Surnames and marriage

I'm not aware of any legal issues at all with retention of maiden name.

As far as I know there are no legal complications about the woman keeping her own name, but there would be a decision to be made about naming any children.

I don't really want to lose my name when (if) I get married, especially not professionally (just in case I've managed to get a good reputation), but I don't know if you can keep it professionally but change names in private life.

Every female friend I've had get married has changed her name. And if you kept your own name but the children got his name that would be really confusing for schols etc.

I think I shall change my last name when I get married, but save my maiden name for writing stuff. Yup.

Last wedding I attended, I have attended many at this particular church (I'm a member there) and they take the couple off into a back room to sign the papers. When they return they are introduced by whatever names they wish to be known as post-Big Event. The silence that awaited the introduction was a bit like waiting for Beckham to take a last-second penalty at Wembley, and when the bride was introduced by hubby's name I swear I heard tongues click and I almost half expected to see money change hands.

My mum has kept her first married name after marrying for a second time, for professional reasons. But I have a feeling she and my stepfather invented a whole new shared name for joint accounts etc...

The future Mrs Kitten will be a lucky lady indeed :)

However perhaps I could just retain my name as a middle name and be known rather elegantly as Rachel P. H0lland?

i beg to differ. she is far more likely to look back at the ruin her life has become and curse the day she ever met me. if she hasn't already. but i guess it's worth it for the name, yo.

Archel, if you only named boyspawn after one and girlspawn after the other... Well, what if you only had boys or only had girls? The other half would feel a bit distanced from the kids perhaps?

I'm not much into hyphenated names. I have 2 younger sisters, so if we each took our husband's names, we would stop the chain of Johnsons on that part of the family tree. Then again, who cares about that last name? Too many people have it...

Last names are something I've thought about quite a bit. I don't like it that the woman loses her former identity. If I were to run into some girl friends from grade school, I probably would not know who they were because they'd have different last names.

Then, there's the subject of (cough cough) divorce. My mom ended up keeping my dad's last name because she wanted to have the same name as her daughters. Then, when we marry, we might get new last names and she'll be stuck with her ex-es last name.

Just a lot of my thoughts here that don't really go anywhere... Thanks for readin'.

I haven't really worked out what people should do with children's surnames... double-barrelling is stupid, and if done by everyone would eventually lead to infinitely barrelled names, which would be stupid.

Nick reads this and goes off and cries at the fickleness of Ms. McLusky.

Dammit though I am gonna pick on ONE of our kids to be lumbered with Pl4yforth!

In these self-righteous days a proportion of your circle are going to see you as hopelessly ideologically unsound whichever way you jump, so you may as well make your decision (if a cast-in-stone 'decision' needs to be made) on some other basis.

I was having the same dillema Archel, I kinda like having my unusual surname and D's is a bit common to say the least - but the mere mention of me keeping my own name caused him to get all hurt and offended - think I wounded his pride, so maybe I'll be just boring and common.

Exactly. Figure out what you prefer and work from that.

One time, when I was talking to my mom's friend's s.o. (this old man), he said to me, "Sarah, When a man tells you that he doesn't want to be with you any more, you need to tell him (puts his palms together as if in prayer and bows), Thank you, sir, for allowing me to spend time with you. I am honored. I understand that you are done with me now and you are free to go and do as you wish because all I wish is your happiness."
Yeah, that guy was a mysogynist nut-case.

(Yancy, am I spelling mysogynist correctly? ha ha)

I think I'm just going to have to stick to double barrled last name for now.

I think it would be good if when people got married they created a new last name for themselves.

you wanna get together and go bowling?

I think children should be raised without surnames until they're old enough to choose their own. But then, I guess we'd get a lot of 10-year-olds naming themselves, like Sarah O'CutsieMcKittenWiffle or Gregory CootieDestroyer and such, so maybe not.

My other half has a neat, pleasant-sounding surname but added to mine it'd become ungainly and ridiculous. (And no, Sarah, this isn't a proposal either ;))

If I were to marry I think I'd keep my own in some circumstances and use my partner's in others. Just for fun.

On reflection I think I'll remain me and Matt remains Matt and the kids can be... well, cross that bridge when I come to it.

But, as is obvious above, I haven't decided what I think about this surname stuff.

(except that I really like Nick's new last name)

As for this hyphenating wackyness, I wouldn't mind doing it, as my own last name is so common. Of course, my own would indeed come first. If this hypothetical husband would be brave enough to marry me in the first place, he could take sharing the weight.

It was actually this sexy slightly-older-than-me girl that I worked with in this restaurant that I was totally crushing on that came up with the name; she had been calling me Nicholas for some time, and one day she turned to me with a glass of pinot noir in her hand and beckoned me "Oh nick[i]alicious[/i]!" It stuck.

On-topic: I have told every S.O. this applied to that if we get married, I have no preference what she wants to do with her name so long as she doesn't want me to change mine. My last name is bizarre and can be burdensome. I would not enforce it on anyone.

Don't know what I'd want to do with kids' names, though. Sort of torn. Maybe I'd suggest making up a whole new surname for them to use.

You might have to pay a name change fee if you wait too long to change it. Depending on where you live I suppose.

but I don't know if you can keep it professionally but change names in private life.

One of our coworkers is doing that here. Haven't seen her in a while now that I think of it. Her married version of her email has set up as an alias of her old one (or vice versa) and her paychecks and other such sundries go to her legal name, her cubicle name plate and us still all know her by her maiden name.

Nichole, you should marry Graham and persuade him to change to your surname.

When I married, my wife was so keen to lose her surname, which I'm reluctant to post here, that she even thought Skidmore an improvement. When we split, she didn't want to keep the name or go back to her earlier one, so adopted her mother's maiden name.

I don't understand why women would adopt their husband's name nowadays, unless their own name is horrible.

Luckily, I like my name a lot (esp. the part about being named after someone who gets leprosy in the bible! who else has that honor?!

Kids - we haven't got there yet but I'm pretty sure I want them all to be plain H0ll4nds. Families should all have the same name, at least for a while.

When we divorced I went back to my birth name and am now quite fine with it. When I marry again I don't know what I'll do. I'd lean towards not changing just b/c it's a hassle with ids and bills and such. But I might be swayed by a husband's strong feelings and/or children.

I've got friends who made up a new surname when they got married; no trouble or confusion resulted.

It has taken me awhile to change everything over though. Too many things require certified copies of the marriage license and letters mailed and I just haven't been too fussed to deal with it. The main drawback - I can't use my frequent flyer miles to upgrade or purchase a ticket for him if I'm not traveling on the same itinerary, without going through many many hoops since I have yet to change the name over on those accounts.

(I said yes obv.)

We've thought about making something up, but the conversation gets silly very quickly. Double barrelling would not work. It would be nice to have the same surname but, you know, no big deal.

I think if any offspring ensue they should have my name (after all, the cats have my name on their vet cards), but we haven't discussed it.

The hardest thing for me was whether to be Ms or Mrs. But what I'm finding is that people call me Miss or Ms or Mrs, and by his name or mine, as they see fit; nothing I say seems to make any difference.

[shrug]

I still think it'd be weird if someone took my name.

http://www.edmcgowin.com/nametrue.html

(I am so sorry.)