Did your mother keep or change her name when she got married?

[dead0man]

Changed, as did both my wives.  And my last name kind of sucks.

[traininthedistance]

Option 2, though I am under the impression that this forum has a disproportionate number of people having mothers who kept their name.

I've always been under the impression that this forum has a disproportionate number of people having mothers who moved the position of their original surname to become their middle name.

Those are the only two options in my family.  Like, if your name is Joan Alice Taylor and you marry Steven Walter Smith, you can still be Joan Alice Taylor or you can become Joan Alice Smith.  Those are pretty much your two options in my family.  Some choose to keep their original surname and some choose to change it.  My mother changed her name.  My wife kept her original surname.  My sister changed her surname in one of her marriages but kept it in another marriage.  None of them moved their original surname to the middle-name position.  That just isn't done in my family.

What always struck me about this forum is that there seems to be a large number who make their original surname their middle name after they're married.  Like, if your name is Joan Alice Taylor and you marry Steven Walter Smith, then you become Joan Taylor Smith.  As far as I know, no one in my family has ever done that.  They either stick with their original last name or they co-opt the husband's surname.  Nevertheless, it seems fairly common based not only on this forum but from what I've seen in general society.  I have always found the concept of co-opting the husband's last name and moving your original surname to the middle position very strange.  In fact, I'd never even heard of it till I was a teenager, and my mother explained to me that it was somewhat common in society.  Since I've been posting here, it seems to me that it is the norm on this forum, even though to my knowledge no one in my extended family has ever done that.  They either keep their last name original or they change it. 

Yeah, my mom did that.  I've never had a good sense as to how common or uncommon it was.

[Joe Republic]

Changed (normal).

Change (normal)

I'm disappointed to see Democrats consider this normal.

I consider it normal because it is normal, statistically speaking.  See the results of your own poll if you dispute this.

Since (heterosexual) marriage is an equal relationship between a man and a woman, there should be no more reason for a woman to change her name than for a man to change his. This practice absolutely perpetuates inequality. I know some will claim that it is for family unity, but most same-sex couples either don't change names or they combine/hyphenate them.

It's not like women don't have a choice in the matter.  And if most women agreed with you, perhaps the share of women keeping their maiden name after marriage wouldn't have declined from 23% in the 90's to just 8% now.

[TNF]

My mom changed her last name after she got married to my dad, and kept his last name even after they got divorced. She changed it again when she got remarried to my stepdad. I don't actually think I know any women that have married and not changed their last name, but not changing it would be very out of the ordinary in rural western Kentucky.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

However, on a personal front, I would not expect it and frankly, when asked by friends who asked my opinion before they got married, I said they should keep their name, but it's their name and their call.

[ilikeverin]

My mom hyphenated, and goes by either her hyphenated name or married name socially. (Floridians often get confused and call her by her maiden name, which is first in her hyphenated compound.)  My brother and I have our dad's last name only.  In the future, I would prefer to keep my own name but have kids with blended last names, although if my husband's last name is monosyllabic I'd also be open to hyphenation.

[muon2]

Option 2, though I am under the impression that this forum has a disproportionate number of people having mothers who kept their name.

I've always been under the impression that this forum has a disproportionate number of people having mothers who moved the position of their original surname to become their middle name.

Those are the only two options in my family.  Like, if your name is Joan Alice Taylor and you marry Steven Walter Smith, you can still be Joan Alice Taylor or you can become Joan Alice Smith.  Those are pretty much your two options in my family.  Some choose to keep their original surname and some choose to change it.  My mother changed her name.  My wife kept her original surname.  My sister changed her surname in one of her marriages but kept it in another marriage.  None of them moved their original surname to the middle-name position.  That just isn't done in my family.

What always struck me about this forum is that there seems to be a large number who make their original surname their middle name after they're married.  Like, if your name is Joan Alice Taylor and you marry Steven Walter Smith, then you become Joan Taylor Smith.  As far as I know, no one in my family has ever done that.  They either stick with their original last name or they co-opt the husband's surname.  Nevertheless, it seems fairly common based not only on this forum but from what I've seen in general society.  I have always found the concept of co-opting the husband's last name and moving your original surname to the middle position very strange.  In fact, I'd never even heard of it till I was a teenager, and my mother explained to me that it was somewhat common in society.  Since I've been posting here, it seems to me that it is the norm on this forum, even though to my knowledge no one in my extended family has ever done that.  They either keep their last name original or they change it. 

My situation is somewhat different. My wife's mother was given no middle name, so making her given last name into a middle name was more a matter of adding the new name to the end of a short list. My wife was given her mother's maiden name as her middle name and her father's last name. She kept that name.

My children were given a unique first name but their mother's middle name and my last name. If my daughter chooses to maintain that tradition then the same middle name would exist through four generations through female ancestors. In principle the pattern could be maintained through female descendents much as a patrilineal last name is through male descendents.

[politicus]

Changed/Other depending on definition. She uses it as a middle name.

[angus]

My situation is somewhat different. My wife's mother was given no middle name, so making her given last name into a middle name was more a matter of adding the new name to the end of a short list. My wife was given her mother's maiden name as her middle name and her father's last name. She kept that name.

My children were given a unique first name but their mother's middle name and my last name. If my daughter chooses to maintain that tradition then the same middle name would exist through four generations through female ancestors. In principle the pattern could be maintained through female descendents much as a patrilineal last name is through male descendents.

Interesting.  Was your wife's mother a foreigner?  My wife is a foreigner and she has no middle name.  We gave my son three names, which is the tradition in my family, and his last name is the same as mine, which is the tradition in my family, but neither his first or middle name is the same as mine.  That's also a tradition in my family.  (We don't do seconds and thirds, etc.)  My wife's family also has a tradition of not doing seconds or thirds or naming people after other family members.  It is her tradition not to change her name upon marriage, and neither she nor her sister nor her mother did this.  My own extended family really doesn't have a tradition in this regard, although I think most of the females did change their names upon marrying.  This is especially true if they married someone with an anglo-saxon name.  If they married a slav or a dutchman or someone whose name was even weirder and harder to spell than ours, then they generally kept the original.  One of my cousins married a Lakota man and changed her name to his:  Running Horse.  Very cool.  I'd probably change my name to Running Horse as well.

My sister changed her name when she married her first husband, since he had an easy, one-syllable, four-letter English name and it appealed to her.  She then kept that name even when she married a second husband.  Her son, however, has the same last name as I do, which was her original last name before she got married.  She also broke with tradition in another way, she gave him her middle name as a first name, and his middle name is my middle name, so she managed to name him after herself, myself, and our father in that way.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

No one in my family growing up has middle names......not me, brother, sis, parents, and both sets of grandparents.

My sister uses her maiden name as her middle name.  Mrs. Grumps has a middle name but she uses her maiden name as a middle name as well.

[Alcon]

It's not like women don't have a choice in the matter.  And if most women agreed with you, perhaps the share of women keeping their maiden name after marriage wouldn't have declined from 23% in the 90's to just 8% now.

I think there are apples-and-oranges statistical sources on that -- one was, like, a survey of records, while the other was a pre-survey of brides.  Another source I'm finding says that a third of women married in their twenties now keep their names.

[Simfan34]

Maybe it's just my environment, but I feel like more women are keeping their names than changing them, at least the ones I know.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I know multiple couples who decided to mash their two last names into one new Frankenname, which is an option I have a quite favorable opinion of, actually.

Really? That sounds absolutely dreadful to me.

These fine folks have a Frankenname, and it's a perfectly fine one.

Sure, not every combination will "work" aesthetically.  But I like it as an option anyway.

Well, it certainly wouldn't work for me. My father and my mother's names both have four syllables.

[I Will Not Be Wrong]

She kept her name.

[politicus]

Keep

No problem with this tradition, but it's more widespread than I'd expect considering it's basically pointless.

What tradition? keeping her own name or changing it to the husbands?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

To use angus's example, the practice in my family has been that when Joan Alice Taylor marries a Mr. Smith, she would become Joan Alice Taylor Smith with two middle names, tho when filling out forms that expect only one middle name either Joan Alice Smith or Joan Taylor Smith would be used.

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

She changed it, of course.

[Hatman 🍁]

Why is the trend these days to take the husband's name? I cringe every time someone on my Facebook's feed has all of a sudden changed their last name. And if I were to ever bitch and moan about it, they would probably say it was their choice blah blah blah. Very well then, but the tradition is directly descended from when women were the property of men. Who wants to be associated with that tradition? Well, most women these days, inadvertently.

When our daughter was born, we gave her a hyphenated name. My spouse and I are yet to get married (we may, but it's not a priority). If we do get married, we'll adopt the same hyphenated name as our daughter. What's that? Yes, I, a man will be changing my name upon marriage! TAKE THAT FACEBOOK FEED! Professionally though, I would still go by my maiden name.

As for my mother, she's not the feminist I turned out to be, so she changed her name. That didn't stop some of my friends using her maiden name as a nickname for me (pronouncing it in the original German of course).

[DC Al Fine]

Why is the trend these days to take the husband's name? I cringe every time someone on my Facebook's feed has all of a sudden changed their last name. And if I were to ever bitch and moan about it, they would probably say it was their choice blah blah blah. Very well then, but the tradition is directly descended from when women were the property of men. Who wants to be associated with that tradition? Well, most women these days, inadvertently.

Classic Atlas fallacy. People don't think about the historical context behind these things.

As for the trend towards changing names, I'll offer a couple hypotheses.

1) Marriage rates are declining. The people getting married in 2014 are somewhat more conservative in aggregate than the people getting married in 1985.

2) There's a negative stereotype of women who hyphenate their names, and people don't want to be associated with that.

[politicus]

Here in Denmark it is increasingly common for the husband to take the wifes name, because it simply matters more for women than for men. Is this unheard of in the US? And would it be considered unmasculine if a guy did it?

Often the couple also choses the best sounding name for their children regardless of where it comes from and sometimes chose it as the common name for the entire family. Like I have a couple of friends where his name was Kampenborg Christensen and hers was Saxlund Bischoff. They elimated Christensen for being too common, Kampenborg for being too clumsy and ugly and Bischoff for being too German and then landed on the whole family being called Saxlund, so their children are named after their maternal grandmother.

[Fritz]

My mother took my father's name, as just about all married women did in those days.  Mom has passed away and my father is re-married; my stepmother did not take his name.

I have seen gay couples getting married recently using the hyphenated last name.

[7,052,770]

Here in Denmark it is increasingly common for the husband to take the wifes name, because it simply matters more for women than for men. Is this unheard of in the US? And would it be considered unmasculine if a guy did it?

Depending on the state, it can be a legal headache for a man to do this. While newly married women can do it in a few hours by bringing their marriage license to the driver's license center and Social Security office, men usually have to go through the same process that someone who just wanted to change their name would go through.

I heard about one case from the Mississippi Coast where several driver's license stations all refused to give a man a new driver's license with his new wife's last name on it because it was "wrong" for a man to do that. He eventually was able to get a judge to order it.

[Supersonic]

Change.

[Dixie Reborn]

I imagine hyphenation, for both spouses, as a sort of custom would very quickly make us all sound like a bunch of bizarrely named English aristocrats. If Peter Flynn marries Beatrice Mendez and has a kid named Anthony, who in turn marries Alice Glazowski-Chanut, their kid would be named Colin Mendez-Flynn-Glazowski-Chanut, who would then marry Beth Harper-Zhang-Rothman-Wald, and their kid would be named...

The Danish and Norwegian royal families' last name is Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderberg-Glucksburg.

[Indy Texas]

Here in Denmark it is increasingly common for the husband to take the wifes name, because it simply matters more for women than for men. Is this unheard of in the US? And would it be considered unmasculine if a guy did it?

Depending on the state, it can be a legal headache for a man to do this. While newly married women can do it in a few hours by bringing their marriage license to the driver's license center and Social Security office, men usually have to go through the same process that someone who just wanted to change their name would go through.

I heard about one case from the Mississippi Coast where several driver's license stations all refused to give a man a new driver's license with his new wife's last name on it because it was "wrong" for a man to do that. He eventually was able to get a judge to order it.

I don't even want to know how Mississippi would handle a man wanting a driver's license with his new husband's name on it once SCOTUS wills that to happen.