I am finally ready to answer the question y’all keep thinking, but don’t know how to ask.
Or rather, Dan is finally ready to answer your unasked question, over on Twitter.
YES, Dan is on Twitter too!
Just follow him @danbert8 along with me @belle_brita, and you finally ask him the question I just KNOW y’all are dying to ask.
I can just see the tweets now…
Dan, why didn’t you change your name?
Dan, why didn’t you want to take your wife’s last name?
Dan, how does your wife feel about your decision to keep your last name?
Ha, I’m just kidding.
No one has thought to ask Dan about his decision to keep his last name when we got married.
Not a single person has asked him any of those questions above. But strangers are quick to ask him why I kept my last name!
Yes, strangers.
Not intimate friends or immediately family members. Strangers.
Strangers feel entitled to know why I made a choice that doesn’t affect them in the slightest.
I know what some of you are thinking…
Um, Brita? Didn’t you start the conversation with your satire? Don’t you always ask for comments and questions?
Surprisingly, not that many people responded to my satire by asking me why I kept my last name. If anyone did, that didn’t bother me, because it was relevant to the post.
But people have been asking me this question long before I had my 15 minutes of fame, and they still ask me, even without having read my satire. Like I said, even strangers feel comfortable asking Dan why I didn’t take his last name.
Remember back when I explained that sexism and misogyny are not the same thing? That you can have the best of intentions and still be sexist?
Asking me why I didn’t change my last name is sexist.
Period.
You are asking me a question that you would never ask my husband. That’s practically the textbook-definition of sexism.
But that’s not the only reason why asking me about my last name is sexist.
There is an awful lot of entitlement in asking an individual to explain a personal choice that does not affect you. This entitlement pops up a lot when a person with privilege demands an explanation from a person without privilege.
Frequently, the problem isn’t so much the question itself (but it’s still sexist), but how the question is asked. Rarely is it a standalone question. Usually it is followed by one of the following:
- Do you not love your husband?
- Are you planning a future divorce?
- Why did you even get married if you didn’t want to change your name?
These questions just drip with condescension.
Apparently my personal and individual choice to ignore a tradition steeped in patriarchy could possibly tear apart the social fabric holding America together. Or something. Can that be my superpower?
Surprisingly, I even face negative reactions from other feminists and within feminist spaces. I was pretty hurt a few years ago when I made a joke about my last name and marriage on my Facebook profile only to have people accuse me of judging women who changed their last names. At least I had the written record right there to ask those people where, exactly, did I ever say anything negative about women who change their last names.
The following is an exchange I had in an explicitly feminist space online. Like, in order to post there, you must apply during certain open periods throughout the year, during which the mods will consider your application and your commenting history to vet your feminism. You can post about whatever you want, including stuff totally unrelated to feminism, but it’s a feminist forum.
I vented about some of the hurtful words and actions people took last year when I got married and kept my last name. In this vent, I linked to some other places online where I had written out in excruciating detail why I wanted to keep my last name. I didn’t just include those links, but I wrote out very clearly that you could read all my thoughts on name changes by following those links.
And yet, a dude felt like he could make this comment.
Why do you care so much about keeping your original name? Are you just really proud of your family? Don’t want to conform to norms? Can’t stand your husbands name? There must be a reason other than “because it’s my name.”
I face-palmed so hard. And replied.
I don’t think you read my post very closely, or you would have noticed my link to a detailed essay in which I explain why I’m keeping my last name.
And it’s VERY male-privilegy to ask me that question, followed by a list of negative reasons for keeping your last name, a question you would NEVER ask a man.
At which point dude freaked the fuck OUT. Apparently I jumped down his throat, leaped to conclusions, and attacked him. Eventually some other feminists got him to calm down and to realize that pointing out male privilege isn’t an attack on his character.
I do feel like feminism has made some progress here. Like Kelly pointed out in her own post on the subject, the fact that people ask her if she’s changing her name or not is a win for feminism… Even if they’re not asking her fiancé the same question.
And while I received my share fair of stupid comments on my satire, and I sadly received stories of commiseration as well, its sheer popularity indicates this topic resonates with people.
For the record, I will eventually write a blog post outlining all my reasons for keeping my last name. I’ll give you a hint for one of them, though.
Google “galaxy Brita Long,” and yes, you need to use the quotation marks. Edit 6/3/2015: Apparently my own blog posts are now ranking for “galaxy Brita Long,” so here’s the website you’ll want to scan.
So, to my straight married male readers, while I know at least one of you changed your name, what about the rest of you? Why didn’t you take your wife’s name?
Haha, you got me with that first part. I was like, “Wait. Is this is and does she seriously want us to ask Dan questions?” And then I kept scrolling.
It’s always funny when people freak out at other people who merely point out their privilege. And when strangers feel like they have the right to question your decisions. I experience this a lot whenever people (like 80% of strangers I meet) ask the mostly racist, always invasive, questions about my adoption. And sometimes, if I push back a little, I’m the bad person because satisfying their curiosity trumps my right to privacy.
I mean, you can actually ask Dan questions, if you’d really like… He pops into the comment section occasionally to respond to stuff.
Like I said, the entitlement is ridiculous. No, it’s not okay to ask people personal questions about their lives, especially if you’re not really close to them. And if they point that out, it’s really not okay for you to freak out.
One of my best friends is also an adoptee, and I’ve heard her stories. I can’t fathom the audacity some people have. Good for you on pushing back, even if it just a little. Ugh, it’s so annoying having to be polite to rudeness, right?!
I think my first thought was that we had to guess what questions he never gets asked. . .in my defense, I was half asleep!
All of the clapping to this. My fiance & I are both changing our names to something we created, but not ONE person has asked him while I get asked allllll the time why I won’t just take his name. I need to start coming up with quippier answers to all the excellent questions pointed my way 😉
caitlynhummel.com
I love that solution! Dan and I both really liked our own names, but I think making a new name together is such a romantic way to start a marriage together.
Ask them if they want to take his name instead.
Ask them if they realize women have the right to vote and own property.
Ask them to ask your fiancé why he won’t take your name.
This is pre-marital counseling in 3 questions. Brilliant.
It’s interesting how getting married makes people think they have the right to ask you all kinds of questions… like when are you having kids? or doesn’t it feel great that now you’ve caught a man you don’t have to diet anymore? They would never ask him that, but I get it all the time and it’s so frustrating.
OMG, I had someone suggest I quit my job when we got married because Dan could support both of us. Not that I was all that happy when he lost his job six months into our marriage, but I was VERY glad I was working!
The kids thing is pretty annoying, but at least people ask Dan that too. And he basically threatened his extended family NOT to ask me, because he knew how much it pissed me off to get that question.
I wish threats worked! I resorted to a debate comeback. It gets some interesting responses and usually shuts people up. But I can’t say it to everyone.
People have time to worry about other people’s decisions so they don’t have to take care of their own “stuff’. It’s crazy how people feel entitled to point out what they feel is an encroachment on what they believe, even when it doesn’t affect them. Good for you standing up for your beliefs and decisions.
I don’t go around questioning other people’s marital choices, so it just boggles my mind how many people think they can question mine.
Thanks for commenting!
Exactly! I may wonder about things for a few moments until I realize I have far too much to do, and too many skeletons in my closet to share tit for tat. If I was someone who loved you I am sure that I would already know the answer! Good for you!
Usually when I’m asked that, I say that neither my husband nor I chose to change our names. My assumption of the obviousness of this mutual decision-making seems to shut people up.
Ha, you sound like me. When people get confused that our names aren’t the same, I quip, “Dan didn’t want to take mine!”
I am wondering here is it okay to be curious as to why you didn’t change your last name? Or is the curiosity indicative of sexism? I am curious! I would be curious to know why someone chose to take a different name, or combine names, or take their husband’s last name. I think that when I hear of someone doing something differently then the way I chose to do it just makes me wonder why! Not in a judgmental way, but in a hmm, that is interesting and different then I did it and I wonder why? I suppose I wouldn’t ask a complete stranger this question (and I would never tell someone they are setting themselves up for a divorce, that is just wrong– I had people tell me I was setting myself up for divorce because we married so fast, and it really hurt my feelings!) but I would probably ask people I knew at least a little bit. My favorite thing to ask right now when I see people with babies is to say please tell me your birth story ( I always preface it with if you want to) because I want to hear all the different birth experiences since I’m going to be squeezing a baby out sometime… Oh, I wax eloquent on this comment! Long comment! Thoughts! 🙂 Very interesting post. You are right, through. I wouldn’t think to ask that of a man, why they didn’t take her last name or yada yada. It wouldn’t have occurred to me. I should start doing that and see what people say!
Hi Carolynn! Having curiosity about something is never wrong. How you go about satiating that curiosity can be, depending upon the circumstances.
So, for example, we’re friends, but you don’t really know Dan. If you were like, “Hey, Brita, I hope you don’t mind me asking this, and it’s okay if you don’t respond. But why do you and Dan not share a last name?”
You would ask me because we’re friends, which removes the problem of not asking my husband the same question.
By prefacing the question with an acknowledgment that it’s not totally appropriate to ask, and giving me the freedom to say no, you’re admitting that it’s a personal question.
Finally, by using a gender-neutral question, instead of asking me why I didn’t take Dan’s last name, you’re indicating respect of all the different choices regarding last names. You’re asking about OUR choice, and not just my choice, if that makes sense.
Anyway, like I pointed out to another friend of mine, actions can be sexist without having sexist intentions behind them. Like you said, you wouldn’t think to ask that of a man. That doesn’t mean you have misogynistic thoughts or intentions, but that we live in a patriarchal society that perpetuates unequal treatment of women, and that reality is reflected in our thoughts and behaviors.
I did not change my name when I got married over 25 years ago. It has been a good decision for many reasons. I still get asked the question. These days I simply respond with, “my husband wouldn’t change his.”
Excellent response!
Well why not? What’s wrong with him? Doesn’t he take your marriage seriously?
The fact that these questions are only asked tongue-in-cheek about men, but seriously about women, shows that we have a way to go. Seems like your response is the best (other than having found a fiancé who would change his name in the first place).
If you blog or comment on a site that is publicly accessible, then yes others will have an opinion on what you write and will ask further questions or comment in ways you don’t like. It doesn’t matter what the topic is. If you want privacy and want to avoid hearing/reading comments/questions/reactions that are unpleasant to you, then you make your blog private or have these conversations in person with a small group of people, where the audience is fully known to you.
In addition, unlike race or gender or weight, for example, which people can speculate on without necessarily engaging with each other, your last name is not something that is physically apparent. I very much doubt strangers just walk up to you and demand explanations on your choice of last name out of absolutely nowhere. Maybe you just engage with strangers who turn out to be jerks.
In a world where forced marriages and honor killings are still very sad realities, the last name people choose to take upon marriage isn’t a pressing humanitarian concern. Ultimately, it’s of no real consequence. It doesn’t exactly lead to death and violence. But good for you for… making a decision, I suppose.
It’s almost like you completely skipped over the part where I wrote, “Surprisingly, not that many people responded to my satire by asking me why I kept my last name. If anyone did, that didn’t bother me, because it was relevant to the post.”
When my husband fills out paperwork pertaining to both of us, inevitably the personnel will ask him why I didn’t take his last name. They don’t ask him why he didn’t take my last name, nor do they keep their nosiness to themselves.
Ah, yes, I forgot we are only allowed to care about one thing at a time! There’s no point in addressing problems that I, myself, as one single individual, can actually change as long as other problems persist that would require a lot more time, money, and influence than I alone can provide to change.
Good for you! I thought about keeping my last name, even tried making it a ‘middle’ name for a while, then hyphened it. It always got butchered, or questioned. I finally gave up. My husband’s last name means love in Italian, so it was a pleasant switch 🙂
If my husband’s last name had been Norwegian, I might have taken his name then. I’m 3/8 Norwegian, and “Brita” is a Norwegian name. I would LOVE to have a Norwegian last name. But Fleck? I’ll stick with my solid Scots-Irish Long, thanks.
People ask you because you are deviating from the norm. Historically, women have taken the last names of their husbands. You did not, so people are curious about that. Husbands have never, to my knowledge, taken the last names of their wives as a general rule, so it would be odd to ask your husband why he is not taking your name, since there is no precedent to speak of for doing so.
I think my real issue comes when there is judgment attached, since I strongly believe in personal choice. I actually have the opposite issue from you, which is amusing to me. People are genuinely surprised that I am taking my partner’s last name because we are the same sex!
All in all, I think we should have a sensitive curiousity about other people, wanting to know about them because we want to see them and get to know them and learn from them – not because we want to judge them. It’s really nobody’s business anyway!
I understand that people ask me this because it’s a deviation from the American norm, as naming traditions vary vastly across different cultures. That doesn’t make the question any less sexist.
I read an article awhile back about how same-sex couples are really leading the way in the States for creative solutions to marriage because they don’t have “traditional” gender roles to fall upon.
People are more than likely asking you and not your husband about a name change because it is a stereotype that is associated with marriage. The stereotype saying that it is the woman and not the man, in western cultures, that changes their last name. Knowing this and knowing that one someone asks a question- they use stereotypes as a reference point, I, personally, wouldn’t consider this line of question sexist. I wouldn’t consider this sexist anymore than I would consider asking me, a woman, if I plan to have a baby and not ask the same question to my (non existent) husband. This is because it is being recognized that having a baby is the woman’s choice and not the mans.
You realize that using gender stereotypes as a reference point is basically the textbook definition of sexism, right?
Like I’ve stated here, and in many other places, you don’t have to have ill intentions to be sexist. An action, like asking me why I didn’t change my last name, can be sexist, even without a person intending it to be sexist.
Personally, I disliked my maiden name, so I really liked taking his last name. But many of my colleagues choose to keep their maiden names, and frankly, its none of my business one way or another. I don’t know why people get so bent out of shape over the decision. It doesn’t affect them really.
Great point…nobody would ever ask the man that! I’m always amazed at what strangers say sometimes. I was at a wine tasting a few years back and struck up a conversation with a woman next to me who was probably in her late 50’s or so. Somehow we started talking about cooking and I mentioned that I don’t really cook (I didn’t have kids then). She actually looked at me and told me my husband was going to divorce me!!! She was completely serious. Yes, my husband was going to divorce me because I didn’t cook!
He actually couldn’t have cared less and I couldn’t believe a complete stranger would say something like that! Now I think it was pretty funny but I didn’t at the time. Luckily I had a glass of wine in my hand and I’m a pretty happy drinker 🙂
Hi Brita,
Good to be over at your blog 🙂
Interesting topic of discussion indeed! Yes, you are right – nobody ever asks the man such questions – it is only the woman who is questioned! More so, she’s the one who is expected to change her last name once she gets married. And if she remarries, does she keep changing her last name x number of times? Where is her own identity? So, it’s women who are making all the changes, not the men actually. Wish things would change in this regard.
It’s even the people who raise such questions, which puts you off and makes you wonder as to why you are even being asked about it all, after all it’s your personal choice! If you don’t ask about anyone else’s, why should they! Speaking of which, I changed my name a few times too, but finally stuck with what it is – I guess that speaks of your own identity if nothing else – and people can like you or not, it’s their choice!
Thanks for sharing. Have a nice week ahead 🙂
Ah, this is something about which I feel strongly for myself.
I did take my partner’s last name. At the time, it didn’t even occur to me not to — I was still a fundamentalist Christian. I had my father “give” me away like property. I believed that the authority over my transferred from my dad to my partner that day.
Now, 5.5 years later as a feminist atheist secular humanist, I’m still glad I changed my name. Not because of the symbolism for which I originally did it, but because I feel like I became my own person, who I actually am, as Dani Kelley. In my mind, Dani Ward is the girl who was desperate to make herself invisible for Jesus, but Dani Kelley is the woman who takes up space proudly and uses her words and makes a difference in her life now.
I’m not saying at all that I think everyone should change their name. If face with the decision anew now, I probably wouldn’t. I just shall never cease to be amazed at how strangers and acquaintances (and sometimes family and friends!) think it’s their business at all or that their opinions ought to somehow affect what you do with your life and your name.
This is an excellent discussion. When I got engaged, a number of my girlfriends asked if I was going to change my name and I appreciated that they didn’t assume either way. I love having the choice to do it or not. When I was completing our marriage license, I asked my husband – jokingly – if he wanted to change his name or middle name or the spelling while we are at it. He declined, laughing, but I wasn’t going to assume!
P.S. I found your blog through #fireworkpeople and I will be back!
I love the way people FLIP when you point out that you wouldn’t ask a guy that. ALSO that galaxy thing is legit. I want one! also also, I feel like the last name question is really only something you would ask your friend? even then, it’s kind of weird. like asking to touch a pregnant lady’s belly. like why is that a thing people do? I just have a lot of questions…
It’s a great question! I agree that you shouldn’t have to explain your choice, just like your husband doesn’t. How frustrating! Thanks for linking up at the Manic Mondays blog hop!
I am also a Libertarian woman who kept her name. It seems like we libertarian ladies have a way to see through the bs!
I always love people’s reactions when they find out that I kept my last name (that always sounds weird to say). They tend to look like they need to clutch some pearls. My response is now always an innocent “Why?” and they bluster and do not have an answer other than “well that is what women should do!”. They typically tend to not like my response of “well we can now vote and work outside of the home too, so there are lots of choices available that weren’t always available”. My husband’s response “She is the only one with her last name in Canada – why on earth would she give that up?” which also tends to cause some pearl-clutching. I used to get lectured…now I just walk away! My MIL actually had some great insight – those that bluster are the ones that didn’t want to change their names but were told to/had to/et cetera and now are super judgmental because your decision touched a nerve that they were not brave (her words) enough to stand up for their wishes and make them heard!
Give them a confused stare and ask, “People still DO that??!!”
“You know women can vote and own property now too, right?”
I have a lot of snarky things I want to say, but I usually stick with, “Dan didn’t want to take my last name!” It’s friendly enough, but also quickly gets my point across to the vast majority of people that they’re being sexist.
It is sexist to only expect women to take mens surnames. What I do see as difficult is do you give your kids the male or female surname? Do you go hyphenated which does seem like a good idea but what about grandchildren? You are forcing them to have to pick what surname to remove unless you just keep adding hyphens.
I don’t think it’s a big deal to expect children, when they become adults, to make their own decisions about their last names. My husband and I have decided yet if we’ll hyphenate their last names or give them a portmanteau, but either way, if our future kids grow up and want to change their names, that’s fine with us. It’s their choice.
Interesting, aside from one comment from a well-meaning relative, I received little comment on my decision to keep my name…and my circle of friends is pretty conservative. I have a hard time imagining anyone making any of the comments of which you speak. We had some pretty funny wedding cards from friends (mostly mine) who figured out creative and interesting ways to combine our names.
It’s pretty easy to deflect comments without getting so offended you need to rant/blog about it. This post sounds like you are looking for a fight and making a big to do over something that is a)nobody’s business and b)no big deal, so let it go already.
Or different people have different experiences, and maybe you shouldn’t assume everyone’s life is just like yours? I suggest you read through the comments on my other piece, “My Husband Didn’t Take My Last Name,” (linked in the post above and in my sidebar) to see how many women have commiserated with me.
I do see that women have commiserated with you. Congratulations on that. To me, this just seemed like feminist angst gone awry. So people disagree with you. Big deal.
My point is that if you are confident in your choice, great. Don’t expect the world to accept it though. There will always be people who judge and turn away because they don’t understand. If they do that, it is there problem. It’s not your responsibility to set the world right.
The truth is, I did have some comments when I made my choice, but I didn’t waiver or debate. Nor did I find it necessary to pick a fight about it. Nor did I judge the people who made comments. I knew then that they were responding with surprise because I came from a pretty traditional conservative family and my choice seemed outside of those norms.
The people who were unsupportive of my decision (that mattered to me) eventually either came around or dropped the issue altogether. I didn’t have to go public with insulting comments because I knew they were also being presented with an option that was strange and new to them and therefore, would take some getting used to.
The only reason this becomes a big deal is if we, who make the decision to go against the social norm, create a fight where there needn’t be one.
It’s interesting to look at trends. People today marry much later in life than their grandparents. I wonder how that cultural shift affected attitudes toward names.
There are a lot of traditions that people don’t question, including why more weddings happen in June and why women are “expected to take their husband’s name — or why they are “given away” by their father, etc. While the answer to the first isn’t romantic but rather practical (that’s when people bathed!), the name change and the “given away” aspects of marriage are rooted in how wives were men’s property. We no longer their property and we no loneger marry that way anymore — thankfully — so what’s bad about questioning our marital “traditions”? Now that we no longer have to get married, it’s absolutely essential that we marry consciously — why are we doing this and why are we doing it this way? That doesn’t mean we have to get upset by the busybodies who question our choices, but the fact that people ask those questions indeed points to the fact that we have a long way to go to break free from “we’ve always done it this way.”
Pointing out privilege in any form seems to always be taken as the just the worst insult. It’s kind of crazy. I took my husbands name mostly because I had taken my ex-husbands name and not changed it back after the divorce (too much work) neither of us are particularly attached to our names. In fact, most of our friends call us something else entirely and those are names that we each chose for their meaning to us personally and mean a whole lot more than the names we were randomly born into. I’m a huge fan of couples that choose a name together and both change when they get married. It’s a great sign of starting your family together and picking a name that reflects your goals for that family. I’m sad we didn’t take the wedding as an opportunity to officially change both our names, but honestly my husband really struggled with the blowback he would get from family for doing it. That’s exactly a sign of how steeped our culture is in this idea that the woman takes the man’s name.
So, why didn’t he? I clicked the Twitter link, but I don’t see an answer.
(Of course, I did change mine. Specifically, we hyphenated.)
I am an engineer, so the reason I didn’t change my name is a practical one (or a lazy one if you subscribe to my engineers are just smart lazy people theory). I have an existing name that is more than sufficient for identification purposes and has the benefit of 25+ years of me and others remembering it. It seems pointless to change it over getting married. Neither of us changed as an individual when we got married, so why would we change our identification? We are now linked, but a family doesn’t have to have the same last name to be a family. If they did, people who changed their names would have to leave their previous family, and that would be a horrible thing to perpetrate.
Additionally, I am bad enough with names as it is. It is frustrating to me when people change their names when they get married and I have to unlearn a name that took me a lot of effort to remember and then remember a new name. I can see some merits of hyphenating, but that just makes for a longer name which isn’t as efficient and then I have to remember an extra name.
All that being said, it is always entertaining when people assume we have the same last name and only know Brita’s and refer to me as Daniel Long or Mr. Long. I usually don’t bother correcting them because in general, I don’t expect them to remember my name anyhow and could care less what they call me.
P.S. Sorry it took me so long to reply.
Thank you for your reply.
Keeping track of the name of a person you know well is pretty trivial, even if a quarter of it changes once in a lifetime. (I’m assuming first name, middle name, and hyphenated last name, with one half of the last name matrilineal and the other half patrilineal.) Keeping track of who’s related to whom, among a much larger number of acquaintances, isn’t. An immediate family doesn’t have to have the same name to be an immediate family, but if it does that makes a lot easier to keep track of who’s family with whom.
A name is part of your interface with the rest of the world, which is precisely what changes in marriage. You have essentially the same commitment to each other, personally, when you’ve courted, proposed/accepted, gone through the process of planning a wedding, and shown up for that wedding, as you do when you’ve also said the vows and signed the paperwork. But you have a very different level of connection in the eyes of your friends, extended family, and government. You’re part of the same immediate family as a social unit. That doesn’t involve breaking any personal connection with anyone in your extended family, but it does mean that your parents (if still alive) and siblings (if any) are decisively in the extended-family category. If they weren’t already, they’re part of a different social unit: you’re not expected to live with them, only to visit them on holidays. Nothing horrible about it. Part of the ritual in a standard wedding ceremony is about separating from parents to join with spouses: you walk down the aisle with a parent on your way in, and with your spouse on the way out.
Keeping your last name at marriage is a bit like shipping a product with out-of-date documentation: Sure, it’s easier at the time than keeping the documentation up to date, and most people won’t care. But it’s not accurate. It would be better to just not say it at all, than to say something that isn’t true.
Then of course there’s the feminist motivation. Women are expected to change their name, and the public identity that it represents, while men aren’t. Children are identified as their father’s offspring every time someone distinguishes them from someone else with the same first name, but not as their mother’s. That’s reason enough, as far as I’m concerned.
Your argument stems from the archaic system whereby you move from your parents family directly to being married into a new family. I moved out from living with my parents when I was 18, and was completely financially independent by 22. Why would I not change my name then? The name is loosely tied to family heritage, but I share a last name with many people whom I’ve never met. I’d rather use my name for identification of me as an individual rather than people making assumptions about my familial status based on parts of it.
The problem is that society does make these inferences. People who question my marriage because we don’t share a last name or assumes that my last name is Long or Brita’s is Fleck because we are married is just as wrong as the people who ask me if I am related to some random other guy at my company who has the last name of Fleck. If we drop this assumption that last names are indicative of familial relationships, we can then come up with a better system of identifying lineage that isn’t only taking from the male side of the family tree. In the meantime, my last name is an integral part of my individual identification and as such, it makes no sense to change it because my parents were walking during my wedding instead of sitting.
Hey Dan, I know this is an old discussion, but I’ve just discovered it, and it is interesting to me because I have a mom who took dad’s name and another mom (or at least, his 2nd wife, a step-mom and relationally more like a cool aunt or something) who didn’t take dad’s name when he remarried. Looking at both situations, I wouldn’t press anybody on why–I would assume the choice was well-considered and value-driven–but in my opinion, finding some way to have a common name in a marital relationship is advantageous.
Even after divorce, my mom kept her married name because it matched her kids, and as her kid, I value that. I’m an engineer too, and … it’s interesting, because (I think like you) I see it as a “data normalization” issue… having a shared family name (however that is calculated) is of value in human-data interfaces. It is sort of … reverse-polish notation of families. You know just looking at the variable, what class they belong to.
Not trying to change your mind, just offering my perspective on why maybe it’s worth tolerating peoples’ ideas that it’s okay / not sexist to normalize names when establishing a family unit, whether that follows tradition or not (in my family, my wife did, and that has been very beneficial over the years we’ve been together, having kids, signing papers together, paying bills together, dealing with each others’ medical issues, school things, etc.) And if this is seen as “male privilege” to bring up … I genuinely think I would see the same thing and care about the same amount (that is to say, >0 enough to mention casually to people I respect as thoughtful/listening, but not hugely enough to think less of someone who disagrees)
Brita’s opinion is welcome and valued here, too. Asking Dan primarily because I don’t want it to be taken as “dude pelting a woman with interrogative assault of her opinion”, especially since I respect your views even while not entirely agreeing with it. <3 to you both.
I don’t disagree that there are benefits to having a unique family name, but in the current social norm, the woman has to leave her extended family name and the man gets to keep his. I think my wife deserves to keep her family name that she grew up with and shares with her dad and brothers just as I get to keep my name that I grew up with and share with my parents and brothers.
As far as kids, that remains to be seen. If they are hyphenated, then they are clearly linked to both parents. I personally think we should go with the portmanteau, but somehow I don’t think that will catch on.
Legally, my last name never changed but I did assume his when we got married. I hated mine and we had a kid so it just made sense. Now that I’m legally changing my first name, I’ll be putting his last name on my birth certificate. If I had liked my last name and he didn’t I wouldn’t have put it past him to use mine!
I’ve thought about keeping my last name when I get married, because my Dad had no sons and I would like for his name to carry on. But I”m not sure I want children, so it’s not set in stone.
When I got married 30 years ago, I didn’t change my name. My husband didn’t change his name. There were people who were bothered, not because he didn’t change, but because I didn’t. I have no idea why they cared, or why they felt the need to share their completely unimportant opinions with us. These days, it’s rare for anyone to comment, but if they do, I just say that we both kept our own names.
Sometimes people who know him call me Mrs. Hisname, and sometimes people who know me call him Mrs. Hername. That’s okay. We can correct them if necessary (but it usually doesn’t matter). In fact, when making reservations, he usually uses my last name because it’s easier to spell. Ha!