frozen north wrote:
I didn't change my name. I would if I felt like it, but as another poster said, I really like my name. Unlike other posters, I think CHANGING your name is really confusing. You lose track of people more easily when they change their names.
For kids, they can take their dad's name. No confusion, no problem.
I think it is fine for people to keep the name they were born with. I am male and changed my name when I was 21 because my dad had left when I was 9 and our family didn't have much to do with him anymore. I realized that the boys would pass on his name and the girls would not. My mother (who hated my dad) would have grandchildren with the dreaded name and some with random names. Seemed irrational. Once I changed my name to my mother's maiden name I do admit feeling some loss of sense of self, like women who get married do. I was used to that name, it sounded OK, and I had "been" that name for 21 years. I don't regret it overall though, and think it was the right thing.
In response to the above: still confusion, still problem. I go to the park one day. See a friend, she intros me to a Mary Pletcher who has a 7-yr old boy with her named Henry McCormick. She doesn't say that it IS her son and she has no wedding ring. I guess that she is the nanny, or that she is a BIG SISTER (wait they don't have those for boys), so that might be her son, and she didn't take her husband's name, or maybe she is Henry's aunt? this all comes and goes in 1 second and then it is gone.
A few weeks later said child is at park with a Dan McCormick and Mary Pletcher, who intros himself as Henry's dad. Someone asks where Mary and Dan live. they respond with different addresses. Slightly embarassed, person says "Oh, I didn't know you were not married any longer." Mary responds that they were "never married" and "why do people assume they were married at some time?"
The odd couple gets huffy, the asker is red-faced and I am laughing at how dumb it is.
You see, these two made a child and to the uninitiated, nobody can tell that this is her child. She didn't even get married to screw this up further.
I have run into many people in my life who don't have the same names as their kids and all it does is cause confusion. YES, it does allow their mother to keep that name that they so needed to keep ... but to say that it doesn't cause confusion is just being in denial.
Anytime the kids have people meet their parents, it IS confusing if the mother's name IS NOT the same as their's like the other 95% of America.
The only people I knew growing up who DID NOT have their Dad's name were kids who had a stepdad. Nothing wrong with that, but that is what you are setting your kids up for if won't take your husband's name.
If your husband has a terrible name (seen recently -- Assmann, Boldhead, Klunzinger, there are worse), then I think it makes GREAT SENSE to keep your name or even have the husband take YOUR NAME. If I had a terrible last name I would have pre-emptively changed it the day that it was legal to any more palatable version.
This is not an issue of chauvinism or outdated male domination, this is an issue of practicality and not making life hard (harder?) for your kids.
Women who take a hyphenated name are just dumb. Be strong enough to just (selfishly) keep your name if you hate the other name so much, or just knuckle under and take the "new one". Hyphenating AGAIN is just not practical. I have a friend who married and they BOTH took the hyphenated name. It is ...
John and Sarah Chartier-Mittendorf.
What was wrong with Chartier? What was wrong with Mittendorf? Either one would have been fine. When you make reservations or an appointment of any kind, when you sign your name on a CC slip, it just IS NOT PRACTICAL to have that long a name. People in America are too stupid to know how to spell either name without spelling it for them (Letsrun has proven that to me) and so it takes four minutes every time you need to spell it out.
Thankfully these misguided people did not have kids.