick up your children and you don’t have the same name???”  End of the world that.

I have friends who, when they married after having give birth to two children, gave the children the wife’s last name.

He was a musician who’d adopted a nom de plume—it really wasn’t his name, after all, just a professional name—didn’t much care for his actual last name. It would have been more confusing if wife and kiddies had taken his actual last name.

They’ve been together through thick and thin and over a decade together.

I also think young people are getting married too young, 20, 21 to have thought any of this through.

Man, some of these husbands sound like total babies. My wife took my name, but it was because she strongly dislikes her abusive drunken father. I didn’t care one way or the other. It does make things a bit easier, especially now that we have a kid. Most of the urban hipster bourgeoisie couples that we hang out with had the wife take the husband’s name, but then again one of the eye-openers after returning from exile in small-town VA was that Atlanta hipsters are often very conservatively bourgeois.

Heh! I appreciate the supportive comments on my husband’s weird 15-year-long poutfest about my refusal to take his name. Just a couple of follow-ups on that:

—I have this site to thank for giving me an immediate come-back in our most recent tiff on the subject.  My husband actually said that I should recognize that he had compromised on the name issue.  Fortunately, thanks to this site I recognized the bullshit there immediately.  I told him, sorry, dude, but you don’t get points for compromising by forfeiting some undeserved privilege to control what I call myself.  It would be like me saying I “compromised” by agreeing that he should not have to constantly wear a sign reading, “Laurie’s property.”

— I should note that I was really worried before I married him that his weird name fetish was the sign of secret sexism.  But I can honestly say that he is fine in every other area as far as I can see.  But he does have a grossly sexist blind spot on the name issue.  One reason it really weirds me out is that it seems so out of character.

The ‘famous writer’ objection is actually pretty weak compared to the problem of women academics; a professional writer, after all, can release her work under a pseudonym—which could just happen to be her unmarried name. I’m certain academics wouldn’t have that option.

@Mark Foxwell (comment number 42),

I don’t think Ben Yitzhak was complaining that women are benefiting from some privilege men don’t get.  I think he is complaining that the government is making a (sexist) statement as to which spouse should make the name change.

I am really surprised that people get grief from friends or schools for not having the same name as their kids.  It is so common now. 

But do you know, you don’t need to give the kids the same name as either parent!  I know a woman with several kids, each with a different father, and each with a different last name.  She never has trouble with schools (but maybe I live in a relatively enlightened place).  The really interesting part is that the last names of the kids are not necessarily the last names of their respective fathers (although they are in some cases).  She used family names, but she could just as easily have called them Elvis Presley and Mae West and so on.

I changed my name when I got married.  Not strictly to his name, but to a shortened version of it that he then took once he got his citizenship.  Honestly, I don’t think it really occurred to either of us that I wouldn’t take it.  It’s just what you did.  Our kids also have the short version of his name.

Now, I kind of wish I had kept mine, but since I was so young when we married (just a few weeks shy of 22) and I’ve used the one I have now for more or less all my adult life, it would be a pain in the ass if I tried to change it back.  I also think that, while he probably wouldn’t have been upset if I hadn’t taken it when we got married, he would be a little hurt if I tried to go back now, 11 years on.  All that plus laziness means that I most likely won’t be changing back.

Emaloo—okay, so part of the process of changing-name-under-marriage is filling out the actual marriage forms themselves. But when you do that, assuming one or both spouses actually does change their name there, does it automatically set in motion any of the other processes that an individual who simply chose to change their name on their own, without marriage being involved?

I lived with a woman named “Lane Natasha Littletree” for 15 years (until she died); she had to change her name on her own. For complicated reasons—she’d had a child, named her “Littletree” on the birth certificate because her own family and the child’s father wanted nothing to do with the situation so she chose to honor the name of an ancestor with the surname. Then she found that she kept getting into trouble with various bureacracies because her surname didn’t match her child’s—so she changed her own last name to match her daughter’s. Also she took advantage of the process to change her other names as well. I gather it was a long involved process, requiring mandatory legal notices in the newspaper kept up for a long interval, and when I met her nearly a decade later there will still issues about her identity cropping up. In fact, shades of Joe Haldeman’s Mandellas, no legal documents included her middle name (which she preferred) just the initial “N”, because again there was some trouble in spelling “Natasha” when she did the name change. We gradually insisted on using it more; eventually she was known more as “L Natasha” than “Lane N.”

Anyway it seemed like a big hassle to me. Does legal marriage actually help with streamlining any of this significantly? Does one still need to follow all the troublesome and expensive procedures that a person who changes their name on their own must? BenYitzhak seems to think it does; I am more skeptical—but quite ignorant of how it really works.

Since we do not in fact live under one monolithic bureaucracy but a crazy-quilt of more or less autonomous ones, many of them private, I find it hard to believe marriage can do much to smooth things over on the name change blues front. Except, as I said above, a get-out-of-embarrassment free card when the inevitable tangles and confusion happen. Still, endless forms probably have to be filled out, even if the people processing them have less excuse to be surly about it.

As an example of “tangles,” at Safeway I am “Marc Littletree.” I never married Natasha, and my first name is spelled with a “k.” But, when Safeway shifted over from having coupon books mailed to various households to having a “Safeway Club Card” system in the mid-1990s, they rather mindlessly relied on postal addresses. Not only did Natasha and I live in the same rental, the property was divided into three, all with the same mailing address. Another guy entirely named “Marc” lived in another unit. Hilarity ensued. Belatedly Safeway kluged in a way of distinguishing accounts by telephone number, so we and the couple including Marc had our memberships separated—but since Natasha and I shared the same phone number, we were practically married as far as Safeway was concerned.

I really should straighten all this out because as of a year and a half ago I left Sonoma County and terminated that home phone number—but I just used it again today to access my Safeway account, because I’m lazy.

So they still say “Have a nice day, Mr Littletree!”

For the record, there never was a “Mr Littletree;” within Natasha’s family there is even doubt cast on the existence of the Choctaw grandfather she claimed in giving the name to her daughter…

Replying to Comment #42, Mark Foxwell;

I’m bothered that it incentivizes changing the bride’s name. Sure, it’s free not to change either name, but I think it’s more fair if one person, regardless of gender, has the option of changing the name in tandem with a marriage. This does not put pressure on either party, and it works better with same sex marriages.

And yes, Mark, a marriage does streamline the name change process.

From #3

My goal is to stay on the progressive edge as I get older, and so far I’m on track. When I was 25, I listened to Rush Limbaugh. Now I’m 40, and I’d punch him in the face if I got the chance. By the time I hit 60, I’ll probably be Ralph Nader’s lookalike, without the self-destructive tendencies.

Incertus, I’m always happy to see lifetime political progressions which defy the young=liberal, old=conservative plan that everyone is supposed to adopt. Your comment put a smile on my face.

My dad tried to talk my DH into being the one to change his name, but I pointed out people don’t spell ours right either and at least a rare name gave them an excuse. My father changed his name to his stepfather’s on reaching adulthood, so he had a different perspective.
I wanted to change—in retrospect, I could have had us both change to my mom’s maiden name, which I do like. But the fun result has been I have a name that apparently no one else in the world does. That’s majorly cool.

But the idea of a mandatory name change sickens me. I might have boycotted marriage just because that’s so offensive!

So, we’re still in the ‘50s, I see.  *sigh*

My mother kept her name when she married my dad.  They’ve been happily married for, oh, 37 years or so.  If the law had required her to change her name, I’m sure they’d have opted to happily “live in sin” instead.  Perhaps the let’s make it a law crowd are trying to reduce the number of people who get married?  After all, a number of them probably also want to keep marriage between one man and one woman.  Now if only we knew why they wanted to have as few marriages as possible…

All right, I don’t really think they’ve thought things through even that much.

The idea of a man changing his name to his wife’s is nice in theory.  But I don’t think I would really like it if my husband were to change his name to mine—the reason being that people would invariably assume that I had taken his last name, rather than vice-versa.  Because men changing their name is so rare, having the same name would still be interpreted as a sign of male dominance even if my husband were the one to change name.

Of course, my ideal fantasy would be that it become SO common for men to change their names that couples with the same name are NOT conveying any particular values about gender relations either way.  But I am not holding my breath for that to happen.

“Heh! I appreciate the supportive comments on my husband’s weird 15-year-long poutfest about my refusal to take his name.”

My husband decides to occasionally get into something of a snit about it, too.  Last time he did, I reminded him that my last name wasn’t “Yourlastnameherefor$2/mon” and at the top of a website.

“Anyway it seemed like a big hassle to me. Does legal marriage actually help with streamlining any of this significantly?”

Marriage, divorce, and, I believe, adoption.  My mother went back to her maiden name after her most recent divorce and was grousing that the Patriot Act narrowed the window in which she had to file to take advantage of the truncated process.

Well, if it’s just a name, then why is it so fucking important that men get to name their wives and their kids after themselves.

Exactly. I remember my mom getting pissed about this when Mr. Mythago and I were living in sin - she would say we should get married because it was ‘just a piece of paper,’ and I’d respond with, hey, if it’s just a no-big-deal piece of paper, why should I bother? Because, as you say, “it’s no big deal” is code for “your opinions are completely fucking unimportant, do as you’re told.”

I do agree that there’s no point in berating women who are trying to cope with the patriarchy. At least, right up until they start parroting the party line. I don’t care if a woman tells herself she took her husband’s name because she really wanted to, but I am going to be a jackass if she gets in my face about not doing so.

What I find interesting is that our kids think it’s weird and insane that other families do it differently. Women change their names? Girls have their father’s last name? WTF! It’s not because we deride or belittle people who do things differently - it’s the natural tendency to see their families as the norm.

That 50% figure really is shocking, even in the context of what’s been explored in this space about people not properly distinguishing between “the right thing to do” and “should be mandatory.”

I have a pretty terrible last name and, should I eventually marry someone, I will jump at the chance to take hers instead.

My mom is one of those people who changed her name legally as the path of least resistance, but publishes books (and does everything else) under her maiden name.  She can tell junk mail by which name it uses.

Mythago at 61 says:  “What I find interesting is that our kids think it’s weird and insane that other families do it differently.  Women change their names? Girls have their father’s last name? WTF! It’s not because we deride or belittle people who do things differently - it’s the natural tendency to see their families as the norm.”

Yeah, the idea that the children will be confused or traumatized by a different naming custom is total bullshit.  Actually, I WAS confused when I was growing up as to why the eff my mother changed her name.  I can’t explain why I found that upsetting from such a young age, but yeah, I think male domination (whether symbolic, actual, or both) is a far worse thing to impose on kids than a little confusion at school.

Preying Mantis—oh thank god.  I was worried that I would be the only Pandagon reader with a husband being snitty about this.

My father in law still hasn’t forgiven me for not taking my husband’s name—takes it as a slight, like I think there’s something wrong with either the name itself or his entire clan.  Pout on, sir.  My husband agrees about the loaded nature of the name-change, and the fact that we live in Quebec, where most women don’t change their last names anyway, helps. 

When I get shocked looks elsewhere, I trot out the “I’m an academic, I need my c.v. pubs to be consistent” but really that’s just a peace-making statement in certain circles—my job has nothing to do why I didn’t change my name (which isn’t special and I’m not attached to it _or_ particularly affectionate towards my deadbeat father). It’s 100% political and nothing could induce me, ever.

(Though my husband and I sometimes joke about combining our names into a new word we would share, which would spell out either “Whooper”, or “Cooldon”.  Win/win, nuh?)

“Preying Mantis—oh thank god.  I was worried that I would be the only Pandagon reader with a husband being snitty about this.”

We could start a club.  It seems to track pretty closely with abandonment issues being poked by his asshole relatives, so I expect at least occasional snits about it for some time to come.

My wife didn’t take my last name, and the only time I ever recall getting grief for it was a crazy fundie co-worker who was visibly upset that my wife didn’t value me (or some such bullshit) enough to take my name. He was, not surprisingly, divorced. I fixed him with a cold, level gaze and said, “When I want your opinion on how to conduct my marriage I will ask you for it. Until then, be quiet.”

Kids have my name. We discussed giving my daughter my wife’s surname and my son my surname, but decided that would be too confusing. I suppose that’s patriarchal of me, but my wife was the one who suggested it. I don’t really care either way.

I did come up with a good rejoider when someone called up asking for Mrs. Norsecats: I held the phone out and said, “oh honey, I think it’s someone calling for your husband” whereupon they apologized and hungup in confusion.

Of nine married couples about our age, my husband and I are the only ones who have different last names.  Not one of the other couples has even hyphenated.  So these survey results dismay me, but don’t shock me much—except for that 50% of women thinking that the name change should be legally required.  WTF???

And I think it does have a lot to do with where you live.  We’re really conservative up here, and it shows.  I don’t get too much crap over not changing my name, but it’s been three years and various relatives on both sides still insist that my last name is Mr. A’s name.  One grandmother even went so far as to address me as Mrs. Adam Smith.  It’s the sort of social pressure that builds when people just expect you to do something, the way woman are the primary caretakers or the way that men are construction workers.

But then, even in first grade with my very first crush, when I wrote down my name and his last name together, I thought it just looked weird and sounded ugly.

Wow, I knew most people hated me keeping my name, but wanting me to be legally forced to do so?  That’s really disturbing.  Like something out of a Handmaid’s Tale Hell world.  I live in the South, and I’m pretty much a freak for keeping my name.  I am so overwhelmed with joy when I see another woman who has kept her name, but it doesn’t happen often.  But I’m vegetarian and liberal and an atheist and a bookworm so I’m used to being the outcast. 

My grandmother will not accept that I kept my name.  she insists it’s hyphenated because that’s the most radical feminist thing she can think of I guess.  And she still sends my mail to Mrs.  I HATE Mrs.

I suppose that’s patriarchal of me, but my wife was the one who suggested it. I don’t really care either way.

Norsecat, you seem like a good guy and I’m not trying to rag on you but—c’mon. You don’t care either way but it just so happened that the ‘way’ it went was the standard patronymic way? I’m not criticizing your and your wife’s ultimate decision but the rationale is, well, a rationalization.

If you have children this is more complicated, but not much more.

Then she found that she kept getting into trouble with various bureacracies because her surname didn’t match her child’s—so she changed her own last name to match her daughter’s.

Ok, my mom married my dad when I was 2, thirty years ago. Mom and Dad have Dad’s name, I have Biodad’s name. Never, not once, ever did I have a moment of confusion or complication because I didn’t have my parents name. I can’t even conceive of how it could be a problem in a country with so many blended families, unwed mothers, remarriages, and foster families. I honestly don’t get it. Is it possible that this is one of the areas getting more conservative? Because, seriously, never a single issue.

“they told us that women should lose their own identity when they marry and become a part of the man and his family.”

I read this out loud to my husband who rolled his eyes and said, “You’re a part of me and my family without taking my name.” It’s a fair point. I am a part of him and his family (and he’s a part of me and mine, but I suspect the 50% wouldn’t admit that). It has absolutely nothing to do with our names. Believe me, I would never put up with some of my in-laws if they weren’t family. Oddly, my failure to adopt their name didn’t make them less mine.

Last names were a method of atomizing people such that they were easy to tax and conscript.  Last names truly had everything to do with commodification of people, aside from a few noble families that essentially used them as a brand identity.  There should be no surprise at the poll results.  If last names weren’t about possession, seriously, why have them at all?  It’s not as if we can’t use nicknames to the people we know, or that we couldn’t adopt some of the far eastern mentalities about changing names as your life changes.

It would bug the power freaks who’d try and stop us…

What about when she gets divorced?  How hard is it to change back?

It’s not.  The name change is included as part of the divorce decree.

I kept my name, for practical and sentimental reasons.  My family is awesome and there was no way I felt like changing everything, including dealing with my publications and professional license.  My daughter has my husband’s last name and my last name as a middle name.

I’m in the armed forces, so everyone assumes that my husband is Mr. Fizz.  This was quite comical when I gave his name to someone who was tasked with making a list of spouses who would be attending a particular function.  When asked what his name was, I gave it.  “His name is 1stlast Fizz?”  “No, it’s just 1st Last.”  “Wait, you don’t have the same name?” “No, I didn’t change it when I got married.”  “You can do that?” “Sure.”  “I don’t think I’ve ever known a woman who didn’t change her name.”

I also want to address my undying hatred of Mr. and Mrs. John Smith as a form of address.  It’s AWFUL.

I think most women have never even thought about what changing a name means.  They just do it because “you’re supposed to”.  My mother changed hers, and back in ‘77, she had thought it over and erred on the side of tradition.  I won’t change my name because of all of the reasons already outlined, and I often grapple with the fact that no matter what name I choose, I won’t really be honoring the memory of any of the women in my family tree.  I like my current last name though, because it is a very typical Anglo name from non-Anglo ancestry, yet not as typical as Jones or Nelson.  Also, I was raised very near where my dad grew up and was closer to that side of the family.

What gets me more than anything is when a couple has kids and the kids get the father’s name.  People say “oh, I didn’t care”, but when you side with the patriarchal tradition, you just add to the problem.  mythago’s way is my preferred route.  If I had my way, THAT would be the law. (as an adult, I know I can’t have my way, I’m just sayin’.....)

My mother-in-law submitted a wedding announcement to my husband’s home town paper.  She informed them that I would be keeping my name and the paper added “for professional reasons” to the article.  Because for a small town north Texas paper not so long ago, there has to be some kind of reason, I suppose?
The spouse and I considered a mash-up of our last names but couldn’t agree on one.  Our friends refer to us by one of those mash-ups anyway.

It occurs to me, reading this here, that a law requiring a married woman to take her husband’s name assumes that a marriage has exactly one woman.

And I’ll repeat what I said there: if Senator Shaheen had felt able to not change her name, it would sound less goofy.

I know I’ve shared this before, but, hey, once again is great. 

I have a boring Anglo last name that takes up many pages in most phone books.  Before we got married, I told my wife I thought she should just keep her own name (a more interesting Anglo one, actually her stepdad’s).  I was surprised that she got a bit miffed at that—she said it felt like I was trying to keep her out of fully belonging in my family.  So we had the famous keeping/taking argument but with roles reversed.  Ultimately she decided to hyphenate her name, so it’s long, but super cool and posh-sounding, like someone who’d be listed in the baronetage, probably an antagonist of the Miss Dashwoods. 

Great solution for her.  Plus when she got to know my family better, I think she was happy to be quite distinct from them.

Somewhat O/T, but it occurs to me that many of your handles are probably BETTER than your “real” names!

Mr. Norsecats !!!  WHat an awesome name
Ms. Fizz !!!  Teh Awesomness is blinding

If you could change your entire family’s surnames to you HANDLES, in such wise, WOULD you?? Maybe at the time of marriage you hadn’t thought up/worked out awesome enough ALTERNATIVE names!!

Mr and Ms Preying Mantis. That’s a great one too!

The Mythagos

Girls have their father’s last name? WTF

Yeah, but it’s just as WTF for the boys, surely.  It strikes me as remarkably skeevy and patriarchal to assume that only girls somehow belong to their mothers in a way that boys don’t.  Sons take just as much out of a mother as daughters do; separating brothers and sisters into a male and a female ‘line’ is horribly retrograde and gender-essentialist—it seems better than giving everybody the dad’s name, but it isn’t really, when you think about it. It would be so massively alienating to tell a kid that she gets her mom’s name but her brother gets her dad’s; doesn’t matter who you look like, who you take after, or which set of relatives you like better, because hey, genitals. Can’t we just make the children’s last name the same as the gestating parent’s, or flip a coin in the case of adoption? Mother’s name should be the standard.

My wife kept her name—there never was any question, and I would have objected otherwise. Our son has both of our names, hyphenated with my name last. That’s how he’s enrolled in school. He’s not yet old enough for it to really matter (he’s 8), but he tends to drop the second half of his name when asked. If that’s what he wants to be called, that’s fine by me. He’s my son regardless, I devote much of my free time to him and identifies with me heavily. What difference does the name actually make? It’s insignificant compared to the rest. I’ve got to wonder if fathers who insist on stamping the family with their name have a bit of insecurity over who has the biggest actual impact…

Just to geek out for a moment, wouldn’t the kids in the picture find each other repellant?

When I got married, a work colleague asked me what my new name would be.  I said that I wasn’t changing it (and I prefer that framing to “I’m keeping my name”).  She responding that this was for work, yes?  And I said no, I’m just not changing my name at all.  And she said “can you do that?”.  She really, truly thought that a woman’s name was legally changed to that of her husband when they married.

What I’ve noticed is that most, if not all, of my old female work colleagues changed their name when they married, but my friends have either not changed their name, have both double barrelled, or not married at all.  But where names haven’t changed, the kids have ended up with the father’s name - except mine - we double-barrelled her.  This seems to have confused people.  Interesting that while women are starting not to change their names, the “family name” still tends to belong to the man.

In 1989 we waffled a little. But I decided that Sparrow was a cooler surname than Moss. That and I LIKED the idea of not being the oddball, the outsider, the different one in my own family, in the family I was creating, as I had been in my step-father’s house.

I think it should be entirely a choice. If a partner in the forthcoming marriage wants to change names, I say go for it. If neither partner wants to change, go for it. Maybe adopting the Spanish naming system, “Juan Garcia y Vega” might work for the kids?

“Just to geek out for a moment, wouldn’t the kids in the picture find each other repellant?”

I thought that was rather the point?

“Mr and Ms Preying Mantis. That’s a great one too!”

Hee.  Our mailbox could say “The Mantids.”

What the fuck???!?!?  Makes me want to change my name back, or possibly to Ms. Anglerfish.

In Québec, the government makes it actively difficult for anyone to change his/her name.  Since 1981, it is actually forbidden for spouses to change their names, even if they were married outside the province where name-changes are conventional. As a result, hyphenated names have become very common.  Mind you, the marriage rate here is also the lowest in the country, and the cohabitation rate is the highest.

Where did this tradition come from anyway?  It’s got to be a religious thing

No, it didn’t originate as a strictly religious thing.  Religion is part of culture and so it’s often hard to separate the two, but there were patriarchal attitudes about buying women as baby factories long before religion mandated it.  Religions mandated it because it was already done, not necessarily the other way around.

I don’t necessarily agree that it’s just the menz who want it to be mandatory for women to change their names.  I’ve known many men who don’t expect women to do it.  However, the conservative women who do take their husband’s name probably feel threatened by women who don’t and they’re often the quickest to judge any woman who doesn’t validate their own point-of-view.  I suspect that this falls more heavily along conservative/liberal lines than gender lines.

My plan for naming children goes like this.  Children will take a hyphenated name of momlastname-dadlastname.  As the generations pass, to prevent names that are ridiculously wrong, each child will take only the first part of each parent’s last name.  I think that the mother’s name should go first because she actually gave birth to the kid, and realistically, she still does the majority of childcare work.  Or, we could just let people pick there own last name from a list of ancestors whenever they get old enough.

What about, when you do change your last name, having the husband’s entire family decide to get rid of your first name as well?  I want to send back every greeting card and invitation addressed to “Mr. and Mrs. Dude’s first name last name.”  All missives addressed by women, of course.  How do they not see how effing screwed up that is?  Vomit all over the world.

It would be so massively alienating to tell a kid that she gets her mom’s name but her brother gets her dad’s

They don’t find it massively alienating, but maybe I should correct that and start telling them that the girls “belong” to me and my son “belongs” to his father? To be fair, I didn’t also mention that they also have the other parent’s last name as a middle name, but I’m not sure that addresses your concern.

I confess that genitals affected their first names as well; I had a bad anti-feminist moment and failed to name my children Robin, Chris and Pat.

Can’t we just make the children’s last name the same as the gestating parent’s, or flip a coin in the case of adoption?

Well, you’re free to do as you like in your own family, but “gestating parent’s” strikes me as a really bad idea. It doesn’t apply to a whole host of families, and it really implies that giving birth is the only True Parenthood. The rest of y’all? Oh, shit, we dunno, just flip a freaking coin, what’s the big deal already,  it’s not like your parents gestated you so the source of your name isn’t important.

(And yes, we did consider what do to if we had an intersex child, or a child who turned out to be transgender. We figured we’d have to talk to professionals and the community about how to help the child navigate a “boy or girl?” world and we’d deal with it then.)

When my mom got divorced, they wrote it into the divorce agreement, so it’s pretty easy if you do it that way.

Interesting. I had a couple of friends who reported that the only time in their lives they signed their “married name” was on the divorce papers, because the husband’s lawyer refused to file the papers unless they did.

Mythago
In my experience,  hospitals already give kids the last name of the gestating parent. Which can require some polite crossing out and rewriting if the couple’s intentions are otherwise…

A friend of mine told me the story of an affianced friend of his, who was fighting with his intended over various aspects of the wedding. The bride to be insisted that the groom not invite one of his closest buddies to the fete. He objected, saying that even though she disliked the buddy, the friendship was an important one to him. She parried: disinvite the buddy or she wouldn’t take his name. Upshot: Buddy was disinvited.

When told this story, I wondered aloud how such a goofy ultimatum could carry any persuasive weight at all. Who cares what bride’s name is? My friend looked at me, uncomprehendingly. Of course this was a deal breaker! And what an awful woman his friend had married, who would bargain so ruthlessly with his name!

My thought was, well they all deserve each other. Feh.

benvolio:

Eek. That would be a dealbreaker for me, but in a rather different way.

Pretty much all the women I know - friends and family - kept their names if they got married in the past 30 years.  However, I have also heard many reports of pushback from the men involved, although none of them could articulate why it was important to them (“tradition” is not articulation, it’s an excuse).  The kids of the couples who had them all ended up with the father’s last name, however.  Perhaps not coincidentally, none of the pushback came from the childfree men.

And people looking for Mrs. Hislastname (or Mr. Mylastname) are immediately tagged as people who don’t actually know us (with the exception of relatives over 90 years old, who get a pass).

I think Preying Mantis is an awesome last name. The Mythagos (Mythagoes?) sounds like a band, though.

My mother, if she doesn’t know the parents of one of my friends socially, refers to them as Mr. and Mrs. Friendsname. “How are Mr. and Mrs. Amanda doing?”

The problem we faced is that we live in a culture where men’s last names are Their Names, and women’s last names are placeholders and indicators of their status. (Margaret Atwood was making a point when the Handmaidens had names like “Offred”.) Girls are taught that their last name is not theirs - hence the faux-clever arguments that it’s OK for a girl to take her husband’s last name because “otherwise you’re just keeping a man’s name anyway.”

Outside of the ‘net and other subcultures there isn’t a tradition that has to do with occupation or place, either. John Smith isn’t a blacksmith, and while you might differentiate between all the Sanjays you know by saying “No, Sanjay who works at Digitex, you’re thinking of Sanjay from Los Angeles,” that doesn’t work as a legal name.

I will _never_ change my name. And the thought that my kids could be named something different makes me want to smash things.

True facts:
I am from Switzerland, where our backwards govt has actually legislated on this: when getting married, _someone_ has to change their name, at a minimum hyphenating their last name.

Of course, it could be gender neutral, but it’s not. When a friend wanted to keep her name, and her husband agreed to hyphenate, they had to write a letter to the govt to justify this strange state of affairs. I wanted them to write “Because.” but they were afraid of the wrath of bureaucrats.

Also, if a kid is born to an unmarried mother, it MUST have the mother’s name, if not, the fathers. No choice. Another friend isn’t getting married because she doesn’t want her kids to have different last names (same father, not that it should matter).

It’ll be a cold day in hell before I get married under Swiss law.

Can’t we just make the children’s last name the same as the gestating parent’s, or flip a coin in the case of adoption? Mother’s name should be the standard.

So, I read this last night and while the idea of splitting my kids on gender lines doesn’t feel right for me personally, this really bothered me. Look,, I hated every moment of pregnancy from start to finish, and it was really hard for me, and it endangered my health and was pretty scary. I’m not going to question that I worked way harder to bring my kid into the world than my husband did.

But giving birth doesn’t make you a parent any more than ejaculating does. Parenting makes you a parent, and my husband is just as much a parent as I am and has just as much right to every aspect of my child.

Maybe we should all take a new name when we marry so we don’t have to decide later what names our kids take. But I refuse to act like my kid is more mine than my husband’s.

Incidentally, I do know a couple who gave their kids her name. It must be admitted that his name was pretty objectionable and school-teasingly bad. But that seems like a perfectly rational way to choose a name to me.

Is “Elizabeth Taylor” that much worse than “Elizabeth Barrett”?

“When my mom got divorced, they wrote it into the divorce agreement, so it’s pretty easy if you do it that way.  My then-stepfather threw a total fit, by the way”

My sister made a point of not changing it back.  Her ex also threw a total fit

In one of the 234908230947 flamewars about name changing on a wedding planning board, it came up that when you make the obvious retort “If you care so much about us having the same name, why don’t you take my name?”—lots of guys respond in horror “Why don’t you just cut my balls off?”

I’m not making this up.  It’s so obviously a power and ownership game to these men, even if they don’t realize it.  If taking your wife’s name would castrate you, would mean that she owns you and runs your life, what does that mean when she takes your name?

I’m not planning to change my name when I get married.  I just see no real reason to do so.  I like my name, I like my family.

My fiance likewise sees no reason for it, so it’s not like I even have to convince him (I doubt he’d be my fiance if he demanded it).  My mother did ask what we would do if we had kids.  I shrugged and said we’d cross that bridge when we came to it.

My fiance’s mother told me specifically not to drop my name and take his.  She’d done the numerology and the numerology of Myfirst Hislast is apparently very unlucky.  (We also had to pick a wedding date and time that was not under a retrograde Mercury or a void moon.  Luckily the date we already wanted satisfied these requirements.  Hey, if this is all the religion drama we get with our wedding, I’m happy.  It could be much worse.)

I just feel like I’d have to have a reason to change my name, rather than a reason not to change it.  If nothing else, changing it is more of a bureaucratic pain than not changing it, even if I’ll have to roll my eyes at people assuming I’m Mrs. Hislast or assuming he’s Mr. Mylast for the rest of our marriage.  The vet where we take our cats is already confused, and addresses letters to “Mr. and Mrs. Mylast/Hislast.”  We find this incredibly amusing—I can’t believe they have no way to handle unmarried couples living together but co-owning pets, or couples without the same last name co-owning pets.

Many states’ divorce laws have a sort of auto-revert provision, where part of the standard order granting divorce restores the mother’s former name.

“The vet where we take our cats is already confused, and addresses letters to “Mr. and Mrs. Mylast/Hislast.” We find this incredibly amusing—I can’t believe they have no way to handle unmarried couples living together but co-owning pets, or couples without the same last name co-owning pets.”

I think most places just pick one to file everything under and then stick a note on the chart.  My husband is Mr. Mantis to the vet on account of me being the one who usually takes the pets in.  If there was a new staffer who didn’t recognize him, it was easy enough to say “I’m here with Ferret X.  The chart’s in the Mantis file.” And if that’s not precise enough—if you have a larger practice or demand more precise record-keeping—the reasonable alternative is to use a dash or a slash in between the two last names.  It’s bizarre the issues some people just seem determined to have over things like that.

I’m taking the boy’s name because I’m not attached to my family (at the moment at least) and who wouldn’t want to be a Fox?

lots of guys respond in horror “Why don’t you just cut my balls off?”

“Oh, my bad. It’s just that it never appeared that you had any.”

Preying mantis, our vet has everything filed by phone number.  I don’t even remember if they put anything but the pet’s name on the bills.
By the way, I assume the ferret is not actually named Ferret X, but I think Ferret X would be an outstanding ferret name.  It sounds so mysterious.

“Preying mantis, our vet has everything filed by phone number.  I don’t even remember if they put anything but the pet’s name on the bills.”

That sort of system seems like it would make it particularly easy to have letters and such addressed to Ledasmom/Ledasdad.

“By the way, I assume the ferret is not actually named Ferret X, but I think Ferret X would be an outstanding ferret name.  It sounds so mysterious.”

I went with that because we have multiple ferrets, so there is a certain amount of Ferret x to Ferret X, but we do currently have a Ferret With No Name.  He was a proper stray, which isn’t something you see too often with them.

We both hyphenated when we got married, though my mom sort of missed the point - she addresses our Xmas cards etc to “Mr & Mrs HisFirst Hyphenated name”.  Meh.

Incidentally, our vet doesn’t quite get it either.  The bills are all addressed to Mr HisFirst MyLast.  Whatever.

hee hee - ferret x

My sweetie has known from day one that I am not changing my name if we get married.  And that since my brother is not having children, I am the only one in my generation with our peculiar last name, and some of our children will have it.  I want to flip a coin for the first one, but he prefers girls get mine, boys get his.  I don’t like that one because there is 50% chance of having two of the same sex, and one of us might lose out.

@syfr: you want to pass your name on? your bf should acknowledge that. How about your name gets passed on to child #1, he get #2? Why can’t he agree to that?

It’s not so much the Mylast/Hislast that amuses us, but the “Mr. and Mrs. Mylast/Hislast.”  I understand just picking one and putting the file under that one.  But why not just have a field for “Owner 2” with title, first and last name, and address it to Title1 Owner1Last and Title2 Owner2Last?  This is actually more about database design than about last name changing, of course.

Furthermore the assumption of Mr. and Mrs. amuses me, because we are not married.

My fiance likewise sees no reason for it, so it’s not like I even have to convince him (I doubt he’d be my fiance if he demanded it).

I had that exact conversation with a very conservative friend in high school.
Her: “But what if your husband really, really wants you to take his name?”
Me: “Clearly I shouldn’t be marrying him, then!”

I think most places just pick one to file everything under and then stick a note on the chart.

That’s what we’ve found.  The portrait studio we take our kids to has us filed under my last name, even though I’m the only one with that name.

There was really no discussion when I didn’t change my name when I got married.  My father-in-law may have given me the briefest of odd looks, but that was all.

The kids (both genders) have my last name as a second middle and my husband’s as their actual last name.  I wanted it this way specifically because I figured it would be easier to deal with me having a different name than their father.  Plus, I already have the pregnancy-and-labor connection with the kids; I was willing to cede this one.

I’ve never had a problem with bureaucracies.*  When I had to take my oldest daughter to the emergency room at 6 months, they took my info off my driver’s license.  Then the very first question they asked was, “Is the child’s last name the same as yours?”

We didn’t hyphenate for either us or the kids because his name is a less-common variant of mine, and mine is *really* common.  So it would be like presenting ourselves as the Smith-Smythe family.  No thank you!

*Well, not because of being a multiple-last-name family.  However, the middle name character limit on Social Security cards?  Huge pain in the ass.

I’ve always thought it would be both awesome and sensible to give girls their fathers’ names and boys their mothers’. Would that shake things up just a smidge?

Addendum:  I do plan on encouraging my children to choose how they’d like to be called as soon as they’re old enough.  That’s a big part of why we gave them four names in the first place.  In high school, I decided to use my full name (my middle is my mother’s maiden - and her married middle) for anything formal.  It took me from having a hugely common name combo to being the only one in the country.

I’ve always thought it would be both awesome and sensible to give girls their fathers’ names and boys their mothers’. Would that shake things up just a smidge?

The only shake-up in that is the son getting Mom’s name. The girl still gets named for Daddy, just as she would if all the kids get Dad’s name. YMMV, of course, but in a culture that teaches little girls that their last name means nothing more than which male currently has jurisdiction over her, that’s a problem.

Plus, Mr. Mythago is of an ethnic heritage where they can point to Great-Great-Great-Great Grandfather Ragnar, who brought over all those nice things from burning down Irish monasteries in the triple-digit years, so something like the Icelandic -son and -dottir system appealed to him. (I acknowledge that Mythagosdottir is a mouthful.)

*The reason for Mr. and Mrs. John Smith is not that the wife’s name is “John Smith” too, but that it is her title.

Wow, I can’t believe I missed this one.  Haven’t read all the comments (but will between doing actual work, lol), but here are my usual & customary thoughts:

- catgirl’s comment at #2 is pretty much dead on IMO.  This assumption of male privilege & female ritual sacrifice always made marriage less appealing to me, going back to my initial realization of it at age seven.  It’s a dealbreaker, but more importantly, it’s part of that whole package of sexist customs that makes dating less and less appealing.

- Naming is power, period, and taking on a husband’s name means that you’re publicly ceding power even if he isn’t overtly claiming it.  Which is technically fine—individual choices, etc., blahblahblah—but don’t pretend that it means something different and more extra-specially virtuous.

- I’m not anywhere near as concerned about the patriarchal naming of children, to be honest; it’s a somewhat irritating convention, but kids’ names are wholly chosen by parents regardless.  My first name would sound stupid with my mom’s ‘maiden’ name, which means that a revision would throw everything out of whack (plus my maternal grandfather was an even more annoying mean old bastard than my paternal one).  The important thing is that my whole name—first, middle, last, each from various family members on both sides—is mine, and not offered for barter.

- Matt Yglesias is usually pretty awesome on this issue in his dispassionate way; he basically says that this is a custom that is fundamentally demeaning to women, and outlines why.  He doesn’t bring it up often, possibly in part because a lot of his commenters are rather passive-aggressive semi-liberal guys who claim they’re cool either way while really enjoying their privilege.

- I don’t think this issue is going to improve much with time, to be honest; after some initial progress in the seventies & afterward, it’s become one of those “harmless” sentimental throwbacks that women use to prove their commitment.

from a ways upthread: mythago is probably correct that there was some unconscious patriarchy going on in our decision to give the kids my name rather than splitting them up or giving the kids my wife’s name. The splitting-it-up thing just seems silly to me, but I have friends who have done it. Most memorably is a family I know with 4 kids, using all possible combinations of last names, to wit:

Kid 1: last name Smith
Kid 2: last name Jones
Kid 3: last name Smith-Jones
Kid 4: last name Jones-Smith

their school district must hate them :-]

School districts are (or should be) used to blended families where not everybody has Daddy’s last name.

My husband is Mr. Mantis to the vet on account of me being the one who usually takes the pets in.

I’ve learned to answer to Mr MySpousesName, but we didn’t count on the fact that her brother, who has the same first name and lives on the other side of the country, would have done business with a lot of the same online places that we do. (Now it’s gotten even worse, because her other brother married someone with her first name and a desire for name-changing.)

I think this survey is BS.  They only interviewed 815 people (or so it says via the NY Daily News) and I think that sample is too low to represent, “America”.  Also, when NY Daily News (a conservative rag) posted this article, they also had a poll.  Although they didn’t have the option of the man can change his name, they had four categories, 1) it should be required by law, 2) it shouldn’t be law but i think its the right thing to do, 3) women should keep their own last name, and 4) it’s a personal choice that’s up to the individual woman.  The results as it stands right now, 77 percent think its a personal choice with another 10 percent thinking women should keep their own last names.  How could the results be so different?  So YEAH i call BS on the first survey.

“How could the results be so different?”

The poll’s getting mobbed by visitors linked in from feminist/liberal sites?  Which is not at all a terribly uncommon tactic meant to either mess with people’s tiny little minds, correct for being posted on a site with an identifiable or blatant bias, or correct for a previous swamping from sites with an opposing bias?  Which is why actual professional surveys are supposed to be careful of sampling errors?

Comment #120: hz on 08/15 at 01:49 PM:

I think this survey is BS.  They only interviewed 815 people (or so it says via the NY Daily News) and I think that sample is too low to represent, “America”.

815 is a sufficiently large sample for a study like this.  It’s important to understand this: the margin of error of a sample is primarily determined by the size of the sample, not its proportion relative to the population.

Also, when NY Daily News (a conservative rag) posted this article, they also had a poll.  Although they didn’t have the option of the man can change his name, they had four categories, 1) it should be required by law, 2) it shouldn’t be law but i think its the right thing to do, 3) women should keep their own last name, and 4) it’s a personal choice that’s up to the individual woman.  The results as it stands right now, 77 percent think its a personal choice with another 10 percent thinking women should keep their own last names.  How could the results be so different?

The people who answer the online poll are a self-selected set, and the poll has different questions and alternatives.  One of the big problems with polls and studies like this one, too, is that subtle differences in the way that the questions and alternatives are phrased can lead to large differences in results.

I’m not sure I’d describe the News as “conservative,” but that may just be compared to the Post.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning died young.