I’m a 59 year old with a 16 year old! I had her when I was 42. She was a complete surprise of the nicest kind. She has a combination name from my family and her dad’s family. I hope she keeps it her entire life!
You captured my feelings exactly. I liked how my first name sounded with my (ex) husband's name more than mine, and once I changed for one guy, I felt like I needed to change for the next one. And as you say, my surname (Olson) was really my father's name, so then what? Seems like a reasonable convention going forward would be that daughters keep mom's name, Son's take dads, and then it stays even.....I'll send a memo. ;)
I still have my maiden name. We had been together for ten years and already had 2 children before we actually decided to get legally married. The kids have my husband’s last name because I think there’s still a chance I’ll change mine someday... keeping mine is just keeping my father’s name after all (these damn patriarchal claws in every option). My mother-in-law is the only one I know to be bothered by this and in a cruel twist of fate she’s actually going through a divorce with my f-i-l right now. I don’t think there’s a right answer, it’s just a name but we should be able to choose what feels most right for ourselves.
I didn't want to change my name, and I didn't for about 6 months. I have 3 brothers, so the argument of keeping my name for fear it would disappear didn't carry.
My mom had an alliterative name (J) and she often talked about sacrificing that for a Japanese name that so many people had a hard time with. So I felt pressure to change mine too as if in solidarity.
I also felt pressure from my husband and his family to change it and become an official part of their family. I actually suggested my blonde husband change his name and it was rejected outright because he didn't look the part. The irony is that the opposite was also true, but we are just used to women assuming men's names.
I didn't consider it at the time, but keeping it may have been a feminist act in the way that keeping Stanley wouldn't have been. Three or four generations back, that husband took his wife's surname for that reason--she had no brothers--and thus every generation after that had her name (or her father's name, depending on how you look at it).
I didn't realize how much of my identity was steeped in my last name. Many called me by a shortened version of it growing up, so while I also kept it as a middle name, we don't really use middle names in the US on a regular basis, so it feels gone.
I had the same qualms about hyphenating you did, and my Japanese maiden name was hard enough for people to pronounce when I was growing up that I couldn't imagine adding an English surname to it.
I think a lot of my regret comes down to being mixed race and realizing how many people assume I'm white or guess I'm a mix of something, since I have my husband's last name. It's like half of my identity was erased by no longer using my Japanese surname, and since Asian Americans are already so often forgotten in this country, it really hits hard.
At 21, I didn't have the voice I do now and wish I would have advocated more strongly for myself.
I was so thrilled to change my last name at 21 - I was a young conservative (no longer), and my last name was constantly misspelled or mispronounced. I went from Kight with no N, to Jackson. I do like the idea of sharing a last name with my husband and kids, so that seemed like the only option.
Now, I have mixed feelings. My dad has three sisters, and they have very much identified as “Kight Women” and made that a wonderful thing my whole life. Moreover, none of them have any children, so there won’t be any more Kights from our family since I and my girls don’t have the name.
I got married in January and did not change my last name. I just did not see a need to at all. I am happy with how my name sounds and don't think it would sound any better or worse with my new husband's name attached. It is 2021 and I personally think it is unnecessary, and I hate the idea that it's expected of women to make such a visible part of ourselves disappear while the same is never expected of men. Also, my mom did not change her name, and it was never a big deal in my family. Sure, there have been people at the doctor's office who got confused for a minute and thought my mom's file was under my dad's last name, but those events have been few. I have never, ever, ever thought having a different last name than my mom was an issue.
I also live in one of the most liberal-leaning places in the country where it seems it's more normal to not be married at my age (27), or to be living with a long-term partner but not married. So no one, even at my Baptist church, has batted an eye when I've said I didn't change my name.
This being said, my sister also got married recently at 21 and did change her name, and I don't think her decision, or anyone else's, is inherently bad or problematic or anti-feminist. I think that people can do whatever they choose with their names. For me, it's that the societal expectation differs so greatly between men and women that rubs me the wrong way. Maybe there are men out there who HATE how their first and last names sound together, but don't want to do anything about it because they're afraid of rocking the boat!
I remember reading the story about your friend changing her name when you first published it. I have kept that story with me all these years in case I found myself in a similar situation.
I chose to completely get rid of my maiden name because I didn’t have a close relationship with my dad. Plus it was a weird spelling of a somewhat common name. I gladly traded Shaifer for Cobb.
Now I’m 3 years post divorce and still a Cobb because I have two kids that are Cobbs, but I don’t consider myself a Cobb. I figured one day I’d remarry and get a new last name. But should that not happen I have also considered finding my own last name the way your friend did.
My parents hyphenated their names when I was born, and I was given the hyphenated name, too, so I have direct experience with the "next generation" problem you mention!
I kept my hyphenated name when I got married, for a variety of reasons. Partly, it was feminism; why should *I* be expected to change my name when my spouse wasn't? He, being feminist himself, actually considered taking mine, but felt weird about taking a hyphenated name that didn't match either half of his; it also didn't feel right to drop just one half of my last name to create a hyphenated name together, because it felt like no matter which I chose, I'd upset the parent whose name didn't stick. (My brother dealt with the same thing when he got married, and actually *wanted* to take his wife's (singleton) last name, but she didn't like her last name so they ended up both taking the second half of our hyphenated last name, and I think it did kind of upset the parent whose name didn't stick.) I am also an academic, and even though I was an undergraduate when we got married, I had already published under my name and didn't want to deal with changing it. And when it came down to it, I identified most strongly with the family who gave me my name, not with my spouse's family (he's quite different from his family, so we're both a better "fit" in terms of politics, culture, etc, with mine). On a superficial level, if I'd changed my name, I would have had an alliterative name, which I didn't really want.
My hyphenated name is super unique (one half of it, my mom's half, is an unusual name on its own) which means I'm super easy to find online, and that has both upsides and downsides but my name, unusual as it is, feels "right" to me. The only thing that's a little weird now is that we gave our daughter my spouse's last name (didn't feel right to saddle the third generation with hyphenation!), which means that neither half of my name matches hers. This doesn't actually bother her or me, but it's really confusing for teachers, etc, and has caused us some difficulties when registering for things, traveling, etc, because there seems to still be a really strong assumption that mothers will share their children's last name, and adding hyphenation to the mix just adds weirdness when neither half matches.
I'll add that at least in my corner of academia, it was considered weirder for a woman to CHANGE her name than to not change it, but outside the academic world, it always seemed to be the opposite.
I changed my name to the Irish version of my mom's name when I got a passport. Dad had misspelled mine and my older sister's anyway and the only way to fix it was by deed poll, so I fixed it altogether 😀 did not change it again when i got married and my husband isn't bothered and we don't want kids. Why is everyone so afraid of women down through the ages that they are trying to control the minutest details 🤔🙄 love your blogs and stories and links 💜
Unfortunately the 50% statistic doesn’t surprise me at all. My mother never changed her last name and all my siblings and I have her last name as our middle name. I knew from a young age I never wanted to change my name, especially after getting my degrees. When I got married I didn’t change my name and our daughter has her dad’s name for a middle and mine for a last. I didn’t realize how radical of an idea this was until my father in law called me and my daughter disgusting for not taking his surname. Unfortunately my husband’s side of the family thinks our decision is completely ridiculous and has distanced themselves from our daughter’s life as a result. Living with my “radical” family I never realized how antiquated people’s ideas on last names were.
While my maiden name/married name story is un-noteworthy (I changed my last name but kept my maiden as a second middle name), my brother and his wife gave their daughter her last name. I honestly don't know anyone else personally who has done this. Most women I know who kept their maiden name did give their children their husband's last name. I think your choice is awesome but I'm so sorry you had to endure such abuse from your FIL afterwards. It really does seem like such an antiquated part of our culture now although I didn't question it much when I got married 17 years ago.
I hated my maiden name - its an awkward, unphonetic spelling of an uncommon name, which lent itself to a large amount of teasing and ridicule in my formative years. Paired with the less common spelling of my very 80s first name, and traditionally male middle name, I was eager to drop my father's last name. So when I married, I gladly took on my husband's and giggled with glee to see my new driver's license, with my perfectly easy to read and spell name. If I had liked my maiden name, it might have been a completely different story.
My husband and I joked around a lot about it before we got married. Maybe he would take my first name instead of my taking his last name? Maybe, as a trade-off, if I took one of his names, he had to choose one of mine to take, too? Maybe we would combine our last names (we still reference our combo name - which we decided would be "VarHol", pronounced var-hole)? In the end, I took his last name for many of the same reasons you note above (mostly, he has an aesthetically nicer last name than my maiden name, my maiden name is still my father's name). I do still regret it sometimes, but mostly because there was/is so much extra work involved in the process for women. We've been married 11 years, and there are still a couple of utility bills that come to my maiden name because I got tired of the hassle it took to change things.
I’m first gen Canadian with Estonian parents. I was happy to change my surname. I already had to spell my first name and provide pronunciations (and still do). It’s Ülle. The Ü is pronounced like the French u in “tu” and the separate syllables are Ül-le. I gave up trying to correct the pronunciation in grade 6. I always knew when the teachers got to my name on the first roll call. Grade 6 teacher said “Oolah?” And I just said yeah 😞
People (receptionists, eg) now ask how to pronounce my name (Ull?), and when corrected to Oolah, they question the e, assuming it’s a misprint and should be an a. Then I have to explain the correct pronunciation. Really, Morgan as a surname was wonderful even though I have difficulty saying my full name. Oolah does not come out easily (because it’s wrong!) and when I say Ülle, I add the Estonian accent to the Morgan, lol. (Very rolled R 😁)
And one last point: my late husband was a much better person, husband and father, than my father was.
As an added note, we met a couple through our children’s sports teams who each kept their own surnames. Their son (my son’s age) has his father’s surname and their daughter (my daughter’s age) has her mum’s. The mother is Québécoise and I know Québec doesn’t allow name changes for marriage (it’s gone back and forth a couple of times), so that may be the reason she kept her maiden name.
I kept my birth name (prefer that term over "maiden" name). My two older sister's did the same so I had them as role models. Plus, my husband had a mother and a step-mother both or whom went by his last name and neither of them were particularly kind women. I have absolutely no doubt that my only daughter will keep her given birth name too, which is my husband's last name. I've been married 23 years and none my children's friends (they are 20 and 22) think twice about it. The only comments I ever receive, and those are rare, are from my parents generation (they are in their 90s). I have zero regrets. It has helped me maintain a sense of self and my own identity in a marriage where my husband lovingly takes up a lot of space!
I kept my last name, but growing up I never liked it. It's Slovenian and has a silent H at the start (Hribar). I didn't like that it was mispronounced (or not at all when people just gave up), but by the time I got married in my 30s I found that I was rather attached to my unique name and the habits associated with it. For example, when I have to give my name over the phone, I always spell it first before pronouncing it; otherwise, it will almost always be misspelled (starting with Rh instead of Hr). I've never regretted keeping it, but I have to admit I sometimes dislike having a different last name from my husband and daughter. It is interesting when occasionally we get mail addressed to them with my last name instead of theirs. They think it's so funny and strange, but I have to admit that it bugs me that they think so. Why can't husbands and kids take the wife/mom's name? (Of course that just shifts the problems of different names to the husband.) Choosing an entirely new name for the family is appealing to me, but then you both lose the connection to your family of origin. No one easy solution to all the concerns, but I like reading about what other families have done!
I’m a 59 year old with a 16 year old! I had her when I was 42. She was a complete surprise of the nicest kind. She has a combination name from my family and her dad’s family. I hope she keeps it her entire life!
You captured my feelings exactly. I liked how my first name sounded with my (ex) husband's name more than mine, and once I changed for one guy, I felt like I needed to change for the next one. And as you say, my surname (Olson) was really my father's name, so then what? Seems like a reasonable convention going forward would be that daughters keep mom's name, Son's take dads, and then it stays even.....I'll send a memo. ;)
We knew a family that did what you suggested. They had girl/boy twins and the girl had the mom's name and the boy the dad's name. :)
I love this idea!
I still have my maiden name. We had been together for ten years and already had 2 children before we actually decided to get legally married. The kids have my husband’s last name because I think there’s still a chance I’ll change mine someday... keeping mine is just keeping my father’s name after all (these damn patriarchal claws in every option). My mother-in-law is the only one I know to be bothered by this and in a cruel twist of fate she’s actually going through a divorce with my f-i-l right now. I don’t think there’s a right answer, it’s just a name but we should be able to choose what feels most right for ourselves.
I didn't want to change my name, and I didn't for about 6 months. I have 3 brothers, so the argument of keeping my name for fear it would disappear didn't carry.
My mom had an alliterative name (J) and she often talked about sacrificing that for a Japanese name that so many people had a hard time with. So I felt pressure to change mine too as if in solidarity.
I also felt pressure from my husband and his family to change it and become an official part of their family. I actually suggested my blonde husband change his name and it was rejected outright because he didn't look the part. The irony is that the opposite was also true, but we are just used to women assuming men's names.
I didn't consider it at the time, but keeping it may have been a feminist act in the way that keeping Stanley wouldn't have been. Three or four generations back, that husband took his wife's surname for that reason--she had no brothers--and thus every generation after that had her name (or her father's name, depending on how you look at it).
I didn't realize how much of my identity was steeped in my last name. Many called me by a shortened version of it growing up, so while I also kept it as a middle name, we don't really use middle names in the US on a regular basis, so it feels gone.
I had the same qualms about hyphenating you did, and my Japanese maiden name was hard enough for people to pronounce when I was growing up that I couldn't imagine adding an English surname to it.
I think a lot of my regret comes down to being mixed race and realizing how many people assume I'm white or guess I'm a mix of something, since I have my husband's last name. It's like half of my identity was erased by no longer using my Japanese surname, and since Asian Americans are already so often forgotten in this country, it really hits hard.
At 21, I didn't have the voice I do now and wish I would have advocated more strongly for myself.
I was so thrilled to change my last name at 21 - I was a young conservative (no longer), and my last name was constantly misspelled or mispronounced. I went from Kight with no N, to Jackson. I do like the idea of sharing a last name with my husband and kids, so that seemed like the only option.
Now, I have mixed feelings. My dad has three sisters, and they have very much identified as “Kight Women” and made that a wonderful thing my whole life. Moreover, none of them have any children, so there won’t be any more Kights from our family since I and my girls don’t have the name.
I am also shocked by those statistics!! 50%??
I got married in January and did not change my last name. I just did not see a need to at all. I am happy with how my name sounds and don't think it would sound any better or worse with my new husband's name attached. It is 2021 and I personally think it is unnecessary, and I hate the idea that it's expected of women to make such a visible part of ourselves disappear while the same is never expected of men. Also, my mom did not change her name, and it was never a big deal in my family. Sure, there have been people at the doctor's office who got confused for a minute and thought my mom's file was under my dad's last name, but those events have been few. I have never, ever, ever thought having a different last name than my mom was an issue.
I also live in one of the most liberal-leaning places in the country where it seems it's more normal to not be married at my age (27), or to be living with a long-term partner but not married. So no one, even at my Baptist church, has batted an eye when I've said I didn't change my name.
This being said, my sister also got married recently at 21 and did change her name, and I don't think her decision, or anyone else's, is inherently bad or problematic or anti-feminist. I think that people can do whatever they choose with their names. For me, it's that the societal expectation differs so greatly between men and women that rubs me the wrong way. Maybe there are men out there who HATE how their first and last names sound together, but don't want to do anything about it because they're afraid of rocking the boat!
I remember reading the story about your friend changing her name when you first published it. I have kept that story with me all these years in case I found myself in a similar situation.
I chose to completely get rid of my maiden name because I didn’t have a close relationship with my dad. Plus it was a weird spelling of a somewhat common name. I gladly traded Shaifer for Cobb.
Now I’m 3 years post divorce and still a Cobb because I have two kids that are Cobbs, but I don’t consider myself a Cobb. I figured one day I’d remarry and get a new last name. But should that not happen I have also considered finding my own last name the way your friend did.
My parents hyphenated their names when I was born, and I was given the hyphenated name, too, so I have direct experience with the "next generation" problem you mention!
I kept my hyphenated name when I got married, for a variety of reasons. Partly, it was feminism; why should *I* be expected to change my name when my spouse wasn't? He, being feminist himself, actually considered taking mine, but felt weird about taking a hyphenated name that didn't match either half of his; it also didn't feel right to drop just one half of my last name to create a hyphenated name together, because it felt like no matter which I chose, I'd upset the parent whose name didn't stick. (My brother dealt with the same thing when he got married, and actually *wanted* to take his wife's (singleton) last name, but she didn't like her last name so they ended up both taking the second half of our hyphenated last name, and I think it did kind of upset the parent whose name didn't stick.) I am also an academic, and even though I was an undergraduate when we got married, I had already published under my name and didn't want to deal with changing it. And when it came down to it, I identified most strongly with the family who gave me my name, not with my spouse's family (he's quite different from his family, so we're both a better "fit" in terms of politics, culture, etc, with mine). On a superficial level, if I'd changed my name, I would have had an alliterative name, which I didn't really want.
My hyphenated name is super unique (one half of it, my mom's half, is an unusual name on its own) which means I'm super easy to find online, and that has both upsides and downsides but my name, unusual as it is, feels "right" to me. The only thing that's a little weird now is that we gave our daughter my spouse's last name (didn't feel right to saddle the third generation with hyphenation!), which means that neither half of my name matches hers. This doesn't actually bother her or me, but it's really confusing for teachers, etc, and has caused us some difficulties when registering for things, traveling, etc, because there seems to still be a really strong assumption that mothers will share their children's last name, and adding hyphenation to the mix just adds weirdness when neither half matches.
I'll add that at least in my corner of academia, it was considered weirder for a woman to CHANGE her name than to not change it, but outside the academic world, it always seemed to be the opposite.
I changed my name to the Irish version of my mom's name when I got a passport. Dad had misspelled mine and my older sister's anyway and the only way to fix it was by deed poll, so I fixed it altogether 😀 did not change it again when i got married and my husband isn't bothered and we don't want kids. Why is everyone so afraid of women down through the ages that they are trying to control the minutest details 🤔🙄 love your blogs and stories and links 💜
When people ask if I changed my name I always say yes, it's John 😉
Unfortunately the 50% statistic doesn’t surprise me at all. My mother never changed her last name and all my siblings and I have her last name as our middle name. I knew from a young age I never wanted to change my name, especially after getting my degrees. When I got married I didn’t change my name and our daughter has her dad’s name for a middle and mine for a last. I didn’t realize how radical of an idea this was until my father in law called me and my daughter disgusting for not taking his surname. Unfortunately my husband’s side of the family thinks our decision is completely ridiculous and has distanced themselves from our daughter’s life as a result. Living with my “radical” family I never realized how antiquated people’s ideas on last names were.
While my maiden name/married name story is un-noteworthy (I changed my last name but kept my maiden as a second middle name), my brother and his wife gave their daughter her last name. I honestly don't know anyone else personally who has done this. Most women I know who kept their maiden name did give their children their husband's last name. I think your choice is awesome but I'm so sorry you had to endure such abuse from your FIL afterwards. It really does seem like such an antiquated part of our culture now although I didn't question it much when I got married 17 years ago.
I hated my maiden name - its an awkward, unphonetic spelling of an uncommon name, which lent itself to a large amount of teasing and ridicule in my formative years. Paired with the less common spelling of my very 80s first name, and traditionally male middle name, I was eager to drop my father's last name. So when I married, I gladly took on my husband's and giggled with glee to see my new driver's license, with my perfectly easy to read and spell name. If I had liked my maiden name, it might have been a completely different story.
My husband and I joked around a lot about it before we got married. Maybe he would take my first name instead of my taking his last name? Maybe, as a trade-off, if I took one of his names, he had to choose one of mine to take, too? Maybe we would combine our last names (we still reference our combo name - which we decided would be "VarHol", pronounced var-hole)? In the end, I took his last name for many of the same reasons you note above (mostly, he has an aesthetically nicer last name than my maiden name, my maiden name is still my father's name). I do still regret it sometimes, but mostly because there was/is so much extra work involved in the process for women. We've been married 11 years, and there are still a couple of utility bills that come to my maiden name because I got tired of the hassle it took to change things.
I’m first gen Canadian with Estonian parents. I was happy to change my surname. I already had to spell my first name and provide pronunciations (and still do). It’s Ülle. The Ü is pronounced like the French u in “tu” and the separate syllables are Ül-le. I gave up trying to correct the pronunciation in grade 6. I always knew when the teachers got to my name on the first roll call. Grade 6 teacher said “Oolah?” And I just said yeah 😞
People (receptionists, eg) now ask how to pronounce my name (Ull?), and when corrected to Oolah, they question the e, assuming it’s a misprint and should be an a. Then I have to explain the correct pronunciation. Really, Morgan as a surname was wonderful even though I have difficulty saying my full name. Oolah does not come out easily (because it’s wrong!) and when I say Ülle, I add the Estonian accent to the Morgan, lol. (Very rolled R 😁)
And one last point: my late husband was a much better person, husband and father, than my father was.
As an added note, we met a couple through our children’s sports teams who each kept their own surnames. Their son (my son’s age) has his father’s surname and their daughter (my daughter’s age) has her mum’s. The mother is Québécoise and I know Québec doesn’t allow name changes for marriage (it’s gone back and forth a couple of times), so that may be the reason she kept her maiden name.
I kept my birth name (prefer that term over "maiden" name). My two older sister's did the same so I had them as role models. Plus, my husband had a mother and a step-mother both or whom went by his last name and neither of them were particularly kind women. I have absolutely no doubt that my only daughter will keep her given birth name too, which is my husband's last name. I've been married 23 years and none my children's friends (they are 20 and 22) think twice about it. The only comments I ever receive, and those are rare, are from my parents generation (they are in their 90s). I have zero regrets. It has helped me maintain a sense of self and my own identity in a marriage where my husband lovingly takes up a lot of space!
I kept my last name, but growing up I never liked it. It's Slovenian and has a silent H at the start (Hribar). I didn't like that it was mispronounced (or not at all when people just gave up), but by the time I got married in my 30s I found that I was rather attached to my unique name and the habits associated with it. For example, when I have to give my name over the phone, I always spell it first before pronouncing it; otherwise, it will almost always be misspelled (starting with Rh instead of Hr). I've never regretted keeping it, but I have to admit I sometimes dislike having a different last name from my husband and daughter. It is interesting when occasionally we get mail addressed to them with my last name instead of theirs. They think it's so funny and strange, but I have to admit that it bugs me that they think so. Why can't husbands and kids take the wife/mom's name? (Of course that just shifts the problems of different names to the husband.) Choosing an entirely new name for the family is appealing to me, but then you both lose the connection to your family of origin. No one easy solution to all the concerns, but I like reading about what other families have done!