Because I can’t think of anything worth writing about on my own, I am going back to an old question. A while back Lisa asked:
I’ve been meaning to ask about your decision to keep your last name. I’m curious because I chose to take my husband’s name, and it really wasn’t something we discussed but rather both just assumed. When I asked him about it the other day, he was shocked to think I could’ve done otherwise- actually, his exact words were, "I wouldn’t have married you if you didn’t take my last name." I think he was (sort of) joking, but he refused to see that there might be anything to consider about a white girl taking an Asian last name.
I can honestly say that it never really occured to me to take A’s last name. There are a number of reasons why, I suppose:
- One is that my name is my name. It is the name I have always and probably will always have. It just seems so ODD to me to have to change my name to symbolize my relationship to someone else. I am still ME even though I am married to A.
- Another is just straight up feminism. Why the hell should I change my name if A isn’t expected to change his? If he proposed a new "family" name for all of us, I might have considered it. Being a smart guy, A knew better than to make a big deal out of my name. He would have been thumped all up and down the court with my feminist bat. He already knew he was lucky that I let M have his last name and he better not get greedy.*
- A’s last name is one of those few Chinese family names that could also be a "western" family name if it were spelled a little differently, so it wouldn’t have seemed that strange for me to have it as a last name.
- On the other hand, there is actually a somewhat famous por*n star with the name Amber (A’s last name spelled the non-Chinese way). If I had taken his last name, my name really would have sounded like a por*n star. People mention it ALL THE FREAKING TIME. Who knew so many people not only watch tons of por*n, but they also take note of the actresses names so they can tell me "Hey, you are lucky you didn’t take A’s last name because there is a por*n star named Amber ____" Get over it already, people! I didn’t take his last name so that isn’t my name!
- Finally, even if I had thought it was necessary to take his last name, I probably would have been so lazy about it that I still wouldn’t have finished doing all the paperwork yet (two years later). I mean, we had our wedding on July 5th, but didn’t bother to go apply for our marriage license until December. We only did it then because we were going to get a big tax break for being married. There wouldn’t even be any financial incentive to changing it.
Edited to add: If you DID take your husband’s last name, I would love to hear your reasons. I am guessing that the main one would be because that is what most women do, but maybe there are others?
*Have I mentioned that my boy is well-trained in the art of not antagonizing the resident feminist? He is. The girlfriend A dated before me was such a hardcore feminist that when I first started dating A, HE tried to convince ME to stop shaving my legs. You know a boy has been well-trained when he is trying to teach the WOMEN’S STUDIES girl to stop shaving. Breaking him in was a piece of CAKE.
This is an ongoing discussion in our household, and I’m fascinated to hear what others have to say.
My Chinese American boyfriend wants our entire household (he & I, plus our future hypothetical kids) to take on my (French) last name. He believes that our (still as yet wholly nonexistent) kids will get better treatment from (U.S.) society if they have a non-Chinese last name.
I suspect he is right. But I don’t want to send the message to my kids that we are complicit with the racist jackasses of the world, or to encourage any self-hatred. With regards to race, I would vote for our family taking his Chinese last name.
The complication is that I grew up my entire life intending and expecting to keep my own last name. It’s my name. It’s the thing that differentiated me from the millions of other J’s my age.
I suspect that when we marry, I will keep my name and he will keep his. (Especially if it takes actual work to change either.) And, luckily, the fight over our kids’ last names can be postponed. Perhaps by that time one of us will be persuaded by the other.
Laziness and denial (denying that I was actually married) are probably the two things that kept me from changing my last name.
My sister and her husband smooshed their two last names together and now the family (them + 2) has one name. It didn’t surprise me that she would want to keep her last name, however I was shocked that my brother-in-law agreed to change his. (He’s kinda an ass.) I like that they did this, my mother always crys about what a pain it was to change her name- I might do the same..
i’m delurking to say that I’m getting maried in September,and I’m taking my fiance’s last name. The main reason is, that i would much rather be a part of his family than my current family, and that’s what a name change symbolizes to me.
I’m gonna post about it on my blog. I need a new post and this is as good as anything else I blather on about.
I might post about it on my blog, but for now I’ll answer.
I kinda-sorta, passive-agressively took D’s last name. At first I didn’t. I did the hypen thing. It worked for a while, kinda. My maiden last name is 9 letters long, my husband’s last name is 7 letters long. Put them together with a hyphen and it is a 17 character name. Not good.
The other thing I noticed (and will go into greater detail on my blog) is when I looked for a job, my hypenated last name resume got NO takers. I didn’t get called for interviews.
When I took my name off, I got called. I don’t know why this was, though I have my suspicions.
Hope this helps.
Okay, I will admit it. I took my husbands last name for the most shallow and silly reason possible….because I *hated* my maiden name. It is horrible, rotten, and caused me nothing but grief for the entire 24 years that I used it. I cringe when I have to give a maiden name on paperwork to this day.
My parents divorced when I was an infant, and my mom went back to her maiden name (and to this day I accuse her of abandoning me with the name o’shame). Then, she remarried, leaving me as the only one in the house with a different last name. Adding insult to injury was the fact that we were a military family, and I attended six elementary schools, three middle schools, and two high schools. Try not only being the perpetual new kid, but being saddled with *that* name. Yeah, it was a blast.
Can you tell the last name thing is a bit of a weird subject for me??
But, for the record, I don’t think that women should have to take their husbands name after marriage. If I had liked my name, I would have kept it.
Take care.
When my husband and I got engaged, we had a SERIOUS talk about names. I wanted to have my last name, but I also wanted to have his last name. But, I also wanted him to have MY last name. I’m huge on the feminism issue and we even talked about my husband taking my name, but we decided that doing the hyphenation of both of our last names was the way to go for us. So we are both jen and hubby lastname-lastname. The BIG huge hairy stinky deal has been for his family to actually use our “new” last name. His father and stepmother refuse to use it for either of us and it’s become a real issue for me. So much so when they sent me a check for my birthday, I sent it back saying “sorry, no one here by that name”. It may be bitchy, but we married, chose to honor both of our families and I’ll be damned if they throw it back in our face that we did that. But, other than that, we’re both happy with our decision and it reflects our different heritages.
I felt strongly about keeping my last name. M felt strongly about my taking his name. There were issues. The thing is, his son has his bio-mom’s last name because M wasn’t made aware of his birth until 6 months after it had happened, and this has always bothered M (I think if we were on good terms with the bio-mom and fam this wouldn’t be an issue, but since we’re not, THAT last name always serves to be a reminder of these people that we are stuck with). So for about six months after we were married I kept my name, but then we were going to court for the big custody stuff, and I could just see the other side using my keeping my name as a weapon against us. Which is stupid, I agree, but at the time we needed to give them as little ammunition as possible. And *if* we got custody (which we did) and K came to live with us, then we’d have THREE different last names in the house, which is just bordering on ridiculous. So I ended up changing my name.
Actually, I didn’t change it — I kept my full name and added M’s last name on the end. I actually still sign everything Jen MaidenName MarriedName. No hyphen, but it’s all still there.
Whew, that was complicated.
My boyfriend and I have been discussing me chaning my last name. My reasons for keeping my name have to do with feminism and also with the fact that my last is dying out in my family. My sister and I are the only two grandkids left with that last name so we want to keep it going as long as we can. My last name gets mispelled and mispronounced a lot but I don’t care. it’s my name and it’s a part of me.
Hey, also de-lurking. I’ve always hated that women change their names after getting married (from a feminist stance), but i was surprisingly torn when i actually did get married 6 months ago, because i like the idea of us having family name. My husband, the more firm feminist (yay feminist men!), was totally against my changing my name. For a while he was even pushing to pass down my name to our (purely hypothetical) children. I kept pushing my changing my name as an option — until the first wedding gift addressed to “Mr. and Mrs. His Name Here” arrived, and I had a total freakout. I’m sorry, no. Getting married, not losing my identity.
There’s also the race/background stuff; i’m white (grandparents from ireland); he’s indian (parents from india), so what happens with our names and the kids gets alot more complicated because it will affect their sense of identity. Basically, in the end, we decided to leave our names as they are, and to saddle our kids with the hyphen.
-Michelle
Umm….I would never change my name. Don’t go in for all that patriarchal BS myself. But my husband and I decided a while ago that when we had children (oh yes – that happened about 1 yr after we got together, BTW!), girls would get my last name, boys would get his. That’s just fair. We live in CA, so that’s not so odd around here. So we do have a daughter (with my last name), we had a son-with his last name (sadly, he died at age one), we are expecting another son (who will get his last name if he behaves well for the rest of the pregnancy), so the name thing worked out in a fair way for all of us.
Plus, I kinda like that my children have different last names. It makes the conservatives think I sleep around.
i have a hyphenated last name myself- as well as two first names and two middle names. my dad is jewish, my mom is amindian and i ended up getting a first, middle, and last name from each. my last name is Mom’s Last Name- Dad’s Last Name. of course, i’m not in contact with my father, so i sign everything with mom’s last name only.
enter my partner, whose last name is a blissful 5 letters (compared to my 16, inc. hyphen). i’d love to do Mom’s Last Name-J’s last name, but it’s still pretty long. Regarding the racial identity thing, I want to keep my “Indian” last name. however, it’s really a Spanish last name due to the love Spanish Catholic forced-conversion thing… So who knows.
We had some serious talks. We almost decided to both come up with a new family last name, and now we wish we had. I ended up taking his name, but only because I have a tough relationship with my dad, issues growing up, and when we got married I really was not feeling connected at all emotionally to my maiden name. We still talk about coming up with a new last name for the family since K. is also pretty much estranged from his father and our last name just reminds us both of him. I did keep both my middle name and last name as a part of my legal name when I got married, so I have two middle names. And I’ve given both of our children middle names that represent “family names” from my side of the family.
Great post!
WOW! I’m so glad I read this post and these comments because now I know I’m not alone. I took my husband’s last name for a few reasons.
1. His last name was way cooler sounding than my redneckedish last name.
2. I’m a bit of a traditionalist.
3. I always hated that my last name connected me more to my father than to the rest of my family. The rest of my family wasn’t evil like he was. My mom was able to get divorced, remarried, and get a whole new last name. My sister and I were stuck with HIS. bleh.
As soon as my sister and I got married we both dropped our maiden names altogether. So on my driver’s license it says Shannon Middle Husband’s Last name.
Thanks for the response!
I think I made us sound a bit more conservative/traditional than we really are. I don’t hold much with labels, so while I can’t call myself a feminist I’d say I agree with most feminist philosophy. I am of the mind, though, that it’s just replacing one man’s name with another’s, and I’d rather have the name of the man I chose. And to me, my identity and my name are related but not dependent on each other.
I have a good relationship with my father, so I say the above in a very general sense. However, I never liked my maiden name, which is a “Jones” type name in Ireland, mostly because it was easily rearranged to spell “devil”. Plus I think just about everyone on my dad’s side of the family is an idiot poohead.
I did have some internal qualms about taking my husband’s name. I didn’t want to have to explain myself and my relationship to everyone. But it was very important to both my husband and myself that we and our children all share the same name, to identify us as a family. I wasn’t thrilled with my husband’s name, and I would’ve been fine taking another name entirely, but he has strong family ties and it would have been difficult for him and his family if we had gone that route.
It really helps that where I live, it is not at all uncommon for white women to have Asian last names. I still occasionally see a bit of surprise on people’s faces when I meet them in person after corresponding via email or telephone, and sometimes it’s a bit awkward if we’re meeting for the first time at a public place like Starbucks and they’re looking for an Asian woman and totally ignore me. I’ve opted, instead of telling them to look for a white person, to say what color I’m wearing to avoid too much confusion.
My mom is a bit hurt that I dropped my maiden name entirely, because it symbolizes a break from her, my father, and my sister. And that we decided not to give our son an Irish name (legally he has an English first name, Hawaiian middle name, and Vietnamese last name). But since the our Irish cultural heritage consisted of corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day, I didn’t think we’d be depriving him of anything.
And it’s taken me almost 2 years to get my name fully changed. It is a real pain.
i didn’t change my last name to dh’s. we both took the same hyphenated last name (mine first, his last). We figured that we wanted to symbolize our union, the union of our families and if one had to change their last name then the other did, too. so it was a good way of each of us announcing that we were both members of our family and becoming members of each other’s family. it works for us. and dh used to get strange responses to the hyphen, but he doesn’t so often any more.
As the Asian half of the interracial couple, I kept my name in spite of my hubby’s preference that I take his. I’ve dealt with a lot of difficulties as a result of my race/name from not getting my calls returned when looking for housing to not getting job interviews to a whole bunch of other shit. At this point, it’s a matter of pure stubbornness that makes me cling to it. Giving it up for a western name might open a few more doors for me (tricky!), but it would also feel like giving in to prejudicial attitudes. So it’s my “fuck you” to the world. And the husband got no say in it. If he wanted me, that’s the only way he could have me (and he did, after a bit of good-natured grumbling). The point about kids and wanting the family to be unified within a name is the only thing that I had a tiny second thought about. But the thing is, how better could I demonstrate to them that names are only as important as one chooses to make them if I capitulated to everybody else’s expectations?
Can’t resist not answering this one, since I’ve been hearing so much about this lately among my group of friends. I plan to keep my last name when I get married. My reasons:
1. In my culture (Vietnamese), women keep their last names when they get married. The kids get their dad’s last name. I have absolutely no issues with my mom having a different last name than me, and my kids won’t have any with my having a different last name either.
2. I finally have figured out an efficient way of explaining to people how to pronounce and spell (my very asian name) after 20-something years. All that effort can’t be for nothing!
3. It’s a part of my identity, (self-identity, and cultural identity) and that doesn’t change when I get married.
4. As a feminist I think it’s bs that I would have to change my name just because I got married. What sacrifice would he be making for me in return?
5. Last, and probably kind of selfishly, I really just don’t like how my name sounds using my boyfriend’s last name. It really doesn’t have the same ring to it that my name does.
I took his name for aesthetic reasons. I liked it. If I hadn’t, I would have kept mine. Even so, the feminist in me had trouble adjusting and we discussed my reverting or us combining our names or creating a new one. If we’d delayed the adoption by another year, we could have changed our names to a common one, but we didn’t want to wait, so we left things as-is (I preferred some sort of common name, so our child would share our name). FWIW, my husband really didn’t want me to change my name. He didn’t see the point and went out of his way to make sure I didn’t feel obligated to do so. His mother also was disappointed with me for changing my name–she’s also a feminist–she thought I was giving up my identity.
My husband took my last name. We wanted the (future) children to have the same last name as us, but I really, really didn’t want to change my name. He has very little connection with his father’s side of the family and very little connection to his (now late) father, so he doesn’t feel like he lost anything. I love him for being so with-it like that.
)
I changed my last name because I hated my maiden name. I know, shallow. Anyway, I got alot of shit about it from my mother in law, who always felt that she lost her identity when she got married. For me (and this is personally, I know everyone feels differently) I am Sarah. My last name is an address. It doesn’t mean all that much to me.
I also hate when people say “I thought you were a feminist?” because yes, I am a feminist, yes I hate how patriarchal our society is. And if I had my mothers name, maybe I would feel differently. But lets face it, my maiden name is still the name given to me by a man.
Having said that, I practically scream when I get sent letters to Mr and Mrs husband lastname.
I kept mine. I really really like my last name, and I always have.
Plus, my name and Sam’s last name rhyme and sound incredibly stupid together, and in eleven years, I haven’t been able to tell anybody what my name would be if I changed it without having them start to giggle uncontrollably, and I can’t even blame them.
I told Sam that if we have kids, we can either hyphenate their last names, or they can have mine.
Well, only took me about a million years to get round to it, but I’ve finally written a post over at my blog giving my reasons, if anyone’s still interested (it was something I’d been vaguely meaning to write something about, so I thought I’d do a full post about it rather than just squeeze it into a comment).