Choosing a Last Name

331 Comments

1. My husband is already a hyphenate, which would have made our conjoined last name a nightmare. So far, he’s keeping his and I’m keeping mine. Sometimes I think about this decision as a win for feminism, but then I remember that it’s largely because I’m lazy (too much paperwork to change) and for practical reasons. So much for smugness and feeling superior …

   Also, we’re considering changing both our middle names to some amalgam or even something brand new if/when kids become part of the picture, and have that be their last names. So, if I’m Mariah Jay Something and he’s Mark Kay Else, I’ll become Mariah Newname Something and he’ll be Mark Newname Else, and the kids will be little Jane and John Newname.

   Whaddya think? :)

   1. I like it. How are you going to decide on your new name? I think that would be the hardest part!

2. I was married a year ago. I changed my last name on the marriage certificate, but nothing else (so far) for many reasons. Didn’t think about hyphenating at the time on the certificate. I’m at attorney and my “brand”/reputation is with my maiden last name (after practicing for 10 years under the maiden name). My husband wants me to change to his which of course is hard to pronounce and spell. I know some people keep their maiden name professionally, but use their married name for everything else which seems like the best option for me, but no one has really been able to explain to me how that works with a bar association when your SSN, license, etc all say your married name and you practice under your maiden name (how do you sign legal docs?). If anyone can explain that or give me some guidance, I would really appreciate it because the bar in my state didn’t even know.

   1. In my state (Virginia), as long as you don’t change your name with the Supreme Court, you can change it on your drivers license/SSN/everything else and keep practicing under your maiden name (and use that name on pleadings, etc.).

   2. I’ve always thought that for someone keeping their name for work and changing it for personal life, it would be easier to legally keep your name so that work, SS card, taxes, bar membership, court admissions, etc. can all be in your legal name, which isn’t changing. Then in your personal life, just use your husband’s name: introduce yourself with it, have a facebook/email account with that name, sign that name on church and other organization registries, etc. That always seemed to me to be the easier way to go about having a different personal and professional name. Although, of course, many actors and writers do it the other way, but I imagine all of their agents, attorneys, and other work contacts all know their legal name; it’s just the public in general who knows them by their stage/pen name.

3. I took my husband’s last name in order to dump a first name that I hated and NEVER used. It was so exhausting telling people that I didn’t actually go by my first name every time I scheduled an appointment or started a new class, etc. The process was much more involved and required going to probate court to have it changed instead of just the social security office, but I could not be happier. Don’t ever make your kids’ middle name their preferred name!

   1. So to clarify, I’m now FormerMiddleName MaidenName HusbandsLastName and FormerFirstName is gone.

4. My husband and I both changed our names when we got married. We married in our early 30s, so our careers were already established, and we both use our middle initials, since we have common last names.

   We each took the other’s last name and added it to our middle name. So legally I am Jane Lynn Doe Jones he became John Charles Jones Doe. Professionally, I’m still Jane L. Jones.

   My mother doesn’t understand it at all (we’re southern, so I should have taken his name “properly”), but it was the best solution for us. I don’t feel like I gave up my identity or the privilege of sharing a new one with my husband.

5. I have almost an opposite situation re: parents. I changed to ex-DH’s name, and kept it after divorce, since that was my professional identity. On several occasions when traveling with my parents, when I’ve made the reservations (to enjoy loyalty program perks), my parents get addressed as Mr./Mrs. ex-DH’s Last name!

6. I think it’s a 100% personal decision, and that no third party has the standing to criticize whatever decision is made. I married in my 40’s, and as a result, I had been known professionally by maiden name for a long time. There were no children to factor into the decision nor any expected ones either. I am probably best defined as a quietly militant feminist. After marrying, I did not change my legal name, so medical, financial, government and professional records are BirthName. (I really do hate that term – “maiden name”.) In professional and social settings, I am usually known by Husband’sLastName, although I had birth name for so long that I am often addressed byBirthName. I cheerfully answer to both. For whatever reason, or perhaps no reason, I do not feel an overwhelming urge to use one over the other. I am who I am, whatever the name attached to me. After reading so many excellent comments on this post about others’ preferences, I feel a bit odd that I don’t have a personal preference, but I just don’t.

7. It never even occurred to me to change my name!

8. I am First Middle BirthLast-HusbandLast. We got married young (22 and 23 years old, respectively) bit I was already in law school. Some of my considerations were:

   1) My birth name is MY name. 22 years might be relatively young, but it’s many years with this identity. I’m sure there’s a lot of feminism wrapped up in that, but I don’t feel the need to discuss it here.

   2) I still live in my hometown. Very active in my community. As a new lawyer, I feel a little name recognition couldn’t hurt. My husband, on the other hand, is from overseas.

   3) I’m the last person in my family with my last name (Dad was only son in his generation and he just had one daughter). Adds some significance IMO.

   4) I’m an only child (see above) and very close with my parents. His family are really awful to us and are verbally/emotionally abusive. Yeah, no thanks, I didn’t feel comfortable becoming one of “his last name”s in their eyes.

   5) Ease. I have a short first name, and each of our last names is just one syllable. My hyphenated surname is only eight letters. Easy to pronounce, fairly common.

   I don’t regret hyphenating, though it is occasionally tricky. Spelling over the phone, picking up Rxs, push-back from the DMV. Most people have been fine about it. The most hurtful comment came from my best friend in law school, who stated that she felt that women who hyphenate “already have one foot out the door” of their marriage. Fortunately, neither my husband nor I feel that way!

9. My husband probably would have been willing to entertain a combined/new/hyphenated name if not for the fact that he had a fair amount of brand established under his name already, and it didn’t feel worth it to either of us to risk losing that. So we both kept our names (a feminist way to frame it.)

   I would also be interested in talking about the Kat/Katherine distinction in a future post. Calling me “Katherine” means you’re a telemarketer, I just feel like that is not my name. As an academic, I even publish under “Kate Last” because I like the idea of people being able to immediately connect me to my published work when they meet me. But I’m intrigued by people who go back and forth more fluidly.

10. Recently married and I didn’t change my name. The ‘official’ reasons were 1) I like my last name, 2) I never wanted/planned to change it, 3) it ‘goes’ with my ethnic first name, 4) I have several degrees in that name, 5) I don’t want to deal with the paperwork.

    There is another reason — my husband was married before and she did change her name — and then, to his annoyance, after they divorced hyphenated with her maiden so she’d have the same name as their child. She dropped his name when she married again. Even though it wasn’t her last name anymore, we don’t live anywhere near her, and it’s a common last name, I didn’t want to me the second Mrs. Hislastname. I admit it’s petty and never plan on telling husband.

    BTW, I think she was totally justified in keeping it after they divorced.

    Husband is still a bit whiney that I didn’t change my name — under the guise that he’s ‘joking’ — which is annoying, even though I ignore it. He knew early on in our relationship I wasn’t changing, too late to complain now!

11. While I can’t say that I’m a big fan of my husband’s last name, I took it because it was important to him that I do so, I didn’t HATE the name, and with a kid on the way I think it’s better for our family to have one common identity. I am, however, attached to my maiden name, it is a part of my professional identity (I’ve been a practicing lawyer for 8 years), so I compromised – I got rid of my TWO original middle names and took my maiden name as my middle name, and I now force people to refer to me as the entire damn thing, even though it’s not hyphenated.

    My husband’s name is a fairly common American name, like Johnson, whereas my name is Scottish and a little more unique (I think), and it flows with my name.

    At the end of the day, do whatever works for you.

12. My partner and I have agreed: boys will take his last name, girls will take mine. That way, we can have both of our names carried on (if we have both kids) and are creating a matrilinear and a patrilinear culture, which I think is way better than doing one or the other. This way, nobody sacrifices their last name!

13. I’m glad I lucked out in the name game. My maiden name is the same as Mr.’s surname. It’s an extremely common surname. So common that his mother’s maiden name is also the same as his father’s surname. Our families have traced the family trees for dozens of generations and haven’t found any overlaps or crossings.

    Mr. jokes that we should hyphenate our surnames for our kids so that their surname is, for example, Same-Same or Same^2 (that would be Same-squared). Our friends joke that we should give one child the first name of Same so that his/her full name would be Same Same or Same Same-Same. Or that I should “take” his name so that my name is [First] Same Same or Same-Same. Yeah, somehow our friends never get tired of playing with this.

14. One thing I’ve noticed here is how regional/cultural the choice is.

    I live in Wisconsin, so people have the expectation that I will take my husband’s name. However, my boyfriend and I both come from multiple cultures, and we are both trying to make a name for ourselves. We probably won’t get married until we’re well into our thirties, and by that point, our whole lives’ work will be tied to our pre-marital names. So professionally, we’ll probably both keep our names.

    To add a level of complexity, I have a second legal name. My mother is from an old samurai family, and her family name is my surname on my Japanese passport. (There is no way I’m letting go of that legacy.) Traditionally, Japanese women typically take their husband’s names, but in the event that a woman has no brothers, her husband may take her name. My parents actually did this- in official Japanese family records, my father took my mother’s family name.

    My boyfriend has a similar background. We both have mothers with strong (may I say cool?) warrior ancestry, and we are not at all close to our fathers’ families. Therefore, I see us keeping our father’s surnames for professional cohesion, and we’ll probably name our children after their grandmothers.

    Minor note- MyFirst FathersLast sound very nice, unique, and professional together. MyFirst BoyfriendsLast doesn’t sound at all special or memorable. Love my boyfriend, but I don’t love his father’s family like I love my mother’s family.

15. Didn’t change my name when I got married because my name was my name and is my name. Its on my birth certificate. I felt rebellious about women-as-chattle in history (and, in some places, present culture). Nobody owns me. Also, I had been practicing in Big Law for 15 years already and it seemed professionally counterproductive to change names all of a sudden. The issue of kids eventually came up – and we used his name because that signaled him as the biological father. Until/unless some convenient new system is widely adopted in a country like ours, I guess we’ll continue to have the naming convention debate.

16. I realize that I’m about to invite a huge flamewar, but I’m anonymous here. And even though I can’t really defend my point of view as fair or right, I think a lot of people secretly agree with what I’m about to say. And I think that people who are considering changing their names should know that some people feel this way, even though most people say “whatever you want is awesome because feminism is about choices!”

    I secretly on some visceral level lose respect for women who change their names when they get married. I try really hard as a feminist who believes in freedom of choice not to feel this way, but I can’t help it. Because taking their husbands’ names makes me think that they think that they’ve changed as people now that they’re married, and I’m sort of creeped out by the idea of defining yourself in relation to another person so thoroughly that it subsumes your own identity. I know I’m not supposed to think that, but I do, and none of the arguments that people have presented to me in numerous iterations of this debate have changed my gut-level response of disdain for women who are so happy to subsume themselves in that way.

    I’m a woman, and I’m not married. I sort of dislike my name (it’s boring, sounds clunky to my ear, and reminds me of family members I don’t much like). That said, I wouldn’t change it if I got married. It’s my name, and I’ve considered changing it, but ultimately, it’s mine, and absent some huge change in who I am as a person (like, a gender change, for example), it’s who I am.

    “I don’t like my name” is a copout. If you really didn’t like your name, you would have changed it before now. “I want my whole family to have the same last name” is a copout unless you’ve equally considered your husband taking your name. And using different names in different contexts is just confusing. Again, I really try not to feel that way, and I feel guilty about feeling that way, but in all honesty, and here in the warmth of internet anonymity, I just don’t buy those reasons, and they seem to me like fig leaves for “women change their names when they get married so that they can honor their husbands,” or some other patriarchal BS.

    I’m going to continue to work hard to be nonjudgmental and accepting and tolerant of other people’s choices. But I think that deep down, I’m always going to viscerally react by thinking of women who take their husband’s name to be a little weaker and a little less independent. I try really hard not to let it affect how I treat people, though.

    (And everything I said above is many, many times more true of women who use “Mrs.” Again, I know I’m being a judgmental bitch, but women who go by Mrs. always strike me as either uptight or weak.)

    1. I agree with you on some level; it does cause a visceral reaction in me. But I personally want to change my last name so we have the same last name, and to me that’s an acceptable reason.

       I don’t particularly like my last name other than its indication of my ethnicity, and going up the family tree on both sides, we don’t have a whole lot of good options. I understand we can go with something completely different and out of the blue, but 1) it’s much more of a hassle legally and financially and 2) we both like his last name (other than the punctuation thing mentioned in my other comment).

       I am not a fan of the Mrs. HisFirst HisLast thing, though.

    2. The thing is, though, EVERYONE is secretly judging everyone for whatever choice they did or didn’t make. I judge women who kept their names. I know I am and was judged for changing mine.

       And we wonder why women don’t actually get anything accomplished in this world — maybe it’s because people are running around thinking about the importance of their last name too much. (See what I did there? I judged you.)

       Sigh.

17. When I got married I dropped my middle name (which I never cared for), made my maiden name my middle name, and took my husband’s last name. My full legal name now is First/Maiden/Married Last. I have it on my business cards, email, etc. It is a mouthful but it was important for me to keep my maiden name in there.

18. Somewhat related question.. has anyone had to deal with changing to a new name that has punctuation (other than hyphenating HisLast-MyLast)? For example, if new last name would be St.John – which even his family doesn’t agree on how to write it out, whether it’s St. John or St.John, or when you can’t have periods, StJohn versus St John. It causes problems with things like voter registration rolls, and he often gets mail addressed to HisFirst John or even John HisFirst. However, he is reluctant to change it even to a last name further up in the family tree, especially because it’ll more of a legal hassle for him than it will be for me.

    (More related to this thread: Only my last name shows that my parents are immigrants, and it’s what’s on my diploma and my bar certificates. I do want to take his name, and I don’t want to hyphenate, so I plan on making my maiden my second middle (First Middle MaidenMiddle HisLast) so I don’t lose all semblance of ethnic name and name recognition in networking circles. But it’s just this last bit that’s throwing me for a loop!)

19. I have to make the name decision soon and really don’t know what to do. I always thought I would change my name. Until I got engaged, and realized that (shallow alert) I don’t like my FH’s last name. It is not as nice as my last name. I used to be happy to ditch mine, because I imagined upgrading to a new classier last name that sounded amazing with my first name. But his is bad. FH doesn’t care either way, and I am early in my career so I don’t think it would be much problem to switch. I just feel like such a mean person not taking his name solely because it doesn’t sound nice.

    Also, my 0.02 on the not keeping your maiden name “for the kids” – so outrageous. I know so many people who have switched for that reason only. If people stopped doing that, it would be more common to have parents with two different last names and people would be used to it, therefore, no inconvenience to the kids. I find it hard to believe in this day and age (and 5 years from now when these people have kids ready to go to school) that people would be so shocked to see a mother and father having two different lastnames. Just my thoughts.

    1. My two kids’ last names are different then mine. It is a non-issue.

20. I’m surprised so many women take their husband’s last name. It’s always seemed so strange to me which is why I kept my last name.

21. I wonder how other cultures and civilizations manage this?

    Surely a new set of standards could be concocted to respect our current culture (or perhaps ideal culture). Perhaps both spouse take each other’s last names as their own middle name? Jane Smith marrying Juan Gomez would become Jane Gomez Smith and Juan Smith Gomez. Girl children could be given their names in the same order as their mother and boy children could be given their names in the same order as their father (or vice versa). When children grew up they would loose their middle name and it would be replaced with their spouses last name. Both the matrilineal and patrilineal lines would be continued (although not both in all children, but that gets impossible pretty quickly anyway). Or some other system.

22. There was just an interesting piece 0n this topic on the Ms. Magazine Blog as well: http://msmagazine.com/blog/2013/09/10/my-feminist-name-quandary/

    Some of the comments are just as interesting as the article itself.

23. I have relatively common, easy to pronounce Anglo last name, and my husband has a relatively easy to pronounce Irish last name. I didn’t change my name when I got married because I didn’t really see any need to. I’d always been Kate W. and I saw no reason to change. It didn’t make us any less married. Now we have two kids, both with the husband’s last name (I got the middle names) and it is no problem to make reservations, doctor’s appointments, school registrations, etc. just because I have a different last name. Try this out, “Hello, this is Kate Mylastname and I’m making an appointment for my daughter, Nuni Herlastname.” Nobody has questioned whether or not my familial relationships are in fact, the relationships I say they are in 10+ years of marriage and 6 years of parenting. And when I make reservations, I usually make them in my name because I’m making the reservations – same for him, if he’s doing it (i.e., never). Occasionally I get called Mrs. Hislastname and occasionally he gets called Mr. Mylastname and we just deal, or correct if necessary.

24. What are same-sex couples doing?

25. My parents had the same last name so neither changed. My husband & I kept our respective monosyllabic last names – his Euro, mine Asian. We decided on boys as Firstname myname hisname and girls as Firstname hisname myname. It turns out we have boys, we moved to his country which requires a common family name, and his society assumes I took his name (except at my workplace). My only consolation is that having kids with myname as a middle name reduces the suspicion of border officials.

26. I was pretty neutral on the whole thing, but leaned a little toward keeping my name, so I did. The reasoning went something like, it’s the name on the door and on the diploma, so it stays. Also, I’m an only child, and my husband’s family is sort of annoying– his dad even got mad about it, storming away from the table shouting “a woman changes her name, it’s JUST WHAT SHE DOES!!!!” So damned if I was gonna do it then. But afterwards, it was just sort of there– didn’t think a lot about it, sometimes even regretted it because it’s hard with the kids, people get confused at hotel check in, etc. Until one day over a decade later when some of my friend’s husbands would get sort of weird about it, even make jokes, and a number of people insist on calling me by husband’s last name even though they know it’s not my name. So at that point, it’s like, WTF? Now I do have a bug up my ass about it, and I’ve swung back around to being proud to have kept my name, just like I’m proud to be one of the only working professional moms in our circle of friends.

    1. I have one degree under my maiden name, and two under my married name. On my later diplomas, I list all four of my names and it makes me exceedingly proud :-)

       Whatever you use professionally, you aren’t obligated to use personally. Your personal/SSI/IRS name only drives your IDs, credit cards, and tax returns. My employer doesn’t care that I use Maidenname Lastname together while my payroll records show Lastname. I could call myself Dorkus and they wouldn’t care either.

27. I’m coming late to this. I have strong feelings on this issue and didn’t want to skip commenting b/c I’m a day behind.

    It’s a common practice for women to change their names when they marry. Individual women can make individual choices to follow the practice or not. This practice is only expected of women and can cause complications for them that most men don’t have to deal with. To me, that makes the practice of women changing their names a women-unfriendly tradition.

    Women list many different reasons why they chose to follow the tradition in their specific circumstances – it’s romantic, he wanted me to, I want our family to have all the same last name, my kids will be given his name and I want to have the same last name as my kids, I liked his name better, I want to get rid of my difficult to spell/pronounce last name, I didn’t care that much and my mom/his mom/my husband did, etc.

    Women also list many different reasons why they chose to deviate from tradition and not change their last name – I like my name better, I’m professionally established/it will hurt my career to change my name, I want to keep the same name that my kids have, I don’t want to have an “ethnic” name that doesn’t match my ethnicity, I’ve had this name my whole life and I don’t see the point of changing it now, it was a pain changing my name for my 1st marriage and divorce so I’ll skip the name change this time around, I’m a feminist who doesn’t want to perpetrate patriarchy, etc.

    I believe that those reasons for choosing to follow or not follow tradition are honest and valid. I do not believe that women are deluding themselves or unthinking if they make a different choice than me (or the same choice for different reasons). I do however believe that when a large quantity of women make the traditional choice to change their names, that continues the women-unfriendly practice of changing names upon marriage rather than letting the practice die out from lack of use. That makes me sad.

28. I never planned to change my last name until a couple years after we got married. My husband has done so much for me and it meant a lot to him for me to change it. I have a non English maiden name which is two words with a space in the middle (5 letters first word and 10 letters second word), so I took his last name with only 4 letters!! But what I did was that, I legally changed my name so I took the first portion of my maiden name as my middle name.

    At the end of the name, it is just a name and does not identify who you are…

29. LFT: Is a name non-identifying for men or just for women? Why would your husband want you to change your name if it is “just a name”?

30. Choosing to change your name is un-feminist. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean you get kicked out of the feminism club. I think it is hypocritical to assert that changing your name is a choice you made in a vacuum, because you didn’t. But we all do things and say things from time to time that are un-feminist. I don’t judge my mom for changing her name because that is just what you did back then. I don’t judge any of you for changing your name if that is what you wanted. I only judge you (quietly, to myself) if you claim it was a choice you made freely without any influence from our patriarchal naming system.

    1. It’s worth noting that the definition of feminism (and there are a few) is that it is “the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities.” Note that nothing is said about those rights and opportunities existing in a vacuum or not. Men and women both have the choice of changing their names in the US, as many times as they like. There is no law that says women must change their names. Because our cultural history is that the father’s name is passed to the child doesn’t mean that any of this is “un-feminist.” Your name at birth is chosen for you; your name at marriage is one you choose. Equal rights and opportunities for both, equally impacted by our own societal norms.

31. Holy five pages of comments Batman!

32. When I got married, my decision was somewhat made for me by the IRS. I wanted to be Julia Bennett Santorelli and keep my middle name in there somewhere. Essentially, not “drop” a name but also not use my middle name. I didn’t want to hyphenate either, but I wanted to take my husband’s name because a. I wanted to be Mrs. and b. it would be so much easier for the kids.

    However, when I went to file our first joint return (sigh – big day for a tax accountant like me!), there was only one spot if we were sharing a last name. So I changed my name with SSI and the IRS to be Firstname Middle Maidenname (as a second middle), Marriedname. 15 years later (wow), I’m happy with my decision. 1. It DOES make it much easier for my kids. If I hyphenated and my husband hyphenated (friends of ours did this) then what would our kids do when they married? 2. I LIKE being Mrs. Santorelli (not my real name, but right ethnicity). 3. Professionally, I go by Julia Bennett Santorelli and it totally works, except that my married last name gets misspelled and mispronounced all of the time. and lastly 4. My husband is never referred to as Mr. Bennett. Which I’m not sure he’d mind, as he’s a good egg, but I would. Because that’s my dad!!

    Do what you like, but do plan ahead on how difficult it will be if you have a different name from your kids. I like being Mr. & Mrs. I like that we are the Santorelli family. And I like that I still have the heritage from my maiden name along with my reputation in my professional name.

    One last perk of changing your name? I don’t pay to have our phone number unlisted. Instead I am listed as J. Bennett with no address, and since socially (and with the kids’ school) we use our married name, it means I am relatively anonymous at no charge.

    1. Oh, and another perk of having one name professionally and one name socially (which my aunt did back in the 50’s before it was cool because she was a doctor and her husband was a doctor and they didn’t want to get mixed up)…. anonymity (somewhat). I have a friend who is a very famous athlete and sportscaster, and socially she uses Mrs. Marriedname while professionally she is Firstname Maidenname. No one bugs her kids at school, her personal life is relatively anonymous, and yet she can capitalize on her well-earned fame.

33. In my family a woman’s maiden name is passed on to her oldest daughter as a middle name. At this point that’s the only thing I’m sure about doing – oldest daughter will be first mymaiden hislast and all kids will have his last name.

    Honestly, I’ll probably keep my birth name because I’m too lazy to go through all the paperwork rather than because of any sort of feminist stance.

34. I moved my maiden name to be a second middle name, and I go professionally by Molly Maiden Married. I graduated law school with my maiden name, so a lot of people know me with that name, but I got married just a few months after graduation and before starting work, so a lot of people now know me with my married name. Using both seemed to be the best way to bridge that gap.

35. Alternatives to ‘maiden name’ from my fantastically feminist mom – ‘natal name’ or ‘given name’, to describe the name you were born with (and FWIW my mom took my dad’s last name when they were married).

    My dad’s family tradition going back several generations is to give middle names to sons, but not to daughters, so a daughter could take her husband’s last name and keep her own as a middle name. I think it takes a lot of angst out of the decision. My sister recently married and took her husband’s last name, but felt like her name was still First Last – she just added First Last Smith. I’ll probably keep my name as is, for professional reasons, but either way I’d be honoring my family’s traditions.

36. I’m stuck in name-limbo. I joke that I don’t even know my own name.

    I’ve been married nearly two years. I always wanted to get rid of my maiden name (like Kat’s, mine is a hard to spell and pronounce German last name). My husband has a simple (but not common) last name, and it sounds good with my first name. I was happy to take his name!

    We got caught up in applying for visas, and to meet a deadline we had to send off my passport before I had a chance to get my name changed. To get my passport re-issued in my married name with my new visa would cost a ton, and cause even more hassle since we decided to move back to the USA and I had to apply for a visa for my husband!

    In the UK, I could call myself whatever I wanted, as long as I didn’t do so fraudulently. So that was cool. I was Catherine MarriedName over there. But back here in the USA, I never know if I should use Catherine MaidenName, or Catherine MarriedName. So I’m stuck with a legal name of Catherine MaidenName, but I tell people on Facebook and casually that my name is Catherine MarriedName.

    We moved back to my small, midwestern town in the USA. Advantages to keeping MaidenName are that everyone knows my MaidenName name, and that it carries some influence. Disadvantages are that people here are really judgmental about me not using MarriedName, and that it’s a pain to explain to everyone why I have two names. People write me checks using my non-legal MarriedName… ugh, it’s a mess. Roll on 2015, when I can renew my passport.

37. So here is my dilemma. I see a lot of you saying you picked his name because you liked it better. What if your maiden name is just objectively better? My fiancee has a super common generic last name and I cringe to take it. He knows I like mine better, but he is also defensive about his name. I dont want to essentially hurt his feelings because mine is objectively better (thats just luck!) Does that make sense?

    He is defensive about his family too. Have to admit I dont really want to share their name either. Mine is just so good! But it is not necessarily feminism or professional concerns that have me wanting to keep it – I am kind of a bully on a playground with this one.

    I will still give my kids his last name – ugh – but they are getting really arefully chosen first names to balance it out!

38. This is fascinating. I got married at 21. I did not even question taking his name at that time. It’s just what you did. Plus, I wasn’t all that attached to my maiden name. Thereafter, I graduated from undergrad…then went to law school. I have been in practice now for 8 years, in a mid-size community. In that time, I divorced my first husband. I gave no consideration to going back to my maiden name. I hadn’t been that name in so long! Plus, my ex-husband moved away and I was the only person with my last name in town! Most importantly, my reputation within the legal community is tied to my name. Since then, I remarried. I did not take his name. And my husband doesn’t particularly care either way. The only consequence of this arrangement? He gets called “Mr. FirstHusbandLastName” a lot. ;)

39. I changed to my husband’s short, easy to spell last name from a Mittel-European hard to spell and say last name because I wanted to do so. Any one who thinks I’m a tool of the patriarchy is in for a rude surprise.

40. This is a very relevant discussion to me since I’m getting married in 3 weeks (!!!). I have to admit I don’t feel strongly about it one way or another, so I’m just going to keep my own name. It seems like a lot less hassle, and my name is a lot easier to spell and pronounce. Both our names were North Americanized to some degree (mine more than his) in the 20th century so it’s not like there is an extensive legacy to uphold for either of us.

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