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What should working women do when they get married — take their husband's last name, create a new last name, or keep their maiden name? What factors matter? Reader E wonders.
I have a question about maiden names vs. married names. I am currently in law school and am planning an engagement sometime in the recent future to my boyfriend of four years. My question is this — I have a very professional and short last name, in addition to a middle name that I commonly use with my first. Both are one syllable, which is nice since my first name is three. Unfortunately, my boyfriend's last name is also three syllables, and difficult to spell and pronounce.
Looking forward to my career I would love to use all four, but realize that that is probably too much for a work setting. What is the protocol on creating a work-friendly name. To be clear I do NOT want to use only my maiden name.
This should be an interesting discussion.
There was JUST a New York Times op-ed about this, and Vivia Chen at The Careerist has recently(ish) explored the topic in a three–part series. We've talked about name change after divorce, as well as Ms. versus Mrs., but we've never discussed choosing a last name because, honestly, this is one of those topics where people get somewhat passionate, so I've shied away in the past. (So ladies, please play nicely.)
Kat's Thoughts on Choosing a Last Name
Here's my official $.02: Do what's right for you and your family. Everyone is going to have their own reasons, probably influenced by what their mothers and married friends (both of their age and older) have done. Your reasons — whatever they are — are valid because this is your choice, and yours alone.
Obviously, I come at this from the perspective of someone who took my husband's last name. I'd rather not discuss the reasons why I did so in a public forum like this, not because they're weird or unusual, just because they're my reasons, and it's ok/important to keep some things private.
Did it help that I moved from a difficult-to-pronounce German last name to an easy, common last name? Yep.
(For the record, I legally changed my maiden name to my middle name, and used all three names professionally when I was last working as a lawyer; all three names are also on my driver's license.
It was a business decision to go with Kat Griffin when I “came out” of the anonymous blogging closet — shorter for bylines/social media, more friendly/fun, and easier to remember and pronounce.
(One of my best friends, asked for her opinion between the two names, said, “Hmmn. If I were casting for you in the movie of your life, I would see Meryl Streep playing the longer three-name part, but Cameron Diaz playing Kat Griffin.” Apparently in my life movie I am blond.)
It felt like an alter-ego for a time — only good friends have called me Kat in the past, and Griffin was still new to me — but now I'm comfortable being both Kat Griffin and my full name.
(If you meet me in real life in a non-blog capacity, though, odds are good I'll still introduce myself as Katherine and then look like I want to change my answer.)
So… yeah. I'll turn it over to you guys: Those of you who are married, what last name did you choose? Those of you who've been divorced, what last name did you choose? What factors did you consider, and how do you feel about your choice now?
(Pictured: my personal stationery, bought at Fine Stationery.)
anon in tejas
we both hyphenated.
I am She Herlast-Hislast. He is He Hislast-Herlast. It works. We both have long and different ethnic names. It was important to him that we have the same name, it was important to me that I keep my name.
Our dogs have hyphnated last names based on gender- girl dogs (mine), boy dogs (his).
file edit view
I just got married a few months ago. I never seriously considered changing my name. I have professional publications and reputation associated with it, and he knows I love him and am part of his family no matter what I call myself. His first wife took and kept his name, so there’s already his mother and stepmother plus the ex who are Mrs. X. My mom kept her own name and we never had any daycare or traveling problems. Our kids will probably get his name but it’s not a big deal.
Amelia Bedelia
I think this is an excellent approach. I truly believe whatever a woman chooses — as long as it is her choice not born from pressure (from peers or family) – is absolutely fine.
Lyssa
My experience, as someone who didn’t change her name for the first 8 years, then did, is that people don’t care nearly as much as the internet would have you believe. The only reactions I ever really got were when I did finally change my name, and a few people who knew I’d been married but didn’t know me well enough to know my husband’s last name got a little awkward trying to figure out whether I’d gotten divorced. Overall, it was really not a big deal, and you should do what makes you comfortable.
I am glad that I did change it, as, now that we have a child, I like to have one cohesive family name. I’d warn though, that lawyers are called by their initials a lot, so consider not just the name, but the 3-figure initial set when you consider what appeals to you (I’m not crazy about mine, though I don’t think I’d like the original any better.) I also changed my last name to my middle, which I’d never really liked anyway, and when I use my name in a very formal way, I’m “Lyssa Maiden Married.”
(I’ll add that I have noticed that a lot of people are really turned off by hyphenated last names – not sure why, I think that they associate them (probably unfairly!) with militant feminism of the ’90s era (which seems silly, since it seems so much more militant-feminist to just keep your last name). So, if you’re concerned about that sort of impression, that may be a consideration. Or not, depending on your personality. I personally find hyphenated names cumbersome, but that’s just an aesthetic preference.)
Nonny
On your comment re hyphenated last names – I don’t know why people are turned off by them, as you say. As someone with a hyphenated last name, I don’t get what the big deal is. It’s just my name, and that’s the way it is! It shouldn’t make a difference to anyone other than me, and I find my 4-syllable last name euphonious. :-)
Senior Attorney
As somebody who has changed my name twice now, I agree that it’s really not a huge deal. It’s a little annoying for a short time, and then we all get on with our lives.
a
Many of us have strong opinions about which name to take. But the one thing I think is very important to note — if not already noted above — is that as far as surnames go, there isn’t any “professional” or “non-professional.” They’re all just names. My last name is transliterated from Russian and it’s hard to pronounce and there’s nothing “unprofessional” about it.
Parcae
I will never forget what my mother once said about this. We were both attending a baby shower with a bunch of 20-something female acquaintances. Of seven or eight women, some married and some single, I was the only one who said she was thinking of keeping her name… until my mom spoke up and said that she’d changed her name when she got married 35 years ago but she regretted it.
Well, you could have heard a pin drop. Finally, one of the young women got up the courage to ask if her ex-husband had pressured her to change her name. My mom replied cheerfully that he hadn’t said anything one way or the other, but that they were still married so she’d ask him when she got home(!) After the laughter died down, Mom confessed that she’d changed her name because she thought keeping it would upset *her* mother.
“Oh,” I said, “and it turned out she wouldn’t have cared?”
“No,” said my mom, “she would have had a complete nervous breakdown. But I’m old now and I don’t give a [censored] what anyone thinks.”
Baconpancakes
:-D
Amelia Bedelia
I took my husband’s last name. It surprised me how much this bothered some of my peers. I got a lot of “how could he make you do that?” and “what has he done for you that you think warrants this sacrifice?” I don’t know if because in my region it was uncommon, or what. I found it a bit unsupportive that someone would villify my decision to “support patriarchal norms.” It’s a choice. and I love my choice.
I considered it a very personal decision and truly wanted to take his last name. It’s funny because he was very surprised when I told him I was doing it. I dropped my last name (though had considered making it my middle name), and am comfortable with that decision. I think I dropped my last name because I have a confusing and hard to spell last name and my husband has an ethnic, confusing, and hard to spell last name . . . I just didn’t want two of those!
We’ve been married more than ten years and I still love my choice. I think everyone views this differently, and that’s okay. For me, I loved the family aspect. And I am okay that my family aspect is patriarchal. I still love it.
k-padi
Haha! I love the smalltown/Central Wisconsin shout-outs in this thread. I grew up there and totally understand!
I’m not married, but I will admit that with each serious boyfriend I have thought about it. It mostly comes down to whether I “like” his last name more than mine or if our names would “sound good” together. If my hypothetical husband and I decide to have kids, I do want to have a common family last name. My last name is pretty decent (not great but not awful), and I wouldn’t be afraid to ask him to change his last name to mine if his name is hard to pronounce, spell, or invites playground teasing.
I don’t worry too much about the professional aspects–people changing their names is pretty normal. I do appreciate it when my married friends go by FirstName BirthName HusbandName for the first year or two.
J
I agree that this is a profoudly personal decision, for both the woman getting married and her soon to be husband. And fundamentally I think that the fact that we have this choice to make is progress, though as a feminist I also worry that the societal biases underneath the decision to take a husband’s name might be undermining that progress.
I kept my maiden name, which is a difficult-to-pronounce-and-spell Italian name. My husband’s last name is a very standard British name (not quite Smith, but close) so I tend to use it for things like dinner reservations but otherwise I am still First Middle Maiden. I did not and will not change any of my ID.
The primary reason I kept my name is that, while it’s difficult to spell and pronounce, it is part of who I am. Marriage is a hugely important change in my life, but I don’t think that getting married does (or should) change who you are as a person. Italy is also one of the countries where women don’t use their husband’s name on marriage, so that part of my heritage also prompted me. I made this decision long before my husband was on the scene and pretty much just announced it to him – and, luckily, us having the same last name was not important to him.
Practically, I also prefer the way my name sounds with my maiden name. I don’t really use my middle name, just First Last, and the letters and syllable count for First Husband’sName just sound a bit too cutesy for me – definitely not what I want professionally, and not really what I want socially either. And First Maiden Husband’sName really doesn’t work at all. Professionally I was a couple of years into my practice when we married, and while I’m sure people could have learned a new name, I prefer to keep the same name. My last name is also unique, so once people do learn how to say/spell it, I think it helps me stand out.
While it’s not important to my husband that he and I have the same last name, it is important to him that our children have his name, and neither of us like hyphenated names. So they will be will be First Middle Husband’sLast, without my maiden name. Because of that I expect teachers, their friends, etc. to call me “Mrs. Husband’sLast”, at least at first, which I’m fine with. Having two names in that way doesn’t feel schizophrenic to me – but I do also plan to (gently) correct people.
As for what I’ve seen among my friends, it has somewhat surprised me that at least about half have taken their husbands’ names. My friends are largely highly educated, professional women, at various stages of their careers. Some of those are replacing non-English maiden names that, in English, have bad connotations – in their shoes, I’d’ve changed names too. The other decisions have been for similar reasons to the ones above – they want one “family” name, it’s important to their husbands and not as important to them, etc.
Cat
I’m in Philly and am a First Middle Husband’s. I liked the namesakes my parents chose my first and middle names and so I wanted to keep them; also, I married young and didn’t have a career history using Maiden. Most common in my friend group is definitely First Maiden Husband’s, though.
Amanda Wingfield Goldman
It was hard for me to let go of my maiden name when I got married- I had practiced under it for four years and I loved my maiden name. When I changed firms I made the switch a year after we got married (I had already legally changed it, but was practicing under my maiden name). I did it for my husband and for my future children. I have nothing against ladies who hyphenate, but when I was recently filling out place cards for a friend’s wedding and I drafted a long four-name hyphenated last name, I was thankful I took his name. Hyphenations can breed like rabbits. Yes, my diplomas say something else, but I don’t have the headaches that some of my other friends have when it comes to getting things done in their household because they chose not to take their husband’s name. And when you’re a busy working mom, you don’t frankly have time to deal with the BS that comes with explaining that you are married but have different last names when it comes to accessing a certain record on behalf of your spouse.
Anonymous
You’re making a lot of implicit and unexamined assumptions based on what annoys you.
AIMS
I don’t think most of the things you describe as being a hassle are actually a hassle in real life. My SO and I are not married and definitely don’t have the same last name and I have had ZERO issues getting anything done in our household. I make doctor’s appointments, argue with the cable company (in his name), plan vacations, get hotel rooms, you name it. It has never once come up as a problem.
RL
Since Reader E doesn’t want to go only by her maiden name, I suggest she take her husband’s last name as her only last name. I’m not a fan of hyphenated last names. Hyphenation will only lengthen her husband’s already long name. And for whatever reason, I’ve seen more misspellings happen with hyphenated last names.
No fiance yet but I plan on taking my last name. I have a really difficult to pronounce Chinese last name. (Why couldn’t it be simple like Lee?) I definitely plan to take on my future husband’s last name who most likely will have an easier to pronounce last name. Plus, I want my children to have one last name and to share it with them even if I ended up getting divorced.
Anon
I grew up with a hyphenated last name and happily took my husband’s name, something I always knew I would do if I got married. I think that if I had a “single name maiden name” I would have kept my maiden name as my legal name (for professionial and feminist reasons). But I hated having a hyphenated name for a lot of reasons, and plan to have children one day and did not like the idea of having two names different from my children (since I hated the hyphen, I would not have passed it on!). My brother dropped half of our last name soon after he graduated from college and entered the workforce.
Anonymous
I think the nicest thing to do is for both partners to change their last name to create a new one. That said, it doubles the administrative hassle.
Personally, I took my husband’s last name. To me it came down to past/future — if I kept my maiden name I stayed aligned with my past, my father, my parents. If I took my husband’s name I was really just taking my FutureKid’s name. I always thought it was a bit sad to see older women who are still tied to their past and completely detached from their present/future — to know that anything they’ve accomplished or name recognition they’ve gotten, their fathers (if still alive) can take credit/pride in but not their sons or daughters (like the book authors I know who still have their maiden names). It’s one thing to keep a name that you’ve established some cache — for me when I got married at 30 I decided that while I’d done some cool stuff (worked with a personal icon, published a few small things) the best was yet to come, so I chose the future.
All that said, I remember years ago dating a man whose last name sounded phonetically like a sexual thing (a body fluid) — $10 says I would have kept my own name (or insisted we create a new one together) in that instance. So everything depends.
cbackson
Gosh, I really hope my hypothetical future husband and children still manage to be proud of me even if we have different last names. If your sister got married, changed her name, and had a different name than you did, you would be any less proud of her?
And honestly, my current last name isn’t my past – it’s my present. It’s me. My husband’s last name is only my future if the decision to change my name is preordained.
Anon
Feel free to ignore this question if it is too personal, but I seem to remember you posting about changing your name back to maiden post-divorce. Are you committed to not changing your name again if you remarry, or is this more a position of not making assumptions?
cbackson
I’m committed to not changing it again. The process of changing it back really pushed me to examine why I changed it in the first place, and to realize that I’d made a decision that I wasn’t 100% comfortable with at the time. I also think that, as a result of that experience, I view my name as an essential part of my identity as an independent person. We all have things that we do to maintain our independent identities after marriage, and I’ve come to realize that for me, this is an important one.
I know it doesn’t have that weight or significance for everyone – I don’t mean in any way to suggest that women who change their names have sacrificed their independent selves – but it does for me.
Victoria
I don’t mean to pick on you, but your post reminded me of a trend I’ve observed that drives me crazy: Feminist women who keep their name but then give their kids their husbands’ last names.
It’s none of my business, of course. But it just feels like punting the question for a few years. I truly don’t understand the logic, emotion, or politics of that decisions. I’m a feminist and I absolutely believe in the power of symbolism, so I get and support the decision not to take a husband’s name (I didn’t take mine) – and I get and support the reasons someone might choose to do so. But I can’t get my head around what you’re accomplishing by keeping your own name but automatically assigning the kids’ names to him.
Senior Attorney
I tend to agree with this. I think my idea solution to this would be to keep my maiden name and give female children my name and male children my husband’s name.
Senior Attorney
And let me hasten to add I’m speaking in the abstract and not criticizing any individual’s choice.
Baconpancakes
Thank you. I was starting to think I was the only person in the world who thought this was the ideal solution. Isn’t there some Scandinavian country that does this?
Senior Attorney
If there isn’t, there should be!
bb
This is my brother’s hypothetical future solution. I kept my name, and probably my kids will have my husband’s. My name is my name and always has been, so no reason to change it. My kids have to have a last name, so I don’t see a reason why it couldn’t be my husband’s. They’ll have my mom’s maiden name as a middle name.
Name
My solution to this future problem is to divvy up the naming rights with my future baby daddy – he can give the kid his last name if he wants, but I get to pick the first name. Or vice versa – kid gets my last name and he can pick the first name.
Pittsburgher
“I think the nicest thing to do is for both partners to change their last name to create a new one. That said, it doubles the administrative hassle.”
It way more than doubles it. My husband and I wanted to do this, but me changing my last name to his is free and pretty easy. Him changing his last name, or me changing my last name to anything but his, requires a court order, hundreds of dollars, and dozens more pages of paperwork and hours waiting in lines.
So we took the easy way out and I just took his last name.
R
I didn’t change my name after getting married, despite my husband’s name being shorter and easier to spell and my two unusual middle names cause me a lot of trouble. Why should the default be so strongly that women change their names but not men? Along the same lines, my husband’s attitude is that he wouldn’t change his name, so why should he expect me to? However, our kids will have his last name because it just seems too complicated to do anything else. I think in my field (academia) it’s very common for women to keep their names due to published papers.
marketingchic
I took my husband’s last name, mostly because it’s much easier to pronounce and spell than my maiden name. All other issues aside, I was happy to stop spelling my name for people constantly.
On my resume and on Linkedin I”m Firstname Maidenname Lastname, as I worked for 5 years using my maiden name. It’s funny back in the pre-internet stone age, I used to worry about people calling my first employer for a reference using only my married name – which that employer wouldn’t recognize. Yay for the internets!
Gus
For anyone concerned about the inconvenience of having a different last name than your kids (if you keep your maiden name), don’t be. I kept my maiden name and my kids have my husband’s last name, and there really just isn’t any inconvenience to it at all. I think when many of us were growing up, it was unusual for a family not to all have the same name, but things are totally different now. Last year, I went through the school directory for my kids’ grades, and in each of the grades there was a substantial percentage — sometimes as much as 50% — of kids who had a different last name than one of their parents (for all sorts of reasons — moms keeping maiden names, divorce/remarriage, kid living with a different family member, ethnic norms, etc). It’s just not that much harder to say “hi, I’m Gus MaidenName, Kid HusbandLastName’s mom” than it is to say “hi, I’m Gus HusbandLastName, Kid’s mom.” And of course if one of the kids’ friends calls me “Mrs. HusbandLastName,” that’s fine, I don’t bother to correct them, but as they get older, I’ve found they’re pretty savvy about knowing who has what last name.
Anoooooon
On a related front, can the world at large stop using “Mother’s Maiden Name” as a security question on my online accounts? It’s becoming an increasingly less secure question, it’s confusing if your mother didn’t change her name, and the assumption that she did change her name is less true all the time. It just needs to stop. Powerful women of the world, let’s unite on this issue, even if we can’t decide how to arrange our names for ourselves.
Anon
My mother does have a maiden name (she took my father’s name when they married) but I invented a fake name for her that I use to answer this question. I figure her real maiden name is probably google-able at this point.
I'm Just Me
You know you don’t have to use your mother’s actual maiden name to answer that as a security question? Especially if you are worried about security. You can put anything in that space, as long as you remember that was how you answered the question.
I just use a made up last name to answer that, and I’m consistent so I can always respond if the website in question asks me. Same when it asks what city I was born in, I always put Paris (not really, just an example) even though I was born as far from Paris as can be imagined.
Clementine
I got married just less than a year ago and agree that it’s an incredibly personal decision. I knew I would keep my last name professionally as it is one syllable, a noun that’s easy to pronounce but not a common last name at all, and a nickname of many years that many professional contacts know me solely by.
My husband’s last name is Darling. I wasn’t sure if I would keep my last name or hyphenate and then somebody said in a FABULOUS Katherine Hepburn accent, ‘Jane Smith, DAAAHLING’.
Aaaand that’s why I’m legally hyphenated… well, on some things… Still not fully switched.
I will confess though, when someone calls me Mrs. Husband’sFirst Husband’sLast, I get this sense of RAGE in my stomach. I can only compare it to when you’re in elementary school and a teacher calls you by a sibling’s name and you just want to scream “NO NO, THAT’S NOT ME”.
Gen X Partner
So happy to hear from the younger women wanting to keep their names! It seems like it has gone out of fashion, which makes me sad. I did not change my name when I got married in 2000 and have had zero problems. Many, many families where I live (Arlington, Virginia) have multiple last names, for whatever reason, and the school system is used to it. Our kids have my last name as a middle name, but not hyphenated. I don’t feel the need to try to make the patriarchical tradition fair and have actually decided that I love that I have a different last name from the rest of the family – it’s like a proud badge or tatoo saying “I am a feminist”! I certainly do not feel like we are less of a family, or like it is un-romantic. In fact, it was a good test for my husband that he did not ever ask me to change my name.
LilyB
glad to take up the banner for the cause!
Julia
I married 36 years ago and kept my maiden name as my middle name. (my mother had done the same.) My reasons: (and this was at the height of “women’s lib”), I am an only child and didn’t want my family name to “die”, but I took my husband’s name as my last name because when we married, he became my family. I now find out that this was an unusual choice for the times but I am happy with it, the three names are all two syllable and it sounds nice, and it means something to me.
belils
My grandmother, who married in the 1940s and is not what you would call a feminist, uses her maiden name as her middle name.
cbackson
Being on the other side of a divorce and having had the delightful experience of changing my name twice in three years, I’ll never do it again. I’m actually sad that I did it in the first place – I was ambivalent about it, but there was SO MUCH positive reinforcement associated with changing my name (“it’s part of becoming a family!”, “Aren’t you excited to be Mrs. Hislast?”, etc.) that I just sort of tipped over into doing it. And I ended up being excited about it at the time. But then, even before I got divorced, I just..missed “me.”
So yes, I changed it back, and no, I wouldn’t do it again. And I generally encourage my male and female friends who are getting married to think very hard about the social, political, and personal dimensions of changing your name. It’s a personal decision, but it’s a personal decision that, even if subconsciously, is heavily influenced by social norms.
I haven’t thought about what name I’d stick my hypothetical kids with, but I’m untroubled about having a different last name than they do. If that’s the hardest thing in my future children’s life, they’ll be lucky b*stards, you know?
Victoria
The positive reinforcement thing is SO TRUE.
I was surprised when my family objected to my name taking my husband’s last name. My grandmother sat me down for a Very Serious Talk, in which she said that only women who were “accomplished” should keep their last names. Ha!
AIMS
I’m not a huge fan of the First Maiden Married. It’s a compromise, sure, but to me it feels a bit like you’re just putting the last name you were born with into second place. Obviously that doesn’t hold for everyone, or even for most, but that’s how it always struck me.
And I do respect everyone’s choice to be called whatever they want, but I just wish that it wasn’t always a choice that only a woman had to make. For all the talk of couples creating a new family name together, no one I know actually does it. I remember reading somewhere that Jay Z and Beyonce changed both their last names to Carter Knowles and I just thought it was kind of awesome. I guess for two people who go by only their first names, maybe it’s less significant career-wise, but as a statement on their relationship, I thought it was surprisingly powerful. Granted, this is completely silly, but before I thought about Jay Z changing his last name to reflect his wife’s, I never felt strongly about the whole two last names thing, but realizing that 9 out 10 (self-described “progressive”) men I know would never do that, made me rethink the whole thing.
Incidentally, most of my law school friends changed their last name or hyphenated when they got married. My non-lawyer friends all kept theirs, except for one who just hated her last name and really liked her husband’s (totally valid reason!). I think that for all that lawyers are supposed to be concerned with their careers and professional identity, the legal field still remains a very traditional, conservative one.
Pittsburgher
When your de facto last name is “Z” it does change things a bit :)
Krista
I think that First Maiden Last, or having different professional / personal names, or hyphenating when only one partner hyphenates, are all just attempts to have it both ways and are totally wishy-washy. As if somehow you are not “really” taking your husband’s name by doing that— of course you are! So just say that’s what you did. When I see these hybrids, it just makes me think that the wife did not really want to change her name but was persuaded to do it, and is trying desperately to hold on to some sense of her own identity.
Unless you keep your own name, or both parties change their names, you are taking husband’s name, period. If it’s your choice to do so, then do it with conviction!
Tuesday
Ouch! Your comment sounds quite harsh. When you see hybrids, you think the women were somehow coerced. That’s a pretty low opinion of women, if you think so many of us are that malleable (not to mention “desperate” — yikes!).
I think that people should be able to do what they want. Some people do just that. Some people cave to (real or perceived) familial or societal pressure. Some people really don’t care. Some people care passionately. I know I wouldn’t begin to try to slot people into any of those categories based on knowing one thing about them (the name(s) they chose to use after marriage).
Tuesday
I went from First Middle BirthLast to First BirthLast HisLast. Through college I would have said adamantly that I would not want to change my name, but age mellowed me. DH was ok with whatever I wanted. In the end, I decided that (1) I hated my middle name; (2) I had no particular attachment to my BirthLast; (3) I really liked the idea of our friends saying “let’s invite the HisLasts for dinner” or “we saw the HisLasts last week”; and (4) it seems easier [TO ME, FOR ME (and DH)] to be collectable into a single name — the HisLasts.
For me, “like” and “easier” trump hate and indifference, and so the decision was made.
Tuesday
Forgot to say, I use BirthLast as my new Middle — I don’t have two last names.
Anonymous Biglaw Associate
I debate about this from time to time, as I’m getting married soon. Leaning towards changing it. Here are my thoughts.
Pros to changing:
-SO’s name is very short and easy to pronounce. My last name and first name would be 6 letters total. I like that idea for some reason.
Could easily drop middle name, and make maiden name my middle name (my maiden name can be a female first name as well). Anyone does this?
Cons to changing:
-I’ve published a lot with my maiden name.
-Last name (Korean) doesn’t “match” my ethnicity/ethnicies (Jewish/Chinese/Cuban). But no one ever knows I am anyways, for obvious reasons, so it probably wouldn’t raise any eyebrows. But does this even matter?
-His last name is VERY common, and my first name is also VERY common. It could be hard for people to search for me (or maybe this is a good thing).
-We don’t plan to have children, which in my mind lessens the need for changing my name.
AIMS
I’d just run a google search for your first name + his last name before changing it if both are very common.
Senior Attorney
I actually think having a hard-to-google name is a plus.
Anon
Has anyone ever had the gender roles reversed in this situation? Meaning that your SO wants you to keep your name and you want to change it? My boyfriend is adamant that he wouldn’t me to change my name — he’s very progressive on all topics like this, and he thinks that if I were to change my name it would signify that he “owns” me. I, however, really don’t have that strong a reaction to a name change and frankly find it to be really convenient and easy to have the same last name. And I’m not sure why, but I don’t have a really strong attachment to my last name — maybe because even though it’s an easy name to spell, it’s frequently mispronounced. We both agree, however, that we wouldn’t want to do hyphenated. Too long and too much hassle.
Anon
Yes – my boyfriend refuses to let me take his last name. He doesn’t like his last name (he has a very Jewish last name, but his mother is Asian and he doesn’t identify as Jewish at all), and I think he likes my independence too much to “own” me. He’s suggested creating a meld or taking my last name. I don’t actually like my last name that much though and wouldn’t want to wish it on him – so we might be in the situation where both of us want to take the other person’s last name!
All of this has been in very casual conversation though, so we’ll see what happens if it becomes a serious issue.
Kelly
What’s the deal with the term “Married” name? I’m married, and I kept my name. So it’s now my “married” name.
Senior Attorney
Well, you have to call it something in order to have a discussion about it, right? But I think you make a great case for redefining the term “married name” to mean “the name one uses when one is married, which may or may not be the name one used before one was married.”
AnonInfinity
I hyphenated. I do like my last name because I think it flows well. But if I was getting married today, I would just keep my birth name. Hyphenating is confusing sometimes, and I do get annoyed explaining it to the doctor, dry cleaner, whoever I have to give a last name to. A comment above resonated w me when it said that a woman who hyphenates when her husband doesn’t is really just taking his name. That is true for me. I was really uncomfortable taking his name and feeling like I was giving mine up, but I was young and not really confident enough to go against the grain in my small Southern town.
Victoria
This was a big issue for my husband and me. We discussed all the options: keep our own last names, he takes mine, I take his, hyphenation, I make mine my middle name and take his last name, we both take mine as our middle name. None of them sat right with us.
In the end, having the same last name mattered to us, and neither of us wanted the hassle of hyphenation. We considered both of our last names and neither of us could get comfortable taking the others’ name. So we decided to create a new name (which launched many more months of discussion: combine our names? choose a word from the language of our shared heritage that means something to us?). We didn’t end up choosing the name until the night before our wedding.
Aaaaaaand two years later we haven’t gotten around to actually making the change, and I’m not sure we ever will. It’s a BIG hassle to change your name to something other than your husband’s (in our state, taking my husband’s name would have just involved a check on a box on our marriage license; the new name involved finger prints, court dates, newspaper advertisements, etc.). So at the moment we still just have our original last names. Heh.
Blonde Lawyer
I married at 23 and took my husband’s last name. I’m First Middle Married. I hadn’t yet really established myself professionally. I kept using my maiden for a bit while in law enforcement because we didn’t want the offenders in our small town to know we were married. (Both in law enforcement at the time.) Then my employer said I had to sign my legal docs with my legal name and offenders would see it anyway so I just went with the married name and didn’t look back.
The racist/xenophobe comments are interesting. I’ll admit that my prior long term bf has a Hispanic last name and I am very Irish and figured I’d keep my maiden if I married him. My Irish first and middle name just sounded ODD with the super Hispanic last name. My husband’s last name is Scottish/Irish and flowed well with my very Irish first and middle name so it seemed more natural to take his.
I love us having one name and I don’t really miss my “maiden” name. For me, I liked the symbolism of us starting this new life together, though I concede that he didn’t get the same symbolism.
One thing he does (on his own) that I really like is he always puts my name first on things with both our names. Wife and Husband last name instead of Husband and Wife last name. It could be it just sounds better but it is a little non-conformist.
S
I am one of those children who was given a hyphenated last name when I was born. Not only that, but I have a hyphenated first name as well. So, FirstName-FirstName LastName(Mother)-LastName(Father).
I can tell you that as an adult, I have put considerable thought into whether or not I should change my last name to just my Mothers or just my Fathers for the sake of simplicity. Of course, family politics quickly come into play and my intent is quickly dispelled. I now, however, am engaged and am trying to figure out just how to address the last name dilemma as well. Though I do not agree with the tradition of taking the mans last name without thought, I do feel that again, for the sake of simplicity, it may be the right way to go.
Anyway, I just wanted to comment from the ‘hyphenated last name child’ point of view that although it is a wonderful compromise with your SO in terms of naming, it does pose some significant challenges for your children when they grow up.
hellskitchen
I have an unusual FirstName and MaidenName. Neither is easy to pronounce and I always had a hard time with those speech recognition systems on calls. Mu husband has a fairly well known and easy to pronounce lastname. So I gladly took his name when we got married. I never had a middle name and wasn’t about to add one. It was a purely practical decision and I am glad I changed it because my new name has a better ring to it than my old one. Because my first name is unusual, I haven’t had any issues with maintaining my professional identity or with my network finding me on social media.
Baconpancakes
Let me preface this by saying I’m not judging at all, just coming from a perspective of someone who has her mother’s last (Maiden) name. (If you want to change it, sure! That’s kind of the point of feminism – choice.)
So maybe I’m just missing something here, but for all the women who are advocating changing because they want to have the same name as their kids… why not give your kids your last name and let your husband keep his different?
MyNameWasAPain
Mostly because I wanted all of us to have the SAME name. It is nice to be the “Smith” family, Hypenation might work for two relatively short, easy to spell names. It does not work so well for Bezukladnikov-Konigsberg (which is close to the name I grew up with).
Baconpancakes
So if your maiden name was Smith, and his was Bezukladnikov-Konigsberg, would you have considered keeping your name, and asked him to change his?
MyNameWasAPain
Honestly – I am not sure. My dislike of my name was tied to a bunch of stuff left over from my childhood. I would definitely have wanted all of us to have the same name. Beyond that, I would have had to discuss it with my spouse with the difficult name and have us make a decision together about what would work for us and our family – which is what I hope everyone feels free to do.
Prague
I was married for a few years and changed from First Middle BirthLast to First Maiden MarriedLast. I went from one mispronunciation to another, so I didn’t particularly care at first. As the marriage worsened, I really missed my identity as one of the few BirthLasts around.
Also: Ladies who are thinking that changing your maiden name to your middle name helps avoid confusion professionally, keep in mind that no one usually cares what your middle name is now, so they don’t particularly care later, either. You have to work at it. It does, however, help (a little) with the transition right after marriage and divorce.
Turns out, he was crazy, and three years post-divorce, I’m still fighting to eliminate the scourge of his last name in a few places. It was ridiculously easy to change the first time, and extremely difficult to change back at work (seriously, it was like NO ONE had ever gotten divorced before).
Professionally, I see no reason to change again if/when my guy and I run off together. He doesn’t either – in fact, we both think it’ll make me look flaky. Let’s not even mention the additional paperwork or confusion. I’m reasonably well known in a highly specialized niche area, so I’m not willing to give that up a second time. What’s more awesome is that my guy made that point before I could figure out a way to say it nicely.
That said, socially I’m certain everyone will call me Mrs MarriedLast2, which I’m perfectly okay with and actually prefer (“Ms” was often initially used in situations where marital status was unknown – but then, I’m kind of OCD on accuracy, and have always hated the pronunciation “miiiz”). I suspect it’ll bring us together as the MarriedLast2 family emotionally. I can’t have kids, and his from his first marriage are old enough it’s very unlikely I’ll ever fulfill a stepmom role, so it’s not an issue.
MyNameWasAPain
I was one of those hyphenated children (and my parents then got divorced and my mom re-married and changed her name, so my name did not match even one of hers). It was a massive, incredible pain. The name was waaaay long, hard to spell, hard to pronounce, and impossible to fit on the back of a soccer jersey. I spend half my life explaining that was my mother – not my step-mother. The dentist could never keep our files together and my name did not match my siblings on either side. I hated it, but could not change it without major family drama. I was so, so, so happy to get married, change my name and have the same name as my spouse and (now) kids. Maybe I caved to the (unrecognized) patriarchy, but it made me happy. (And I would have been massively, furiously angry if some government official had told me I couldn’t – good thing I don’t live in Quebec.)
JJD
As an initial disclaimer, I am not married, but have given this plenty of thought. What seems both like yesterday and a hundred years ago, I, too, was “planning to get engaged.” I’d lie in bed at night and say my name to myself…followed by his last name (and may or may not have also named our kids). Sparing you the details, things fell apart in a devastating fashion.
Reflecting on those nights spent fantasizing about becoming Mrs. HisLastName have made me change my tune- I now want to keep my own last name, regardless of how nice a ring his has to it. I appreciate (and envy, just a bit) the romanticism of adopting a man’s last name, but after going through a tumultuous year, I’ve learned more than ever to value my identity. Having felt like I lost it for a bit, its something I want to hold on to. I feel like my last name is a significant, though perhaps mostly symbolic, portion of who I am.
I suppose this is a “things happen,” pessimistic, (I say realistic) approach to the subject, but I would hate to now have his last name! I’m also a young attorney, though have now been practicing long enough to, like SB, feel like my name is my brand/identity, which only further solidifies my decision.
To quote Dr. Seuss, “Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.” I’ve had this last name my whole life, I’ve got it today, I’ll have it tomorrow, and its me. I don’t want to be anyone else.
Charlotte, Esq.
I dropped my maiden name entirely and took my husband’s name, but my decision was influenced in large part by the fact that my maiden name was actually my dad’s step-father’s last name which he adopted as a teenager, not the name by which my father was actually born. And my dad’s step-father is a real b@$tard, so aside from sharing it with my immediate family, neither he nor I had much sentimental attachment to it and he encouraged me to take my husband’s name. It was important to me to share a name with him and our future children.
My father did give me his “birth” last name as a second middle name when I was born, though, and he asked me to keep that one, which I have. I don’t use it anywhere by my Social Security card, but I like that it is there.
LLBMBA
I think in Ontario that it’s easier to change your name than it sounds like it is in other places. After marriage, you can assume your spouse’s name (whether male or female) or change to a hyphenated last name – all you do is bring your marriage certificate to the various identity entities (driver’s license, passport, etc.) and you get a new card with your married name. You don’t “legally” do anything, and you can revert back if/when you choose. Your birth certificate stays the same.
For myself, I thought I would change my name, for many of the same reasons others have said: it seemed quaintly old-fashioned, I was excited to be married and being a “mrs” made it feel more real. In the end, I didn’t do it, because it felt so strange to give up the name I’d had since birth. So I kept my name. If my husband had strenuously objected, I would have considered it further (but likely would not have married the type of person to strenuously object).
That being said, I still get invitations, etc. with Mrs Myfirst Hislast and it doesn’t both me one iota. Our kids will (very likely) have his last name. I can’t see that being a problem – it’s so common in my area not to have the same last name as all members of your family. And if someone assumes that I’m Mrs. Hislast because my kids are Hislasts, no big deal.
NOLA
I changed my name when I got married. I didn’t really connect with my father’s family and my ex and I had names of the same cultural heritage. I used First Maiden Last. I switched back to First Middle Last when I got divorced and would never ever change my name again. It’s my name and I’m keeping it. Total pain to change it back and now I have at least one publication out there with a name I don’t use.
My first boss kept her first husband’s name even after she remarried. Her maiden name (first and last) was the name of a character from a vintage TV show. But I never understood why she didn’t change to her second husband’s name. She had no ties to first husband at all and they lived in the same city and it was weird.
Burgher
I took my husband’s last name. I have never admitted this to anyone, but I regret doing so. We have an awesome marriage, I just really liked my maiden name and miss it. After 5 years, my last name still makes me cringe.
The only bonus is that it is the most common last name in the US, so, I am not as easily identifiable online, and everyone knows how to spell and pronounce it. It also made it easier when having a child.