Wedding Blog

Ugh. This is actually the part that I’ve been dreading the most. My cousins and I are the last generation to carry our last names… you see, we’re all girls! And the only 2 boy cousins have a different last name. When I talked to FI about maybe keeping my last name, he was “sad.” So now I’m torn too… hyphen or not to hyphen? Geesh.

I’m rather attached to my last name. I earned a PhD with that name and will therefore keep it professionally. I also have strong feelings about having the same last name when we have children, so therefore will have that name, too.

I’m in the same boat as ML where I’m getting my PhD and publishing papers under my maiden name. I’ll probably do some form of joint name of hyphenated one, since I’m interested in academia someday.

I thought I read somewhere that Jennifer Aniston keep her name professionally, but her driver’s licensce said Jennifer Pitt. So it can be done. Good luck with your decision.

Yes, I think changing your name is more than just a legal thing - it has emotional weight for a woman. It represents a new beginning and a new identity, and while that is exciting, it’s also a little sad to think about what you’re leaving behind. I think it’s really important to sort through your feelings about changing your name and make the right decision for you and your fiance. What does changing your name mean to you? If you change your name, make sure you give yourself time to grieve a bit, I know that sounds silly but it is helpful to allow you to move forwards without resentment.

In my case, I’m a little sad but I feel really strongly that when we’re married, I want to show the world that my husband and I are a family. Sharing a name is sort of like a show of solidarity to me. I also really want to share a name with our future children. So I’m definitely going to change my name. I would feel less “married” if I didn’t, but that’s just me.

i wanna keep my last name somewhere too! my last name is very original, only ppl in my family have it… ive even printed out all the forms to legally change my name so i’m going to find a way to keep it somewhere, somehow. haha

I decided to hyphenate and i’m very happy with my decision. I love my husband and I’m now part of his family, however my identity is also with my family. When I explained my reasoning to DH he understood completely and is very supportive. In social situations I certainly dont mind being called Mrs. C, but for legal documents and my everyday life I refer to myself as Dori B-C. It works out just fine. I see this move a lot more lately and I hope that more women will come to recognize the value of not only their shared identity with the husband but also their identity as an individual.

I moved my maiden name to my middle and took my husband’s last name. As annoying as my difficult last name was, I was still proud of it and what it meant to be born with that name, and didn’t want to lose it completely. Also, I found it slightly easier while making the transition to the new name to have identification with both my maiden and married name on it.

I really tried to convince my FI to blend our last names, but we have long Swedish/Welsh last names that don’t blend well.

So, if we can’t blend, I’m going to keep my last name. My last name is actually more unique than his and I really like it.

I’m pretty sure if we have kids, they will have his last name. But, you never know? I may demand that they have my last name. After all, I will be the one giving birth! :>

FYI: The current mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa blended his last name with his wife. Before he was married he was Antonio Villa and his wife’s last name was Raigosa.

No decision is wrong. But there’s one thing I do feel strongly about. It’s the woman’s to make. It’s her name. No matter what his personal prefernce is, my fiance supports my choice. That’s why I’m marrying him - not his name.

This was something I struggle with, too! I am known professionally under my maiden name, and am in the midst of getting my masters under that name. Not to mention the double standard of the whole name thing and the traditions behind a woman changing her name really bug me.

I am lucky to have a FI who recognizes that what I am called is my choice. He will be supportive of whatever I decide.

Lucy I agree with you that it should be the decision of the person changing their name (not necessarily only the woman’s decision though. If creating a new blended surname, or the man takes the woman’s surname, then it should be joint/man’s decision).

I’m just curious how you would react in the following situation. What if you wanted to take your husband’s surname, but hadn’t told him that yet and the first discussion of it, he insists that you take his surname? Since you were planning to anyway, would this be a problem? Or would you be offended by the insistence? Miss Snow Pea I’m also curious how you’re planning to resolve your choice with your fiance.

my boyfriend is interested in changing his last name because the only other person he shares it with is his abusive birth father. i’m hoping to convince him to take my name but most likely we will both take the name of his dad (the man his mom married when he was 5). he would be the only one to carry on that name as his cousins are all girls.

My fiance and I have actually argued multiple times about what I am going to do — I want to keep my maiden name, as I am in science (most women with Ph.D.’s in science tend to maintain their maiden names), and will have several publications out prior to our marriage. My fiance wants me to change my name altogether because he thinks it will look bad if I don’t have the same last name as my future children. We still have yet to come to a conclusion; I would be willing to hyphenate if necessary, but my fiance is against that as well — he seems to be of the mentality that if I love him enough to marry him, then I better be willing to change my name.

It’s funny because I’m going from a very unique last name to a very common one. But I don’t care. Ever since I was a little girl, I would think about how exciting getting a new last name would be but that I hoped it wasn’t dumb (Meet the Parents/Fockers anyone?)

My stepmom took her first husband’s last name when she married, and then when they had kids they gave the first child her maiden name as his middle name. I’ve never heard of anyone with her maiden as a first or middle name, but it was a nice way to keep it alive just a little while longer. She had a brother who had a son, so the name’s not completely gone.

My last name, however, ends with me and my sister! Of course, there are others out there with it, but as for my dad passing on his surname, this is it. I could see my sister keeping it somehow, but sorry Daddy, I’m giving it up. It’s the next stage of my life, time to leave my singleness behind and take the name of my family. I don’t want there to be any doubt that my husband and I are married, and not just co-parents of our children.

What I don’t get is how strong my fiance feels that I should change my last name. I am in the same boat. I never though I would really care, but now that the date is approaching I’ve decided I don’t want to change my name. My FH feels very strongly that I should change it and I was surprised by how strong!! We’ve yet to work this issue out!

I changed my own name to my mother’s last name prior to becoming engaged, and let me say these few things:

1. It’s weird to change your last name, but you can get used to it.

2. If you go for a hyphenated name, people will think your last name is “difficult” even if it is the combination of two easy names, like Smith-Jones

3. If your fiance wants you to change your name and you don’t want to, don’t do it! It’s sexist if you don’t have as much control over his name as he does over yours. What else does he want you to change? Your hair color? Your profession? It sounds controlling to me if he forces it, to be honest. Maybe his parents had the same last name so he’s used to it, but there are areas of the country where this is much less common — and of course there are many other ways in which you won’t have the same marriage as his parents. If he was happy proposing to Cindy Smith, why wouldn’t he be happy to be married to Cindy Smith?

4. Name-changing is the least common among the most successful professional women. They’ve done research, and if you change your name, you lose a lot of your name recognition. If you’re really young (22-ish) maybe this is okay, but if you’ve accumulated any sort of professional reputation, this is lost when you change your name.

5. You’ll be changing tons of documents and explaining the whole situation to tons of people. This will go on for YEARS because you’ll always find one more company who knows Cindy Smith or one more old friend who has no idea why she got an email from Cindy Jones.

6. If you get married and keep your birth name, you can always change it later if you feel so inclined. One of my co-workers was married for three years before she changed it.

Do what’s right for you! When I was dating my fiance, I mentioned that I had changed my name once and that was enough for me. He said, “Of course you should keep your name.” “Why?” I asked. “Because it’s… YOUR NAME.” I liked that. Now we’re getting married, and I’m keeping the name I chose for myself.

My journalism professor in college once said that married women could either be “the property of their father or the property of their future husband.” And really, that’s what it boils down to. The name you are thinking about keeping will probably be your father’s name (not always, I understand this) or you can choose your husband’s. I don’t really think either of these choices represents your real identity. So, pick whatever sounds nice or pick based on your mood.

Woah lots of comments. I’m keeping my maiden name too, for the same reasons at the girls above who have published and earned PhDs with their maiden names- it makes professional sense, and I’m proud of my achievements with this name. Also, I’m the last generation with this name, and it would feel weird to lose it after so many years. My FI is very lowkey about it and didn’t care either way, but I think our kids will have his last name- I can’t imagine a double-barrel of our last names together- it would be a mouthful for young children!!

FYI, some companies do not allow you to “professionally” use a name other than your legal name at work in the company database. If you do change your name legally, be warned that your workplace may force you to use your legal name not the name you hoped to keep professionally.

Perhaps it’s easier to set your legal name to be what you want to use professionally, and then use another name socially where there are no legal requirements that companies may be bound to.

But if you do go by multiple names, there are bound to be confusions. What if a social contact or family member writes a check to Cindy Smith, and your name at the bank is Cindy Jones? Sometimes they’ll cash it, in my experience. What if someone at work, like an administrative assistant, books a plane ticket for you? The FAA is *not* very understanding about these things, as I can tell you from personal experience. This is why all the wedding books say to book your honeymoon tickets under your MAIDEN name, if you change your name when you marry.

It’s so great to see people being thoughtful about these decisions — I wish men in general were as thoughtful about the name issues. Any choice is great as long as it’s the right choice for you and you’ve thought about all of the issues.

I’m so excited about taking my FI last name, which, by a strange coincidence, is my mother’s maiden name. No relation though, it’s a very common name.

I know many people with more than one middle name (mostly men actually!) so I know it can be done. As far as I know, here in Canada anyway, you can change your name to anything you want as long as you pay the fee.

I got married this weekend, and I am surprised how many people are surprised I am keeping my name. It’s getting kind of old. Men don’t care- but women who changed their names seem to think everyone should do what they did. I have a professional reputation I built up over 12 years with my name- that said, I am all about equality. I wasn’t against adding his name to mine if he added my name to his. But we sort of mutually agreed that we liked our names as they are- and there’s no reason our children can’t have both our names, either with one as a middle name or as a second middle name…. the girls can be C’s, the boys can be G’s, and as a family, we can be the C-G’s.

I have the same questions that Natalie has. I like my full name, and just want to add my new last name to the end of it. But I have interpretted from a website that my last name would be considered a 2nd middle name. So then I guess the legal forms would still have my original middle initial?
So I have 2 choices:
*I can keep my full name and add his last name, and sign myfirst, his last
*I can change my middle name to my maiden name (and then probably move my middle name, which is short, to part of my first name)
to keep all of the names!
What to do!
Sorry to be so confusing, but I’m confused!

Just a little food for thought about the name game:

I think it is interesting that many people on this board make the statement: “Well, our children will have HIS last name, therefore I might as well change my name to his when we get married.” Why are we not questioning and struggling with the child-naming practice as well? That is, why is it that a woman carries a child to term for 40 weeks, risks her health, goes through the intense pain of childbirth, but, after all that, the husband automatically gets the privilege of carrying on HIS family name. That practice has never seemed just to me Equality and Partnership are what make a marriage, and I feel that our society’s naming system severely undermines these goals. I have not yet found any acceptable explanation of how the traditional marriage and child-naming process is in any way fair to both husband and wife. I’d love to hear others’ take on it.

And… I’m, of course, keeping my name (because I love my name and because I think it is the right thing to do), and we will cross the child-naming bridge when we come to it.

Can you please provide more details.

Great read, thanks

Interesting..