Changing or keeping surname?

caramels03 · January 2010

Just curious... do you plan on changing your surname to match your husband's, or keep your maiden name? Why?

stahlop · January 2010

I will be changing my name, although not until the school year is over to avoid confusing the kids. My main reason for changing the name, his name is easier to pronounce. No one can pronounce my last name (or spell it), and his is easier. I will miss going from the beginning of the alphabet to near the end, but I am ok with the change.

caramels03 · January 2010

Thanks for your very helpful remarks! My fiance would like me to change my name, but I don't think he would force it on me. That's simply his preference.

Fortunately, I still have several months to make my decision. I think I would like to change my name since I am going to be his wife and we will be an official family unit. The major downside is that I'm not originally from the US, so I'd have to complete double the paperwork (in the US and in my home country). Does anyone here have experience with that??

aconsiglio · January 2010

I didn't change mine and don't plan to! I am quite attached to my name after 45 years and find the idea of changing it just because I got married silly.

Kappa - " if you guys are so concerned about having the same name, tell your DH to change his

" too funny! My DH and I were having "the talk" and he was expressing his disappointment about me choosing to keep my name, so that's pretty much what I said to him! He got really quiet for a minute and then said that he got it. We are no less married because we have our own last names.

Do what feels right for you; don't let anyone pressure you either way.

CCBelle · February 2010

Yes, definitely discuss with your FI! I thought seriously about keeping my name (after all, I'm pretty used to it after 34 years!), and DH was shocked when I told him. It was very important to him for me to take his name so I came up with a compromise where I kept my entire name and added his on to the end. So my name is CC Belle MaidenName MarriedLastName. It's a lot to write on a social security card, but I'm happy to have 4 names :-)

snoangel79 · February 2010

I'm changing mine, I'm a little old school at heart and also people have butchered my last name since I was born and frankly I'm sick of correcting them

If I had a profession where that was my "recognized" name I'd probably keep it but I don't.

JHS16 · February 2010

As a professional establishing my own firm, I'm keeping mine as well. I originally tried to convince FI to create a new combination name that we could both adopt, but he refuses. This is fine, except I want my children to have my last name, and he wants them to have his. I imagine we'll have to compromise on something at some point.

jesshiggins · February 2010

We just had the conversation recently and I'm SO grateful that he's fully supportive of my keeping my name. I can't imagine going to bed with the name I've had for 33 years, and waking up to an entirely different one. We're still in discussions about how to handle the kids' names - probably hyphenation, but we'll see. I like the idea of combining our names in some unique form, but ours just wouldn't work that way.

cmkuno · February 2010

I'm keeping my name.

We plan to hyphenate the kid's names.

He's not crazy about it, but I feel VERY strongly about this (for feminist reasons) and I've been up front about it since we started dating 6 years ago. So, he can deal!

lifequestion · March 2010

I'm still torn between keeping and changing my name. My fiance's only brother was struck by a car and killed, and his father recently died from cancer, so he's very attached to his name. He had briefly considered changing his name, but eventually felt that he would be disgracing his late father if he did. My rebuttal is that my father is going to one day die as well... which leads me to my next point, it is my father's name, after all. Is that not just as patriarchal?

So far I'm leaning towards taking his last name (It means a lot to him, and it's a lot easier to spell than my last name) and moving my last name to my middle name. Any children would have my last name as a middle name. The only thing with that plan is that my signature matters to me, and my signature looks so much better with my current middle initial "L" than no initial or my maiden initial... But we must pick our battles I suppose.

We considered hyphenating, but in the long term (generations) hyphenating is just confusing. What happens with my son gets married? Do he and his wife become Mr. and Mrs. Myers-Davis-Rhett, or if, god forbid, his wife's parents hyphenated her name and it's Myers-Davis-Rhett-Peplinski?

scalady78 · March 2010

I'm also keeping mine for professional reasons. I have several articles published in my maiden name and the complexities of dealing with different publication names on any future CV just seem unnecessary. Besides we don't plan to have any kids, so that isn't a concern.

brookelynpaisley · March 2010

I changed mine for a few reasons. 1. I'm traditional and feel it's what you do (but I also wanted to). 2. My maiden name is super hard to spell and pronounce and DH's may as well be Smith. Huge upgrade in the ease department. 3. The only other option would be hyphenating but that wouldn't solve #2 and my mom's is hyphenated and it's a royal pain in the azz. 4. It gives me a sense of cohesion. I wouldn't want to spend married life with people wondering if we actually were married.

I'm sure the name-keepers out there can debunk most of my reasons, but I guess that's why we have options.

EStar73 · March 2010

I am changing mine. After all, it is just a name and it will make things, like insurance, or the bank, much easier to deal with. I love my maiden name, it is so unique and I get compliments on it all the time but I don't want to hyphenate the kids last names and I want to share their name. I can't ask my FI to change his because of his profession and I want him to share our childrens names as well. It's just the easiest thing to do.

2dBride · March 2010

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/wedding-boards_wedding-recap-withdrawal_changing-keeping-surname?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Wedding%20BoardsForum:12Discussion:03f1a091-3eec-486e-8c91-eecabf65fff5Post:c5aedf31-0ae5-42b8-a588-e2ee53f8b3c8">Re: Changing or keeping surname?</a>:
[QUOTE]it will make things, like insurance, or the bank, much easier to deal with. I
Posted by EStar73[/QUOTE]Actually, it really won't. For nearly twenty years of marriage, I shared bank accounts and insurance with my then husband. Every bank or insurance company I dealt with was able to handle the separate last names. And that started back in 1977, when keeping one's name was a much less well known option than it is today.

By contrast, changing your name will require contacting each bank and insurance company you deal with to get your name changed.

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/wedding-boards_wedding-recap-withdrawal_changing-keeping-surname?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Wedding%20BoardsForum:12Discussion:03f1a091-3eec-486e-8c91-eecabf65fff5Post:f73b37af-de2d-470a-b97e-59d768c69582">Re: Changing or keeping surname?</a>:
[QUOTE] I came up with a compromise where I kept my entire name and added his on to the end.
Posted by CCBelle[/QUOTE]See, this is the part that I don't understand at all. It seems to me that one could argue either that your husband takes your name or that you take his, so a compromise would consist of your each keeping your own name. Yet somehow, women see it as compromise if the entire burden of the name change is put onto the woman, so long as they get to keep any iota of their prior names, even if it is as a middle name that few will ever know and that will rarely be used.

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/wedding-boards_wedding-recap-withdrawal_changing-keeping-surname?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Wedding%20BoardsForum:12Discussion:03f1a091-3eec-486e-8c91-eecabf65fff5Post:3798864d-802e-4b42-970a-de207c360cf6">Re: Changing or keeping surname?</a>:
[QUOTE]In Response to Re: Changing or keeping surname? : Sorry, I just have to address the bolded part. You will be his wife and an "official family unit" regardless. Your names have absolutely nothing to do with that... lol. ETA: if you guys are so concerned about having the same name, tell your DH to change his :).
Posted by KappaUCF20[/QUOTE]Hear, hear!

When my son was in nursery school, someone asked him why his mommy had a different last name from him. He explained that some people in a family have the same last name (his father, his sister, and his paternal grandparents) and some people have different last names (his mother, his maternal grandparents, all his aunts and uncles, all his cousins). The list of relatives who had different last names was much longer than the list of those who had the same last name as him. And by the time my son had recited his entire family tree, no one ever asked him that question again!

Yet somehow, this simple fact escapes so many who think they have to change their names. Would you say that your children will not be part of your parents' family if they get your husband's last name? Or that you or your sisters would no longer be part of your birth family if you change your names, but your husband and his brothers will always be part of their birth families? If not, why would you assume that whether you and your husband are a family is determined by whether you take your husband's name?

I have kept my name for 56 years now. That has advantages not only in terms of avoiding the immediate hassle of a name change, but because it means that people I knew decades ago are more likely to be able to find me. For example, a bunch of people I went to elementary school with were recently able to find me on Facebook. People who find my professional articles online can still look me up by the same name.

I was recently married for the second time. Needless to say, I am again not changing my name.

Dani0203 · May 2010

I changed it because I just wanted to change it. It makes me feel more like a unified family, I feel closer to him knowing we share his name. Do you need to change the name to be an official family? Obviously not. But I just couldn't think of a good enough reason to keep my name aside from standing for a principle that means so very little in the end. My thoughts were- why not? I mean, really? Is keeping my last name going to make me feel more independant or strong or make me a better person? Um, no. I'm independant, strong and a wonderful person(lol) and I want to be Mrs. (M). That's pretty much all there was to it.

janedoe1113a · May 2010

I changed mine for almost all the reasons brookelyn stated.

Changing or keeping surname?

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