Name Change in Marriage

[Kevin_Stephen]

Anybody have any comments on this situation…

A girl is engaged to get married. She loves her first and middle name, and isn’t that crazy about her last name. Tradition has it that when she gets married, she keeps her first name, loses her middle name and her last name becomes her middle name and she gets the new last name from her husband.

Is she allowed to keep her first and middle name as is, and totally drop her now last name and replace it with her new last name of marriage?

 

[Schluns]

Anybody have any comments on this situation…

A girl is engaged to get married. She loves her first and middle name, and isn’t that crazy about her last name. Tradition has it that when she gets married, she keeps her first name, loses her middle name and her last name becomes her middle name and she gets the new last name from her husband.

Is she allowed to keep her first and middle name as is, and totally drop her now last name and replace it with her new last name of marriage?

I don’t want to seem dense, but what tradition are you speaking of?

 

[AaronK88]

I’ve seen what you are talking about, but that isn’t tradition. Normally, the last name is the only name dropped and changed. The woman’s maiden name usually just disappears unless arrangements are made to have it stay.

The only untraditional thing I can think of is if a guy takes on a girls last name. But that doesn’t seem like a big deal to me.

 

[Seatuck]

Traditions are different from place to place but in the majority of the western world the tradition has been that the woman drops her last name and picks up her husbands last name. I think in some spanish speaking countries there is a lot more of the children having both last names and some other switching. Hyphenating is relatively new -last 30 years or so in the US culture. Middle names have no reason to be dropped. There is always a space on all legal documents for the middle name. Its the last name that has always been the issue for various reasons.

On a personal note, I liked my maiden name but was very proud and honored to take my husband’s name and have that show we had become one. Just my two cents.

 

[Kevin_Stephen]

Thanks everybody. Basicly I guess the question should focus on the maiden name. She doesn’t want to take it into her marriage. She just wants her husbands name, and drop her maiden name all together. Is that done alot? Most people I know keep their maiden name as their middle name.

 

[IrishAm]

Thanks everybody. Basicly I guess the question should focus on the maiden name. She doesn’t want to take it into her marriage. She just wants her husbands name, and drop her maiden name all together. Is that done alot? Most people I know keep their maiden name as their middle name.

Yes, it is done a lot. A whole lot. When I got married 35 years ago and kept my maiden name in the middle, it was a very unusual choice and caused all kinds of headaches. (Actually, I kept both my given middle name and my maiden name “in the middle” and just tacked my husband’s name on at the end.) Women have historically in the US completely dropped their maiden name and taken their husband’s name, leaving their middle name intact. (Exceptions to this were women from wealthy, prominent, families, who may have kept the prestige of their maiden – or the name of a prior husband who fathered their children – name by holding onto it. Martha Custis Washington’s, for example. She was the Widow Custis before marrying George.)

But I digress . . .

Anyway, times have changed, and of my three daughters one kept her maiden name as a middle name and added her husband’s name; one hyphenated the last names; and one dropped her maiden name for her husband’s last name and kept her middle name.

So . . . in short . . . the couple should do whatever works for them. After a while, anyone who objects will get used to it.