Weddingbee Blog

I am changing my name, but FI is too! I told him that I wouldn’t change if he wasn’t willing. I never told him he had to (I was perfectly fine keeping mine and him keeping his). BUT, he totally stepped up and we’ll be mr and mrs hislast-mylast

This is such an interesting issue with many sides. In my field, many women keep their maiden names professionally, and I am considering doing that. I have not made my mind up yet, though. My FI does not care much, but really wants our children (when we have them) to have his last name. It’s easy to spell (but so is mine)…though, his is never EVER mispronounced as it’s one of the most common names in the U.S. and possibly beyond.

Thanks for sharing your struggles with a difficult last name! It helps me think giving our kids such a simple last name will be much easier for them than trying to hyphenate!

I chose not to change my last name. I always thought that I would want to. Similarly to you, I grew up disliking my last name. It’s Croatian, and everyone spells and pronounces it incorrectly. Plus I didn’t like the length, it’s only four letters. I always said that I couldn’t wait to get married and no longer have a four letter last name that everyone gets wrong. And then I met my husband- who has a four letter name that everyone gets wrong. His last name is German, and again, just like you, everyone pronounces it wrong, and he doesn’t pronounce it the proper German way either, so he also has to correct them. Now, my decision to not change my last name would not have been different had his last name been Miller. There were several reasons for me to make this decision. First of all, I have been me my entire life. What’s in a name, you ask? For me, my identity. I’ve always had my name, why should I be asked to change who I am? We don’t ask this of men (generally, there’s always some exceptions to the rule I suppose). Granted, just because I change my name doesn’t mean I’ll turn into a different person or something, but I just don’t like the idea of having to suddenly write a different name down. I don’t feel like it’s me (because for 27 years of my life, it hasn’t been). There are a lot of Anne’s in the world, but I am the only one of me. I got over disliking my last name and started to like being the only person with my name in the world. I know this is fairly uncommon, and many people share names with others in the world. But for me, they changed my grandfather’s last name when he got off the boat. So the only people in the world with my last name are my direct family. I like that. While my husband’s last name is mispronounced, it is far from unique. And there are already other Anne’s in the world with that last name. So, by keeping my last name, I keep my identity and my uniqueness. Finally, the last reason I decided to keep my last name is because I have a doctorate. I have published material under my name, and if I changed my name when I got married, there would not be a way to connect my former published work from my present and future work. I contemplated hyphenating the two last names, but they just don’t sound good together and it gets kind of long. I figured the simplest way is to just keep what I had. My husband initially would have preferred it if I took his last name, just because it’s traditional, but didn’t care that I chose not to. He told me that it’s my name, and therefore my decision about what I want to be called. Our children have his last name, and I don’t feel that mine being different makes us less of a family. I don’t have people questioning why I made the decision or anything, so it hasn’t been a problem at all. Many female doctors choose to keep their last names, so in a way I was actually sticking with the trend among my cohort. I fully support those who choose to take the names of their husbands, or who choose to combine or hyphenate names, it just wasn’t the choice for me.

I always find in interesting to hear about the name debate. I’m very lucky and have the same last name as my FI. (no we’re not related, we checked) So I don’t even need to think about it! I have no idea what I would do since I’m not really faced with the situation.