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| Switch | 62% | 841 votes | Total: 1362 votes | |
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Add to FavoritesChoosing whether to keep your family's name, a name that has identified you during your childhood and in your single days or take the name of your new husband as you begin a new family is an important decision. This decision often weighs more heavily on older brides and brides who have already begun to establish themselves in careers. I chose to switch to my husband's family name. I have friends who kept their last name as well as other friends who switched their last names. Each decision must be a personal choice, taking into consideration the opinions and beliefs of the husband and wife. Regardless of the outcome, the manner in which the choice is made can set the tone for how future decisions in the marriage are made.
My sister was the first woman I ever knew to keep her last name when she got married. She was considered an older bride at the time, at 28 years old, and had been working professionally since college. I believe her plan, initially, was to hyphenate her last name with her husband's name. Eventually, though, his name was dropped completely. As a ground breaker in my family, her decision caused great confusion amongst our parents and grandparents. I remember the discussions of "How do you address a letter?" and "What will be the baby's last name?" Well, I always addressed letters to "Mr. & Mrs. Husband's Name" or simply "The Husband's Name Family" and my niece carries my brother-in-law's name. Whatever my sister chooses to be referred to as an individual and professional, the family unit carries her husband's name. My sister and her husband have always chosen to lead separate lives, however. Her name is really a good reflection of how their family unit has evolved.
My sister's experience influenced my decision to take my husband's name. Making the decision regarding what my name would be after marriage was not easy. I was just beginning a professional career and had made many friends and contacts during college and graduate school. I was afraid of losing what name recognition I had as I started out. My husband made the decision for me easier, though. His family is very small, and it was very important to him that I take his last name. He told me this, and he openly asked that I take his name. He explained to me how much it meant to him for me to take his family name. In then end, his reasons for my taking his name were more compelling than my reasons for wanting to keep my last name. I have not regretted the decision.
I chose to switch to my husband's last name. I kept my entire birth name and added his family's name to the end. In the beginning I wrote them all. Over time, I rarely use my middle and maiden name. As our children have come along, there has been no discussion or confusion about what they would be named. I have many friends who chose to keep their maiden names when they married. Their families are also strong, cohesive units. What is most important is that the choice made take into consideration the feelings of both the husband and wife.
Learn more about this author, Elizabeth Curtis.
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Keep
It's an archaic custom that is no longer relevant. In today's society, women don't leave their family to literally go live with their husband's family, nor are they financially dependent upon men. Your name is your history, your family, your heritage. There's no reason to forsake your name to a man's name in homage to an outdated custom.
Many times I've searched online to find old friends, and while I can find many of the men I grew up with, most female friends from my youth are lost to me. And as women develop their careers and achieve accolades that should enable them to advance their career, they too often get "hidden" from former colleagues who could help them network on to even bigger and better achievements.
More tactically, I'd ask men - have any of you ever gone through the name change process after a marriage? You need to bring your marriage license to both the DMV (and wait in long lines), to the Social Security administration (and wait in long lines), and contact your bank, your mortgage lender or landlord, your auto loan lien holder, your credit card issuers, the electric company, the water and garbage companies, the cable company, the phone company, and your cell phone company. And with your employer you will need to coordinate with the HR department to update your insurance and your 401k, the payroll department to update the name on your paycheck and W2, and even the IT department will join the process to change your email address. Throughout you'll be asked to fill out countless forms that take up hours and hours of your time. Additionally, you'll need to update any legal documents you may have in place. I'd ask the men who've insisted your wife change their name to assume your name - did any of you help your new wife complete this process? If so, perhaps you're a man worth changing a name for. But I suspect there aren't many who were willing to go stand side-by-side with their bride on their lunch hour (for considerably more than an hour) at the DMV or the Social Security Administration. By the time women are done with all of this, any romanticism they may have felt about taking their husband's name is long gone.
And for the ladies, I hope you never have to go through a divorce, requiring you to work the entire process backward to where you started, should you choose to go back to your maiden name, as many women do. It's one of the little known secrets of the full package of hell known as "divorce." One more humiliation you, and only you, as the woman, needs to go through when the marriage falls apart. There's no doubt you'll be filling out all those forms and standing in those lines all by yourself then.
It's time for new customs. The simplest of course is for the husband and wife to each keep their own family name and agree upon which name any children will bear. What's really so wrong with a married couple having two different last names? Isn't what's inside the marriage what really matters? Not what other people think? Are we still so backward that we worry about what the matrons of society think of us? Or what grandma will think? Are we living our lives for ourselves or for society and our grandma?
For those willing to take the leap and go through the effort to change their name for their family to feel united under one name, why not a hyphenated name for the couple? Or what if the couple together decided to take one or the other family name, rather than automatically selecting the man's family name? Radical thoughts I'm sure, but women, we got the vote, we got the right to equality in the workplace, why not equality in your name as a married woman?
Learn more about this author, Esther Andrews.
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