Last Name Changes on Marriage

[trinichiqn]

I am following a blog post where the bride to be announced that she would be be hyphenating when she gets married in January. She likes her last name, it high up in the alphabet (A) and a number of reasons why she would like to keep her name.

I have never given much thought to keeping my name except that I also like where I am alphabetically (C). I don’t really want to hyphenate because my first name is long, my last name is longer and I always thought that I would give one of my sons my last name as a middle name (a few cousins have already used the name as a first name and I am not jumping on that bandwagon). I have a million to eternity relatives with the same last name so I am not attached to it in the sense that there will be no more of us, believe me there will always be more because as a family we procreate like crazy besides my kids wouldn’t carry my last name really.

I believe that this is a personal decision for each couple and there is no right or wrong way but I would love to hear how everyone came to there own decision of what they did or would like to do.

 

[BlueEyedLady]

My fiance and I are both hyphenating our last names. I am not joining his family; we are coming together to start a new family and we are both bringing our heritage, experiences, and identities in to the new family. Our children will have both names, and when they are adults and starting their own families they can decide how they want to handle the names.

 

[manualman]

I think it’s a practical decision that resulted over time to eliminate angst after several generations. It may be no big deal if you wind up with’Green-Smith.’ But pity the poor kindergartener who has to learn to write Maria Velasquez-Villenueve on every homework sheet! Or her kids who have to learn to write Juan Velasquez-Villenueve-Sanchez-O’Toole… (What? that could happen?!)

It’s a fad that will die off when the hyphenated kids grow up and say “this was a PIA and I’m not doing it to my kids.”

 

[SonCatcher]

There is no requirement to change your name at all. My wife is Vietnamese and she did not change her name when we married for cultural reasons.

 

[George_Stegmeir]

I may be old fashioned and politically incorrect, but the fact is that women in Western civilization have been adopting their husband’s surname on marriage for hundreds of years. The only possible exception was possibly in England with noble-commoner marriages where the wife adopted a hyphenated surname. In Spanish speaking Countries, Women adopted their husbands surname, but their children used both their parents surnames (e.g. Gonzlas y Suarez)
The whole thing about women retaining their own surname after marriage is a product of the American Feminist Movement-which has been prooven to be anti-male, and oriented, not to sexual equality, but supremacy.
Needless to say, if my intended refused to take on my family name, I would be profoundly insulted to the extent that I would consider breaking off the relationship. So go ahead and call me a male chauvenist pig! See if I care:shrug:

 

[ricofall]

It is a cultural thing. In Mexico, you have two last names. However, like the other poster said, people just use the first one as their primary name because it does get too long. I believe the females usually drop the second last name and their name becomes the second name when they get married.

 

[AthenaC]

I always felt it was important for me to take my husband’s name because I think it’s important for my family to all have the same last name, and I don’t like the idea of hyphenating.

However, my life hasn’t worked out to be so clean, neat and easy. When I had my oldest, she received my maiden name. When I married the first time, I took his name and my youngest has his name. When we divorced, I kept the name (I figured at that point it was as much my name as anyone else’s), which bugged the living daylights out of my ex’s new wife for some reason (never could figure that one out).

When I remarried, I put off the name change for 6 months (his is an unusual name that lends itself easily to … let’s say joviality). But I eventually went through with it because he didn’t really like that I still had my first husband’s last name (understandably). Now my coworkers give me a good-natured hard time about my last name. I choose to interpret that as a sign that I’m loved.

 

[TrueLight]

I may be old fashioned and politically incorrect, but the fact is that women in Western civilization have been adopting their husband’s surname on marriage for hundreds of years. The only possible exception was possibly in England with noble-commoner marriages where the wife adopted a hyphenated surname. In Spanish speaking Countries, Women adopted their husbands surname, but their children used both their parents surnames (e.g. Gonzlas y Suarez)
The whole thing about women retaining their own surname after marriage is a product of the American Feminist Movement-which has been prooven to be anti-male, and oriented, not to sexual equality, but supremacy.

I think I surprise people sometimes as to how traditional I am when it comes to certain things. They sometimes look at me and say, “A woman like you could not possibly believe that!”

I’m not saying a good relationship should be broken up because of this type of issue, but for the most part, I agree with you.

 

[SonCatcher]

George,

Not everyone living in a Western country identifies with Western culture. I was rather stunned when my then fiance told me she was not changing her name for the marriage (I don’t recall how it came up). When I researched her culture, I found that what she said was indeed true to her. I chose to give it up for the sake of our relationship.

(full disclosure: I got my “revenge.” After our marriage she became a naturalized citizen and I “helped” her with the paperwork. There is a name change section on the paperwork and I proposed a new name in it. She approved of the new name and made the change then - so her name is her “American name” rather than her “married name.” The change caused some problems afterward, however.)

 

[Luna_Lovecraft]

But pity the poor kindergartener who has to learn to write Maria Velasquez-Villenueve on every homework sheet!

Approximately 75% of my students write something similar on their school work many times every day, Monday-Friday, and it’s no skin off their noses.

Have you seen some Thai surnames?

For the record, I took my husband’s surname when we married. I was adopted as a child so didn’t share a surname with most people in my immediate family (long story) and wasn’t particularly attached to my maiden name.

Luna

 

[SonCatcher]

When I remarried, I put off the name change for 6 months (his is an unusual name that lends itself easily to … let’s say joviality). But I eventually went through with it because he didn’t really like that I still had my first husband’s last name (understandably). Now my coworkers give me a good-natured hard time about my last name. I choose to interpret that as a sign that I’m loved.

I know someone with a surname like that. His son changed his name to avoid receiving a “good-natured hard time.”

 

[sedonaman]

It is a cultural thing. In Mexico, you have two last names. …

I work for the local St. Vincent de Paul, and one of the more difficult tasks for us is to find Hispanic names in our records. It seems the person’s last name depends on her mood for the day. It could be her mother’s maiden name, her father’s last name, her grandmother’s maiden name, her grandmother’s married name, etc. [Singer Vikki Carr is Hispanic and she likes to joke that her birth name is like a freight train.]

So when we ask for her last name, she just picks one.

 

[BlueEyedLady]

I may be old fashioned and politically incorrect, but the fact is that women in Western civilization have been adopting their husband’s surname on marriage for hundreds of years. The only possible exception was possibly in England with noble-commoner marriages where the wife adopted a hyphenated surname. In Spanish speaking Countries, Women adopted their husbands surname, but their children used both their parents surnames (e.g. Gonzlas y Suarez)
The whole thing about women retaining their own surname after marriage is a product of the American Feminist Movement-which has been prooven to be anti-male, and oriented, not to sexual equality, but supremacy.
Needless to say, if my intended refused to take on my family name, I would be profoundly insulted to the extent that I would consider breaking off the relationship. So go ahead and call me a male chauvenist pig! See if I care:shrug:

So because some “radical feminists” want to be above men you would refuse to marry a woman who liked her name and felt an attachment to it and didn’t want to give it up? That is incoherent at best.

 

[exoflare]

My fiance and I are both hyphenating our last names. I am not joining his family; we are coming together to start a new family and we are both bringing our heritage, experiences, and identities in to the new family. Our children will have both names, and when they are adults and starting their own families they can decide how they want to handle the names.

How did you settle the issue of whose name appears first in the hyphenation?

 

[BlueEyedLady]

How did you settle the issue of whose name appears first in the hyphenation?

We get asked that a lot. But it wasn’t an argument or power struggle. We just listened to how it sounded both ways and then picked the way we liked best. Fortunately it sounded best with my name first on both of our names.

But if we had really liked it one way with his name and another with mine we probably would have just flipped a coin.

 

[Mum5]

If someone wanted to break off an engagment over me not doing something he wanted, I’d be happily waving them goodbye.
I took my husbands name, early '70’s , didn’t even think about it, and was quite glad to get rid of mine,but my children can do what they want. Two have taken their husbands names, the rest, we will see.
One neice has kept hers, cultural thing, one other kept her own name and the children have the husbands name. One other neice married and her husband changed his to hers, as his was , um, tended to attract more than a little giggling! and she wasn’t having it for her or their children. No problems, everyones happy

 

[melissa_b]

When my MIL got married she added on her husband’s name not as a hyphenate, but just as a second last name. When my husband was born he was given the two last names, but when his younger sister was born, she got her mother’s last name as a second middle name instead and just her father’s last name as a last name. (Apparently they couldn’t remember what they had done with my husband.)

Fast-forward to our wedding–my husband still legally has the two last names but primarily only used the last last name (his father’s name). That name is the name I took on and the name given to our sons. Because of all the hassle with the two legal names and no hyphen my husband is now looking into officially having the first of the two changed to a second middle name, same as his sister.

 

[UpUpAndAway]

I adopted my husband’s name socially when we got married, but all official paperwork still shows my birth name. This was actually forced upon me twice.

First, I got married in a country I did not grow up in. I still live in this country. The administrative norm here is for women not to officially change their names with marriage. Instead, everything is in the woman’s birth name, and if she uses her husband’s last name it appears on a separate line. My driving license, for example, bears my birth name and, on a second line, indicates that I am married to a man whose last name is ______.

Because I’m officially identified as my birth name where I live, I can’t change my name in my country of origin because it would create an inconsistency between the records of the two countries, which are linked in my immigration file. So back where I grew up, I’m still officially known by my birth name. This has caused some problems when I visit, since I have credit cards in my married name that I can’t use there (I’m in the process of fixing that).

But, as I said, I use my husband’s name socially. Everyone except the government and certain financial institutions knows me as Mrs. His-Last-Name. There was never a question in my mind that I would use my husband’s last name to the extent possible, so there wasn’t anything to decide when the time came. I went way down the alphabet when I got married but that wasn’t important to me, nor have I ever thought about whether I even like his last name. It is what it is.

 

[faithfully]

I’m hyphenated. All my biz is in my maiden name. Otherwise I “go by” DH’s last name.

Our kids have DH’s last name.

DH does not define his value by me taking his name. Neither do I.

 

[Gordon_Sims]

I think I stated this the last time this came up, but in the months leading up to our wedding my FIL told us that my wife either had to keep her own name, hyphenate, or I had to take her name as that’s how things were in their culture. There was no truth to it and I finally said that if she didn’t take my name, the wedding was off. That got him to shut up about it. My wife, for the record, never considered anything other than taking my name.