Back in the medieval ages when a woman was married to a man, they were basically considered property for my understanding and treated like an extension of the man’s person and family. So it was customary for women to take the man’s last name since they were being joined to his family. But now here in the 21st century women are fully independent and last names don’t really seem to mean much of anything. I mean what is Smith or McGregor or any last name really mean anymore? Especially in the digital age, lots of people have digital usernames like SarahSmith1727373. So the last name clearly doesn’t mean much anymore… Which leads me to wonder, why do the majority of women still take the man’s last name? Especially when some of them have a horrible last name? I have seen some butt ass ugly last names recently, like Fink, Weimer, Slotsky/Slotsky, Hiscock (no joke this is a last name), Hardman… And then you hear the woman’s name and it’s like something way more reasonable and less stupid sounding like Kingman, or Harrison, Walls, etc.
I’ve dated a few people who seemed progressive, and I’m a woke-ass queer, but names were a sticking point. I have a complicated welsh travesty of a name I would happily trade in for something shorter - so when I got engaged and I didn’t like his name either, and neither did he, I suggested we both pick something new and change our names together. I mean, if it’s no big deal for me to change my name, it shouldn’t be for him either, right? Anyway, I’m single now.
I didn’t change my name. My perspective is that my identity doesn’t change just because I got married. My name has been mine since birth and it’ll remain that way.
I am originally from Spain but have since moved abroad where partners changing names is common.
Personally I love the way it is handled in Spain, where you get your family name at birth and won’t be changed by marrying (you could change it but it is not normal to do it when you get married). And the family name is always a combination of both parents. Traditionally it was the first family name from the father and the first from the mother, but nowadays it can be decided which goes first. So officially everyone’s got two family names, one from each parent. Unofficially you can just go as far as you want, so you get your given name, then first family name from one parent, then first from the other, then the second from the first, then the second from the second, etc. So if you track your family tree you can take all family names to make a huge list of them, which is not used for anything but somehow makes you be more attached to all those roots without names being lost.
Of course that makes it a nightmare when going to other places, everyone thinks your first family name is a middle name and dealing with two family names officially can be a pain. And let’s not go into naming your kids then…
When I was marrying my wife she asked me how I felt about her changing her name to mine and if I wanted her to do that. She got her father’s name but her mother divorced him later on and changed her name back and my wife’s father was not much part of her life, so she was happy to just change it. I told her that for me that custom is a bit strange and I didn’t need her to do it but would accept it if she wanted to (knowing her background), so whatever she did I wanted it to be her choice, but notice how in Spain people who share family name are siblings, as it is extremely rare for two persons to share both first and second name if not related, so sharing family name with my wife is really odd in a way…
At the end she changed her name, but because in this country you only have one she only took the first one. While our kids had to take either both of mine or hers (we had our first kid before us marrying and her changing name, so we chose mine), so now we all share the first (and only, in the case of my wife) family name but me and my kids have both my first and second family name (any kids after the first kid must get the same name).
If that was not complex enough, as I got my kids both nationalities, in Spain the rule is always first of one parent plus first of the other parent, and as the first one was born before us marrying, in Spain he has a different family name than he does where we live.
This conversation is so white and western culture centric. Many cultures have different norms. Centering on this as the normal/accepted route is strange given how international our societies have become.
I’m from a different culture than my husband and my last name was a bureaucratic nightmare. Almost didn’t make it into university because of computer mix ups, have had issues filing taxes, voting, getting a passport, settings basic IDs, getting insurance… It’s endless. Changed my name as soon as I could, and even THAT process was hindered by my original name.
Bonuses: Distance myself from social media I had as a child. Harder for former stalkers to locate me if they decide to rekindle their previous obsessions. Don’t need to upset one set of grandparents when you name your children one parent’s last name and not the other. People stop asking me where I’m from and making racist assumptions about me. Everyone seems a lot friendlier now that they assume I’m [insert European white race here] instead of [insert non-white race here] and that’s despite the fact that I’m clearly white. Racism is wild. My signature is way shorter.
Not saying this should be the norm, but I was happy it was a socially acceptable option for me.
Duper curious what it was now
Nothing too complex. I come from a culture where you take one last name from each parent. No hyphen. Just FirstName LastName1 LastName2.
Some systems put LastName1 as my middle name and shortened it to one letter. Some excluded LastName2. Some squished both last names into one name, sometimes with a hyphen, sometimes not.
But because every system did its own thing, no one could ever find me. I had 2 different credit scores at one point. I received 3 voting cards every election, all of them wrong, despite the fact that every election cycle I would take the hours it takes to report the errors and get them to “fix” it. I was enrolled twice in one class in grade 4 under two separate wrong names. And whatever name my high school used on their system, I wasn’t showing up when universities searched for my records, so I kept getting rejection letter after rejection letter with no explanation and it took me months to track down the cause and have it fixed, by which point it was too late to get into several schools. I also couldn’t buy certain things online because some stores’ paymentet methods wouldn’t let me put in the name of my credit card as it was written. Oh, and the government couldn’t get the name on my social insurance card and the name on my taxes to match. This affected my online logins, so I would need to call on the phone to verify myself for each tax-related transaction, including simple address changes.
This isn’t a thing in India unless there is a ‘value’ in the surname.
To all the people here arguing that it’s easier to have a family name, especially with children: It’s also possible that the husband takes the wife’s name. But from anecdotal evidence in my acquaintance, most men are very opposed to this idea. So if the woman wants a family name she has to change her name or have endless fights about it. That’s why most women I know did it.
Having one name is easier for social reasons. Going with the man’s name is easier for social reasons.
It all comes down to social pressure to keep the status quo. I even offered to take my wife’s last name and she declined and took mine instead.
In Sweden, a couple can choos to have a new last name not related to either.
A. Many men would not marry a woman who didn’t take their name.
B. Makes parenting more difficult in social settings by not sharing the last name of your kids. I.E. Picking up your kid at school or making medical decisions about kids and having a different last name as the child forces you to jump through a lot more hoops.
C. Women tend to grow up knowing they are going to change their last name it’s not even an afterthought. My girlfriend told me her and her friends would often talk about what their name would be if they married a guy they liked.
D. In some states it is very difficult for a man to change their last name but for women the processes is already in place.
Regarding B, the way we do it in the latin world is just by having 2 last names, one per parent. So the child of Jose Perez and Irene Martinez is named Alberto Perez Martinez (the fathers last name is the first by default but you can change order). Its not a problem when picking up children from schools or whatever.
