Traditionally, upon marriage, women took their husband's last names.  This
is still common, but no longer as typical as it used to be.  So, question to
the females: if you plan to or are already married, would you change your name
and take your spouses' last name upon marriage?  (Men who read this conference
can comment on their female friends, including but not limited to spouses'
decisions)  Please state reasons for the decision you choose, pros and cons,
etc.

39 responses total.

I did indeed change my name. Never occurred to me not to, although I did
toy with hyphenation for a while, before deciding that it was just too
unweildy after about five dozen job interviews. (Okay, maybe just a dozen,
but I got tired of being mispronounced, etc.) And to tell the truth, I 
much prefer being a Price to being an Oxley, and I think -- yep, in about
a year, I will have been a Price just as long as I was an Oxley, and then
I can count that I will have been a Price even longer... ANd that will
be a very good feeling.

Hope this is not too irrelevant, but there are also cases where men change
their last names to that of their wife.  I once translated a set of documents
in which a Serb married a German woman, took her name, then divorced her a
kept the name.  Maybe he thought a German name would be more useful?
What is an anderyn?

I plan on changing my name because it's romantic in my eyes.  To feel like
part of my husband and the married couple, sharing the last name would be
wonderful.  I also love change, and it will be Very Cool to have a new last
name after having this one for almost thirty years.  (We aren't planning on
marriage until I have my masters degree, which will probably be when I'm 26
or 27).

My mom didn't change her name, so the idea of one person being 'relabeled'
for marriage, but not the other person, has always struck me as a bit strange.
I've heard of couples making up a new last name, or combining their own last
names into a single name, not hyphenated, which sounds like an interesting
idea.  
Really, I don't think I'd want my wife to take my name if/when I get married,
but I wouldn't object if she strongly wanted to.

Swapping names could be an option as well.
Or, as Keesan just put her finger on the spot: it could very well be
that men want to adapt the name of their significant other.
pragmatically I'd say, the traditional way won't get you in too much
adminstrative trouble.
Easthetically I'd say take the name that goes best with your first name.
For example Willy (girl's name) marrieing to a guy with last name Kok,
which means Cook, but can be misinterpreted around here.

Anyone know what the laws on the subject used to be?  I think it was sort of
automatic that women's names changed.  Judging from my certificate
translations, E. Europe has gone from this stance to an equal rights sort of
attitude.  Instead of asking for man's name and woman's name, including maiden
name, they now ask for 'last name at birth', and in marriage certificates you
have to list which last name will be used by husband, wife, and children, and
they can all be different (except it looks like the children all have the same
last name).  I have seen a lot of instances of Slavic women keeping their
original last names, or hyphenating, but don't recall men hyphenating.
        My brother was given a first name, the middle initial M. (but no name)
and my father's last name.  He was eventually supposed to pick a middle name,
if he wanted one.  He married a Meltzer, and changed the M. to Meltzer.  His
wife's name stayed unchanged.

The first time I married, I didn't take his name.  I couldn't pronounce it
properly (he's european) and I didn't especially like his name.  When I
married for the second time, I took my husbands name.  It seemed more intimate
somehow -- and I liked his last name.  ;)

All the reasons for changing the name make sense to me. I think it would be so
cool to run into people I haven't seen in ages, and I can say something like,
"Oh, well I'm Trisha Smith now!". I like the idea of taking on a new name,
unless it's something horrible like Misti discussed. It's important to me to
have family unity, that we all have the same name. I can understand the
patriarchy argument... but then I got my last name from my dad, so what would
the difference be really?

My name is my identity.  Maybe I'd feel differently if I had a less common
first name, but as it is I have always been "Steve Gibbard."  It would feel
very strange and confusing if that changed.  Since that's how I feel, I kind
of have a perhaps not realistic assumption that anybody I end up marrying
would feel the same way and would want to retain her own identity.  Of course,
in reality, that depends on who that person is and how they feel about it.
If my hypothetical wife wanted to take my last name, I'd find it a bit weird
but I don't think I would object.

I think my mother initially kept her own last name when she married my dad,
but changed it to my dad's last name pretty quickly afterwards, for reasons
I don't remember.  My step mom kept her last name when she and my dad got
married, but now, a little more than six years later, she's started using my
dad's last name socially.  She's still using her own last name professionally,
and I think legally.  If I'm talking about her using her last name for some
reason, I still call her by her original last name out of habit, because it
doesn't occur to me not to until I've already said it.

i took hubby's last name about 7 years ago.
i felt my 'maiden' name was boring, and it had far too
much emotional baggage associated with it. plus, i liked hubby's
last name. as you can see, i still use a version  of it as my
online name. 
i also used this name beforee we were even a 'couple'.

i feel i would have changed my name anyway, whether i was married or not.

Errr... I know people who didn't change, and a couple that took both names
TePaske King, though I don't know who's name was whose... But I wanted
to change.

Iggy, is hubby's last name igor, von, or heineken?  I don't follow which name
you were using before you were a 'couple'.  Too many names to follow.

Steve, that is interesting about changing last names part way through a
marriage.  I wonder if it is because the relationship changed, or if social
customs are changing back again.  

my eal last name is VanHeyningen.
the original spelling was VanHeijningen.

the sound for 'k' and 'g' are virtually alike.
according to my hubby's family lore, they are distant
cousins to the beer people.

i liked hubby's name so much that i would often use the version
of it 'von heiniken'. totally made up, but inspired by the real name.
but he wasnt hubby at the time, he was just a friend.

'igor' is just a made up name. my real first name is chris

re #13:
" my real last name is VanHeyningen.
the original spelling was VanHeijningen.
the sound for 'k' and 'g' are virtually alike.
according to my hubby's family lore, they are distant
cousins to the beer people."

Well, the "k" is pronounced entirely different from the "g" in Dutch.
A k sounds the same as in english, but the "g" can be pronounced either 
as
1. scraping your throat
2. or the same way as in going
Te latter is the case in VanHeijningen
Whether this is related to the Heinekens (mark the e), I do not know.
Genealogy could prove that out.
Certainly they have dropped the "Van" if they had it at all.

As for me:
my name has got a good rythm: Rick Vermunt (1,2,3)

i dont know either.. it is just family lore.

hubby's family pronounces it  where the 'k' and 'g'  are the same, like
a gutteral back of the throat sound.
it seems that the original way it was said is unknown to me.

could you give me a quick lesson/?

I've been asking several female friends the same question.  Most seemed quite
willing to take their husband's last name upon marriage, or a hypenation. 
One did point out that right now she would, because she isn't established yet,
but if she is higher up in her company by the time she marries, she may not
because it would confuse people.  All this seems to have a common theme of
"I'd take his name, unless..." which for some reasons struck me as odd.

So far I think #9 (scg) is the only person who associates name with identity.
Do any women out there feel that way?  As much as I sometimes complain about
the trouble I and my friends have gotten into because of how common both my
first and last names are, it is who I am.

Am I the only female who feels that way?

This response has been erased.

At least Mates sounds better than popcorn, haha.

Interesting. I am who I am no matter what I am called. I prefer to think
of myself as me, rather than an Oxley or a Price. So it was no big deal
to change my name.

Maybe I'm too used to being referred to by my last name...

For those who plan to or have changed their names, do you worry about the
legacy of your maiden name, i.e. are you making any arrangements for it to
"live on"?  I remember reading responses about people whose middle name is
their mother's maiden name, which is one way of having a name live on.

My mother and father had three daughters.  We all married and
left our maiden names behind without a thought.  When I married
for the second time I left my first-marriage name behind, without
a thought.  Names aren't what's important.  To me.

It's also hard to track down people who change their names.
(This from someone who spent two years tracking down an old friend because
she couldn't remember friend's husband's last name)

I didn't care one bit about the family name. So what?

I wonder if there might be a difference in perception of the importance of
a last name, between people who have grown up assuming that they will always
have the same last name, and people who have grown up assuming that the last
name is something that will be gotten rid of as soon as they find somebody
to marry.

I never assumed I'd be getting married.  I planned and looked 
forward to a life-long career and self-support.  But I'm weird
that way. ;-)

I also came from a family where the name wasn't important.  No
one ever said anything even close to "our family has always
(whatever)".  We didn't have family conversations about how far
the name went back.  My grandmother had a son and a daughter.
That son, my dad, had three daughters.  Nobody even gave it a 
thought the name would end if we didn't have children.  The
name simply wasn't important.

In fact is was so unimportant that somewhere, back aways,
my great grandfather changed the spelling so he wouldn't
be mistaken for Jewish.

Name *was* a big deal in my family -- fortunately (I guess) my father had 5
sons.  Of course, only one has had children.  (Life's funny sometimes)

I remember conversations around the table of "what the Delaney's are, have
done, have come from and where they (we?) are going as a family."  And tales
of how we were descended from Brian Boru and how numerous, if not prosperous,
the Delaney clan had become.

Funny, though, that I always thought of my mother's family as more "romantic".
It was not a troic to bring up at the table.  <grin>  

Well, I have four male cousins on my mother's side and two male cousins and
a brother with my father's name, so I'm not too worried about either name
dying out.  =)

I happen to find that my heritage (as a particular confluence of national
origin and such) is important, but that I don't really care to perpetuate
my birth family. I keep the *stories* alive, and that's really all that
I found important there.

I always thought that my family name would die out with my two brothers 
and me, as we didn't care for children.
As the years went by this attitude gradually changed and now my 
twinborther has two children (one boy). But as for my other brother: his
 wife cannot have children and me, well, I am single. On my mother's
side she had a brother and he had two sons. No problems there. Still, I
don't feel like a Vermunt, I feel like a Rick. Then again, the Vermunts
are a somewhat strange bunch, so there IS a  certain specific family
trait (identity).

I wasn't necessarily talking in terms of "continuing the family name."  There
are lots of different last names in my family, and that's never been an issue.
But when I think about what my name is, my last name is generally included
in that.

This response has been erased.

Twins run in my family. I'd like to have one of each and get it over with :)

tyy6yuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh  y7 

Sorry, that was my cat trying to type. :)

My mother's maiden name, Woods,is dying out. She has one sister, and all the
other relatives have died, or are about to. But I don't see any real reason to
pass it on. I like my last name, Patton, better... even though it's always
mispronounced as Payton. I'd probably give it to a son as a middle name. I'd
love to pass on my great grandma's name, but since it was Teenie Vera Sweatt I
don't think I will. Gotta love them Southern country names. Her married name
was Miller and that's much better. No way in hell would I name a kid Sweatt.
Blehh.

My maiden name was a very common one -- no way is the name "Cox" going to
disappear, even if our male cousins had no sons.  (My only brother has
no children)  I've usually experienced "family" as a small-to-medium group 
of people loosely connected to an enormous group of people, very few of 
whom have the same last name.  When Dave & I named our children, I wanted
some family connection but surnames did not occur to me as a resource.

The keeping the family name alive may be more of a cultural issue as I know
it's something I'm battling with (I'm first generation American)

The keeping my own name is my own personal choice; I'm used to my name and
I'd feel odd if my name wasn't the same as the one on my shiny diploma :)

Being a guy, I don't have much room to talk here, but I will anyway.

Unless there is a good reason for doing otherwise, I would advise all
women to keep their original surnames.

Sometimes in the excitement around a wedding, even among women who earlier
expressed determination to keep their names, there is an impulse to
go-for-broke and take the husband's name.  This impulse should be
resisted.

I think it's tragic to see middle-aged or older women, whose original
husbands are long divorced or dead, achieve fame and fortune under a name
that signifies some ex-partner.  One (moderately) famous woman I know has
long been happily married to a second husband, but continues to bear the
first husband's surname because it's the name under which she made her
mark.  She's not happy about it, but it's too late to change it now.

Even if you expect your first marriage to last forever, I think having 
your own surname establishes you (the woman) as an equal and not a
subordinate partner in the family.

My wife kept her own name.  This was what she originally wanted, but she
wavered, and I insisted that we stick to that plan.  It is clearly the
best thing.  Would YOU want to be named "Noodlehead"?

Hhmph. I didn't want to keep my "own" name. And I didn't. Never felt like
it was mine, anyway. It was my father's. Why should I care to keep that?
(On another note, I have a coworker who shed his name when he married,
he and his wife choosing a whole new last name, since he really really
did not wish to be connected with the last name he'd borne until then.)
My "own" name is Twila. Nothing more, nothing less -- I am not invested
in a last name.

I didn't take my first husband's name, but when I became engaged to my second
husband, I asked his permission to share his surname.  

Why?

In both cases, it felt right.

Freedom is about the right to choose.  For all of us.  Had he wanted to select
another name and share that instead I'd have been OK with that, too, though
I *like* the name Tucker and was glad that it worked out the way it did.

What about taking a woman's surname?
I wouldn't mind to do that. A couple of years this feeling was stonger 
since I bore my father's last name and at that stage I hated his guts.
Now I have come to terms with him, although posthumuously, and I the 
last name doesn't feel so bad anymore.
Most of all I feel like a Rick.

I wouldn't have minded if he'd wanted to take my name -- except that I 
had no attachment to my name and wasn't especially interested in keeping 
it.

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