Opinions on taking husband's last name?
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So I kind of have a slightly different take on this–what do you guys think about changing your last name to a last name that’s very clearly not your ethnic group? I’m white and my boyfriend is Chinese, and part of my internal debate is whether or not I want to deal with people’s confusion for the rest of my life. Other weird part is that traditionally Chinese women don’t change their last name to their husband’s legally.
Right now I’m leaning towards keeping my maiden name legally but socially going by Mrs. Hislastname.
@mf oh shit, how did I manage to miss that whole thread? (at least you kinda got to update us! haha) And yeah, reading some of it now– it definitely helps flesh things out even more.
@Eagle Eye that’s an interesting point about heritage. That’s another part of my feelings (seriously, you guys are helping me pinpoint every little reason why the changing-of-names makes me uncomfortable on some level) I guess I’m more connected than I thought I was to my own heritage? My boyfriend also has a super-Italian last name, which is great for him, but I feel no connection to it because I’m a Euro-mutt with no Italian in me whatsoever. And it’s weird that I feel this way–it seems kind of…prejudiced? in a way. But it’s more about the identity thing, obviously.
@katie, I tried to reassure him in much the same way, but the conversation was pretty all-over-the-place. I do remember being like, “don’t worry, if somebody calls me Mrs. _________, I won’t start breathing fire” but my point sort of got lost in a bunch of other shit.OH, also– now that some more people were bringing up the idea of commitment– I thought I’d copy/paste on of my FB friends very prescient status. This is seriously what he posted: “Remember the days when women would take their husbands last name and didn’t hyphenate. it’s weird to see a family where the father and kids have one name and the mother has a different. Maybe these days women aren’t as committed to the marriage or maybe they are preparing for divorce.”
I do agree with this point about families with different names, to some degree, but the rest of his statement is so backwards (especially if you see what he comments later on, as people start arguing with him. P.s. GOD, I hope no one I know reads this site! haha)
i’m still surprised at how much of an issue this is with some people out there that you guys have run into.. even in my family, place of work (with older people) no one ever assumed anything, some asked if i was changing my name, or what i was doing, but no one seemed to care one way or another!
Oh, I would also like to point out that my mom never changed her name and there was never any confusion over whose children were whose and my parents have been married for nearly 30 years.
So, I guess the whole, really ‘being a real family’ thing never really meant much to be regarding names?
Also, my boyfriend doesn’t care and, while I don’t think that his dad will be thrilled when he finds out, he thinks i’m pretty great anyways, so hopefully it won’t impact our relationship too much.
A note on wedding cheques- even if you know the bride is changing her name, make sure you write “Mr. OR Mrs.” instead of “Mr. AND Mrs.” that way either party can cash it. Banks need both people there if it says ‘and.’ This really surprised me because we had joint bank accounts from before we were engaged and they always let me deposit his cheques without him there but apparently there is a protocol change with that little ‘and.’
You know, I don’t even think my husband and I had the name change talk until, like, a week after we got engaged.My husband and I are both proud, rah-rah feminists, so I think we just assumed I would always keep my name. His mom asked him on the phone if I would take his name, and he realized that he didn’t know for sure. He asked while he was still on the phone, and I shook my head no.
That was pretty much it, although I asked later if it bothered him. It didn’t. I asked him if he wanted to take my name, and he said no. We laughed and went back to whatever we were doing.
Aside from the obvious arguments, I DID NOT want to have to do/file any more paperwork than necessary to get the whole marriage thing done. That whole “It makes everything easier to have the same name” thing has not been true for me. I hate bureaucracy and standing in lines so much, I once let my license expire for a couple of months because I couldn’t bring myself to go and spend two hours at the DMV. Nothing bad has happened, no one has gotten confused, and it’s pretty obvious we’re a family unit.
Although we don’t want children and I probably can’t/shouldn’t have them, if we had an accident fetus that turned into a baby, I wouldn’t worry for it’s social status or any confusion that might happen at its daycare/school. For what it’s worth, we decided that a girl accident baby would take his last name, and a boy accident baby would get my last name.
My boyfriend told me once that he was fine with whatever I did as long as I didn’t hyphenate. I was thinking I would hyphenate at the time – seemed like a good compromise – and so I told him to brace himself to be very irritated by my name if we got married. I jokingly offered that he could change his middle name to my last name and I would do the same, and he said he wouldn’t mind except he has a sentimental attachment to the combo of his first and middle name. And I can absolutely respect that, because I feel the same way. So I started seriously thinking about keeping my name, and I told him so. Somehow he had gotten it in his head that because he didn’t like hyphenates, that meant I would take his name…though I’d already expressed a hesitancy to do so. Hope springs eternal? You only hear what you want? Anyway, he got all bummed and I got all guilty because that’s what I do.
But here’s what decided it for me: in all the guilt and angst of this, I started trying to think of compromises, and the first thing that occurred to me as a crazy potential solution was to ask him if he would change his last name. I rejected it out of hand because oh my god, I would never ask him to do that, change his identity for me, I would never be able to be comfortable with the fact that he did that, would always feel terrible anytime I heard or read his name, and so I continued trying to think of compromises.
It didn’t occur to me until much, much later: I would never ask him to change his name – I would feel too awful. And yet why was I considering someone else’s asking that of me to be perfectly normal? How was I so ready to accept the inevitability of doing what I couldn’t bring myself to ask of another person? No! That wasn’t okay! So I’m keeping my name. I finally explained this to my boyfriend, and he said he totally understood and wouldn’t bring it up again. And he hasn’t.
oh yea, regarding the family should have the same last name thing- my mom went back to her maiden name after she and my father divorced, and we went through suing a state to get them to issue me a birth certificate, applying over and over again for passport, applying over and over again for a social security number, completing the mountains of paperwork associated with all three of those things, and me going to private and public school and there was never any problems because she didnt have my last name.
fabelle- people like that annoy me because they think that only the white suburban family with a picket fence is a real family. families come in all different shapes and sizes and gasp- even different names. it doesnt make anyone any more or less of a family.
@katie, I don’t think there would problems, and I never encountered any, but it did bother me that my mom had a different last name after she remarried. Silly? Probably. It was very important to me that my daughter have my name. But I of course agree, families come in all shapes and sizes and no one should think differently.
My stepfather had MAJOR issues when it came to the last name though. Any junk mail addressed to my mom using her old name would set him off big time. If anyone called her Mrs. MyLastName, he would bug. It was ridiculous! It still is actually. Harmless mistake if you ask me.
I can’t lie… It makes me happy when I get mail addressed to Bethany OldName 🙂
And, for some reason it used to REALLY piss me off when people (especially my husband’s dad and stepmom) called me Mrs. HisLastName. I eventually changed my name, so now that is actually my name, but it just really, really bothered that they just assumed that’s what my name was now that I was married to their son. Instead of saying “Hey Bethany, how are you?” it was “Ooh! Mrs HisLast Name! How are you?” and it irritated me to no end. Actually, even though it’s my legal name, it still bothers me, like they think I should be honored to have their stupid hard to pronounce, long, German name. Uugh.
I miss my old name 🙁
