It's amazing how many people rush to defend men "well if you don't give the kids HIS name, then he won't be incentivized to take care of them" Um, what? It's also amazing that women do all the effort of gestating and birthing and men are like "OK BUT WHAT ABOUT ME AND MY FEELINGS?" It's truly wild if you think about the amount of effort and risks to health and life that goes into bringing a child into this world for women vs. the entitlement of men to "claim" the person that resulted from that effort. Finally, it makes the most genetic sense for matrilineal heritage. A woman is born carrying the eggs that she will eventually gestate into a person. And if she has a daughters, then that daughters is born with the eggs that she can someday turn into a daughters. So, one could argue that there is a direct link from grandmother to granddaughter. On the other hand, men exist. So, I guess we should give them full credit and naming rights for that?
Yes to all of this. I write about this in my forthcoming book Sexism and Sensibility. A woman is foremost a wife while a man retains his identity without anyone raising an eyebrow or treating him like a rebellious teenager.
I was going to keep my name but on our honeymoon my husband with big sad eyes lamented, “You really aren’t going to take my name?” So, I took his name and made my maiden name into my middle name. Interestingly enough, I am have been a divorce mediator for 15 years and was a Latin American studies and Spanish major in college. I have project-managed hundreds of peaceful divorces and despite all on the evils of “Machismo” and Marianismo” and search for the Women’s movement in Latin America, I have noticed that it is usually my Latinx heterosexual clients who have both kept their own names upon marriage. I’ve only had about 4 same sex divorces (all female) and all of them have kept their own names upon marriage. Only on one occasion post divorce did the parties agree to change the children’s last names to the mother’s maiden name post divorce and I’ve only have had a two couples agree to hyphenate the children’s last names post-divorce. Interesting.
I've been married twice. The first time, while I loved my ex's last name, I was very attached to my own. My sister and I are the last of the Streichs in our family, and her two kids have their dads' last names. I just felt like I couldn't let the line die off, even though I wasn't sure yet if I wanted kids. I told him I would hyphenate, but only if he did as well. He easily agreed. Lots of people thought it (he) was weird for it.
The second time I got married, my now-husband intended to take my name. He didn't care about conventions and told me the history of his surname and how it was changed completely a couple generations ago in a bizarre series of events, so he wasn't very attached to it, and he liked how mine sounded. In the end, I ended up talking him out of it by explaining what a pain in the ass it was for me to change everything with an the institutions and whatnot the first time when I hyphenated. We both kept our own names, none hyphenated. We don't plan to have kids, but if we did, I'm not sure what we'd decide. We'd probably pick one of our names for the whole family, probably mine.
One of my friends is married to a former Minneapolis city councilwoman. Their children together have only her last name. It always makes me so happy when I see it!
I just felt the need to update this comment because I saw on Facebook today that one of my most conservative male acquaintances' daughter has her mom's last name and not his. I don't know him well enough to ask him about it, but it made me happy that someone so unlikely apparently agreed that she should have mom's name. Progress!
It wasn’t long ago (90’s, even later?) where most states made it trivial for a bride to change her last name to her groom’s, but for the groom to go the other way it would be an expensive and longwinded legal process. (I wrote about it recently, reflecting on my own legal name change.)
Thank you for this. I’ve been married twice. I wouldn’t have considered changing my last name any sooner than I would have switched out my face for his. Every time I see a new post from a newly married young woman (“Say hello to the Davises!”), I feel so disappointed and disgusted.
The example does create a permission structure, though. I was the first woman in my family’s history to keep my last name. After me, my sister kept hers, which her daughter shares, along with her dad’s last name, and two of our nieces kept theirs.
When we married in 1981 my wife expressed a desire to use the same name she had used all her life. The clerk in the rural Illinois courthouse was probably expressing an opinion when she said "Oh, you can't do that." but we took it to be an official statement so she went with a hyphenated name as was often done at the time. We have cursed the clerk numerous times since then as the hyphenated name's 16 characters is often truncated by fixed-length fields on things like driving licenses and prescription records so she is never sure how it is presented in any specific case. The original 6 would have been no problem.
Thank you for writing this! My first son (with my ex) has a hyphenated name, and both names are very long. This has caused constant issues in clerical/admin situations where there isn't enough room to include both names etc. He finds it embarrassing (he's 17, everything is embarrassing) but he doesn't want to have to choose between the names. We gave him a middle name which would work as a last name, which I remind him of at times. I would have preferred to have him just take my name but his father was adamant that he 'get a look in, too' and I was young and lacked confidence. Needless to say, we split up when our son was a toddler and he's contributed little to his upbringing (including no child support). My other two sons have my last name only, which my partner now is more than happy with. I am the only person i know in my circle of (very feminist) women who has done this which is depressing, and as you've also pointed out, I feel like I cant bring it up ever at the risk of everyone getting defensive about their choice to let go of their name. So thank you for articulating it here!
My daughter has her mother's last name. This weirded people out when she was growing up, esp. her school teachers and her friends' parents. But what really freaks people out and has been problematic for 30+ years is our tax returns which have my wife and her last name listed first.
I came of age in the late 60s/early 70s and married twice and kept my name both times. I didn’t have children so didn’t have to decide on last names. The plan was to give daughters my name and any sons would have his.
My mothers-in-law were the only ones vocally against it.
It took my father years to accept the fact that I did not take my husband's last name. When he made me the executor of his will, he still went ahead and listed me with my husband's last name! I explained to him that no one by that name existed and if he wanted the document to be legal, it had to be in my name (which was not his name by the way - I legally changed when I was in my 20s). Even after that, it took some back and forth with his lawyer to get it straightened out. My husband and I agreed before we had children to give girls my name and boys his.
When I married in 1980, I kept my name. I winced as each person in the receiving line said, "Let me be the first to call you Mrs. ___." We received checks made out to Mr. and Mrs. ___. I had to open a special bank account with my full name with his attached in order to deposit the checks. Once that was done, we closed it and opened one with our correct names on it. When I had children, (the first in 1987) we hyphenated our last names for our children. My husband had to go down to an office either in the city or in the hospital and sign off on the name I put on the birth certificate because it wasn't his alone. (This happened for all 3 of our children, all boys.) Since then two of our children have gotten married and, frankly, I was shocked that their wives chose to take our son's last names. I now have grandchildren with our hyphenated names, but who knows what will happen when they grow up. I always told my kids they had the option to change their names or drop a name, but they are all in their 30's now and have not done that. After 44 years of marriage, my husband is still quick to mention that we are indeed married, even though our names are different. His parents never accepted the last names of our children - too much trouble to write it all out, they always just dropped my name. I think my sons like having a different last name. As teachers, they tell their students to just call them Mr. JK, rather than the whole long name. It has been an interesting, strange ride, but it has been worth it to me. After all, they are as much my children as they are my husband's. And I did the bulk of the child rearing. The dog has my last name only. LOL.
Naming is so important and so underrated. In all things - giving names to anything defines how we think, learn and communicate. Knowledge is based on naming of even the most basic things and learning evolves from shared definitions. (Think about how we teach babies to communicate simple ideas. We point to a dog and say “dog”. We can point to a stop sign and name the color as red. )
My son has my last name and a close version of my first name. His father I and I agreed to call him by his middle name because, at the time, we thought it would be difficult for a boy to be named after his mother. His dad could never be considered particularly feminist or progressive. It was a question of other naming traditions in our respective families and a shared decision to carry on my name and family naming conventions.
A couple years ago, it brought me to tears when my son received messages in his given name from his HS. Locally the schools generally defer to the name the child wants to be called. In all of his prior years in school, messages to him came in the name he went by - his middle name.
I asked him why it was written to him in his first name. He replied that he had chosen to be called by his given name. My name.
I never understood women changing their names when they got married. I never considered it. Even asking a man if he will change his name to his wife’s is laughable and ridiculous but the assumption is still that a woman will change her last name or at least hyphenate.
It's amazing how many people rush to defend men "well if you don't give the kids HIS name, then he won't be incentivized to take care of them" Um, what? It's also amazing that women do all the effort of gestating and birthing and men are like "OK BUT WHAT ABOUT ME AND MY FEELINGS?" It's truly wild if you think about the amount of effort and risks to health and life that goes into bringing a child into this world for women vs. the entitlement of men to "claim" the person that resulted from that effort. Finally, it makes the most genetic sense for matrilineal heritage. A woman is born carrying the eggs that she will eventually gestate into a person. And if she has a daughters, then that daughters is born with the eggs that she can someday turn into a daughters. So, one could argue that there is a direct link from grandmother to granddaughter. On the other hand, men exist. So, I guess we should give them full credit and naming rights for that?
Yes to all of this. I write about this in my forthcoming book Sexism and Sensibility. A woman is foremost a wife while a man retains his identity without anyone raising an eyebrow or treating him like a rebellious teenager.
Hell YES. We did this and I’m so happy about it. Tbh the first step is to find a dude who’s up for this. (Which is a tall-ass order.)
I was going to keep my name but on our honeymoon my husband with big sad eyes lamented, “You really aren’t going to take my name?” So, I took his name and made my maiden name into my middle name. Interestingly enough, I am have been a divorce mediator for 15 years and was a Latin American studies and Spanish major in college. I have project-managed hundreds of peaceful divorces and despite all on the evils of “Machismo” and Marianismo” and search for the Women’s movement in Latin America, I have noticed that it is usually my Latinx heterosexual clients who have both kept their own names upon marriage. I’ve only had about 4 same sex divorces (all female) and all of them have kept their own names upon marriage. Only on one occasion post divorce did the parties agree to change the children’s last names to the mother’s maiden name post divorce and I’ve only have had a two couples agree to hyphenate the children’s last names post-divorce. Interesting.
My mother used her maiden name as a middle name after she married my father in 1940. We thought it was a rule when we were kids.
Yes! All of it!
I've been married twice. The first time, while I loved my ex's last name, I was very attached to my own. My sister and I are the last of the Streichs in our family, and her two kids have their dads' last names. I just felt like I couldn't let the line die off, even though I wasn't sure yet if I wanted kids. I told him I would hyphenate, but only if he did as well. He easily agreed. Lots of people thought it (he) was weird for it.
The second time I got married, my now-husband intended to take my name. He didn't care about conventions and told me the history of his surname and how it was changed completely a couple generations ago in a bizarre series of events, so he wasn't very attached to it, and he liked how mine sounded. In the end, I ended up talking him out of it by explaining what a pain in the ass it was for me to change everything with an the institutions and whatnot the first time when I hyphenated. We both kept our own names, none hyphenated. We don't plan to have kids, but if we did, I'm not sure what we'd decide. We'd probably pick one of our names for the whole family, probably mine.
One of my friends is married to a former Minneapolis city councilwoman. Their children together have only her last name. It always makes me so happy when I see it!
I just felt the need to update this comment because I saw on Facebook today that one of my most conservative male acquaintances' daughter has her mom's last name and not his. I don't know him well enough to ask him about it, but it made me happy that someone so unlikely apparently agreed that she should have mom's name. Progress!
It wasn’t long ago (90’s, even later?) where most states made it trivial for a bride to change her last name to her groom’s, but for the groom to go the other way it would be an expensive and longwinded legal process. (I wrote about it recently, reflecting on my own legal name change.)
Thank you for this. I’ve been married twice. I wouldn’t have considered changing my last name any sooner than I would have switched out my face for his. Every time I see a new post from a newly married young woman (“Say hello to the Davises!”), I feel so disappointed and disgusted.
The example does create a permission structure, though. I was the first woman in my family’s history to keep my last name. After me, my sister kept hers, which her daughter shares, along with her dad’s last name, and two of our nieces kept theirs.
My niece, Jules Spector, took her mom's name, Nancy Spector, at the age of 13. I was ever so proud of her!
When we married in 1981 my wife expressed a desire to use the same name she had used all her life. The clerk in the rural Illinois courthouse was probably expressing an opinion when she said "Oh, you can't do that." but we took it to be an official statement so she went with a hyphenated name as was often done at the time. We have cursed the clerk numerous times since then as the hyphenated name's 16 characters is often truncated by fixed-length fields on things like driving licenses and prescription records so she is never sure how it is presented in any specific case. The original 6 would have been no problem.
Thank you for writing this! My first son (with my ex) has a hyphenated name, and both names are very long. This has caused constant issues in clerical/admin situations where there isn't enough room to include both names etc. He finds it embarrassing (he's 17, everything is embarrassing) but he doesn't want to have to choose between the names. We gave him a middle name which would work as a last name, which I remind him of at times. I would have preferred to have him just take my name but his father was adamant that he 'get a look in, too' and I was young and lacked confidence. Needless to say, we split up when our son was a toddler and he's contributed little to his upbringing (including no child support). My other two sons have my last name only, which my partner now is more than happy with. I am the only person i know in my circle of (very feminist) women who has done this which is depressing, and as you've also pointed out, I feel like I cant bring it up ever at the risk of everyone getting defensive about their choice to let go of their name. So thank you for articulating it here!
My daughter has her mother's last name. This weirded people out when she was growing up, esp. her school teachers and her friends' parents. But what really freaks people out and has been problematic for 30+ years is our tax returns which have my wife and her last name listed first.
I came of age in the late 60s/early 70s and married twice and kept my name both times. I didn’t have children so didn’t have to decide on last names. The plan was to give daughters my name and any sons would have his.
My mothers-in-law were the only ones vocally against it.
It took my father years to accept the fact that I did not take my husband's last name. When he made me the executor of his will, he still went ahead and listed me with my husband's last name! I explained to him that no one by that name existed and if he wanted the document to be legal, it had to be in my name (which was not his name by the way - I legally changed when I was in my 20s). Even after that, it took some back and forth with his lawyer to get it straightened out. My husband and I agreed before we had children to give girls my name and boys his.
When I married in 1980, I kept my name. I winced as each person in the receiving line said, "Let me be the first to call you Mrs. ___." We received checks made out to Mr. and Mrs. ___. I had to open a special bank account with my full name with his attached in order to deposit the checks. Once that was done, we closed it and opened one with our correct names on it. When I had children, (the first in 1987) we hyphenated our last names for our children. My husband had to go down to an office either in the city or in the hospital and sign off on the name I put on the birth certificate because it wasn't his alone. (This happened for all 3 of our children, all boys.) Since then two of our children have gotten married and, frankly, I was shocked that their wives chose to take our son's last names. I now have grandchildren with our hyphenated names, but who knows what will happen when they grow up. I always told my kids they had the option to change their names or drop a name, but they are all in their 30's now and have not done that. After 44 years of marriage, my husband is still quick to mention that we are indeed married, even though our names are different. His parents never accepted the last names of our children - too much trouble to write it all out, they always just dropped my name. I think my sons like having a different last name. As teachers, they tell their students to just call them Mr. JK, rather than the whole long name. It has been an interesting, strange ride, but it has been worth it to me. After all, they are as much my children as they are my husband's. And I did the bulk of the child rearing. The dog has my last name only. LOL.
Naming is so important and so underrated. In all things - giving names to anything defines how we think, learn and communicate. Knowledge is based on naming of even the most basic things and learning evolves from shared definitions. (Think about how we teach babies to communicate simple ideas. We point to a dog and say “dog”. We can point to a stop sign and name the color as red. )
My son has my last name and a close version of my first name. His father I and I agreed to call him by his middle name because, at the time, we thought it would be difficult for a boy to be named after his mother. His dad could never be considered particularly feminist or progressive. It was a question of other naming traditions in our respective families and a shared decision to carry on my name and family naming conventions.
A couple years ago, it brought me to tears when my son received messages in his given name from his HS. Locally the schools generally defer to the name the child wants to be called. In all of his prior years in school, messages to him came in the name he went by - his middle name.
I asked him why it was written to him in his first name. He replied that he had chosen to be called by his given name. My name.
I never understood women changing their names when they got married. I never considered it. Even asking a man if he will change his name to his wife’s is laughable and ridiculous but the assumption is still that a woman will change her last name or at least hyphenate.