Marriage: The Adult Name Change Game!

Maybe someone touched on this but isn't your legal name the one you use? I don't mean an alias. I mean you don't go to court but you just start for example, not using your last name. Maybe this was easier to do in the past?
Anyway, of course I kept my maiden name (the second time). His name doesn't go with mine. My first two names were chosen to go with my last name. When I divorced the clown I married at age 21, I had to ask the judge for permission to have my maiden name back. On that day I vowed to keep the name that my parents gave me. And I have. It's not perfect but it has meaning.

 

I still can't imagine changing my name for someone else so why would want to impose that on anyone?

It just feels like a property exchange... Like putting your name on everything in case it gets stolen or lost.

Creepy.

 

I'm so glad I changed mine. I was just thinking about that last night. My maiden name is now one of my middle names, but still gets mispronounced and misspelled even more than my first name. My first name is not that hard, but you'd be surprised. Having a simple, 5-letter last name is easier. Plus, now we have something we share. And, I'll be Dr. Noodle Married name, too, which is a source of pride for both of us. I use my maiden as middle for research and professional reasons, since all of my other degrees are in my maiden name.

 

I have no problem with women keeping their maiden name. If my wife had decided to pursue a career as a professional musician, she would have kept her maiden name to make her professional life easier.

I've known couples who disagreed, and compromised with the hyphenated last name. That makes sense to me, unless the 'enlongated' last name is too unwieldy or lends itself to jokes*.



*I will refrain, with considerable effort, from posting any examples. LOL.

 

Genealogy would be much easier if women would keep/had kept their maiden names.

But what name to give the children could be an issue.

 

My wife kept her name. When she wavered, during the run-up to the wedding, I insisted on it.

Maybe it's my liberal-college-town background, but I would find it intolerably humiliating to be married to someone who took my name. If she had refused to keep her name, I would have called off the wedding.

It has turned out to be a very good thing all around. When I'm mentioned in the news, her patients don't associate me with her.

I should say that my wife and I both have long, distinctive surnames, with a combined total of nineteen letters.

Our daughter has my last name. We didn't think very much about that. Of course, since she is otaku, she plans to change her name to something Japanese.

She chose her Japanese name for her school sweatshirt.

 

This is slightly off-topic. I'm Canadian of half English/quarter German/quarter Scotch background. I have a Scottish last name. My spouse is American of half Polish/less than half Sicilian and a touch of Bohemian background. He has an Italian last name. Our son is then an American of mostly English and Polish decent who carries an Italian surname (!) There has to be a better way!

 

My step-son took his wife's last name when they got married. To be honest it's been a little over a year and I'm still trying to digest it. It caused a little stir with his immediate family. I personally didn't have a dog in the fight and didn't really give a rats ass so I stayed out of it. But it was kinda strange to my old fashioned way of thinking. I don't have a problem with people keeping their own name and I would have been ok with my wife keeping her old name but she wanted to change it. No matter what the name winds up being it really don't change the vows or the fact you are legally married so the state has a right to royally screw you if a divorce does happen.

 

My best friend is a parole officer. When she married, she kept her maiden name professionally and her husband's name outside of work. She said it was safer this way because it was harder for unsavory characters to look up her address. I'm not sure what the paperwork looks like for that. Maybe one is just an alias.