Comments on: Ain’t No Use In Callin’ Out My Name, Gal

By: kate.d.

kate.d. — Fri, 16 May 2008 17:28:55 +0000

obviously i’m super late to the party here, but i feel compelled to comment because i think this is a really important question for women. i am unabashedly biased - i think women should keep their names. i just got married two weeks ago, and there was never a doubt in my mind that i would keep my name. MY name - it’s mine, you know? the whole “your husband’s or your father’s name” is a red herring, imho - the minute it goes on your birth certificate, it’s YOURS. and that so many women are still encouraged to sacrifice that self-identifier that they’ve had and owned and inhabited for decades for the sake of “family unity” makes me really, really sad. so many comments about about being excited to take on a new family name, and almost no questioning of why it’s invariably the woman who’s asked to sacrifice in order to make that happen.

just because something is traditional certainly doesn’t make it fair or right, and i think if women feel connected to their names, they should keep ‘em. end of story. the sky will not fall, society will not crumble, and people will figure it out :)

By: The Lisa Show

The Lisa Show — Mon, 05 May 2008 16:01:48 +0000

I took my last name and his last name, and just slapped them together with a hyphen. If we ever have kids, they’re going to have that same last name. Or, you know, just call them Banana-Hammock. Depends on how drugged I am. ;)

By: rilla

rilla — Fri, 02 May 2008 19:12:34 +0000

Popped in via Five Star Friday and have opinions, so I figured I’d comment.

I married at a very young age and took my husband’s name. I divorced after seven years and retook my maiden name. When I started using my maiden name again, it felt like coming home. It felt right. I felt like I was myself again, and I had just been pretending to be another person for all those years. Now, if I marry again, I’m certain I won’t take my partner’s name. As for naming children, that’s something that will be more complicated. I know of people who share the last names: boys have the father’s name, girls have the mother’s. I also think the whole making a new name thing is appropriate for kids.

By: Operation Pink Herring

Operation Pink Herring — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 02:41:26 +0000

I’m engaged, and I’m happy to take my fiance’s last name once we get married. My last name is difficult to spell, harder to pronounce, and his is lovely and sounds nice with my first name.

HOWEVER. When we discussed the name change issue, turns out my fiance feels very strongly that I should change my name. Which I have no problem with doing. I do have a problem with him feeling so strongly about it, though.

By: Katie

Katie — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 23:10:11 +0000

Ohhh, I love this post. I took my husband’s last name when we married. Let me explain how excrutiatingly hard this was for me (on so many levels). For starters, his last name is plain ugly. Dornblaser (pronounced Dorn-blazer). My maiden name is Sloan. Nice, simple Sloan. Easy to spell, easy to pronounce and pretty! (in my opinion). Our last name is usually too long to personalize anything. I hate that.
Second, I’ve been an athlete my whole life. I was a collegiate athlete, too. Thus, as it often goes in the world of sports, you go by your last name. My friends call me Sloan, not Katie.
So why did I decide to change it? I wanted to take his last name to unify us as Mr. and Mrs. Dornblaser. Also, thinking farther down the road, I thought it would be confusing for our children to have their father’s last name and for me to have my own. Would teachers know that Mrs. Sloan was “Child” Dornblaser’s mother?
So I ended up dropping my middle name to take my last name as my middle name. I went from Katie Lyn Sloan to Katie Sloan Dornblaser.
I still miss it. I still sometimes wonder how hard it would be to change it all back. Argh.
The funny part is that the night I met my husband and he told me his last name, I thought to myself, “Wow, that would be a hard last name to take!” And oh, boy was it.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 18:17:44 +0000

I am a well-established professional, so I am not itching to change my name for that reason. There’s quite a traceable record of my work that I don’t want to get lost in the shuffle. But more importantly, I’m a staunch feminist and a total non-conformist. As Jeci said in an earlier comment, the name change thing is still all on the woman because she is the woman. It simply isn’t asked of men. Men are expected to keep their names.

That being said, marriage is the formation of a new family that never existed before. I prefer this view of it to the patriarchal view of the woman joining the man’s family. I do like the idea of a new family unit having a shared name. But it’s a new family unit, so the idea of that new unit’s shared name being the hold-over name of only one of the two partners just doesn’t work for me. I would consider changing my name if my husband would also change his name. If we were both to pick out a new name to reflect the fact that we’ve started our own family. If he says the name change question is only for me, then there will be no change.

By: zinta

zinta — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 18:34:14 +0000

I hope it is not too late to comment,

No plans to marry anytime soon but I have thought about this name changing a lot. I know I will not change my name if and when I get married. The life I have led for the last three decades, the education certificates, my writing credits, my bank accounts, my identity cards, my citizenship card, my passport, my so many things…all come with the first and last names that I was given as a child…I do not think I want to change all that. The challenge I feel is to continue being who you are , while still being part of someone else’s life and lives together…! I am up for it< i hope the man I marry won’t have issues about it!

By: kim

kim — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 10:22:38 +0000

i have to say i’m actually excited about changing my name, too. and not because i don’t like my maiden name. i really do. it reminds me of my dad and our family the way it used to be. also, C’s last name is not exactly the greatest (but fine).

no, i’m excited about having the same last name as him, becoming part of his family and becoming our own little family. to show everyone out there that we belong together. getting married to me is a huge deal and starting a new chapter of my life which to me is connected to changing my name to his.

it doesn’t necessarily have to be “his” name though, to me it’s just important that we both have the same name. and since my C is old-fashioned that way and wouldn’t be comfortable taking on my name, it’s clear to me that i’m taking his name.

hyphenating has never been an option for me. i think it just gets too long (also, my first name officially is kim-julia = already hyphenated) and then what do the kids do? the most important thing for me is that we have a family-name. just like my maiden name was our family’s name. now that family is not here any more and it’s time for new families (with new names).

but i also know that my brother will keep his name and give it to his children and that probably helps when it comes to saying goodbye to my name…

By: darlene

darlene — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 20:16:22 +0000

the first time i was married, i was fully planning on taking my husband’s name and he was so touched that he gave me this book on how women have lost their identity’s through their names throughout history. it swayed me and i ended up never changing my name which i suppose made life easier in that regard when we divorced.

when my second husband asked me to marry him while we sat in the funeral home, holding the urn of our dead son, i knew that i would change my name without a doubt because of all the hassle that we went through over the death certificate and our sons’ last names as they died too soon to have an official record of their father’s name and because we weren’t married, they instantly had my name. sigh. it bothered me on a weird level that i can’t possibly explain but i wanted them to have their father’s name.

the thing is our laws here in Alberta are a little easy peasy on the whole name change thing. so you can assume your husband’s name but you can also sort of keep your old name because it remains your legal official name. so at work and for payroll and taxes and even my passport, i have my husband’s name and can do so as long as i have a marriage certificate. but. i can also use my maidon name which i do on my website ‘kreutzer’ and as an alias on my bank accounts and for any writing or photography that i get paid for. i kind of get the best of both worlds i think and can pretend i am two different people, hah! : )

to me its just a name and yet so much more than just a name.

By: 180/360

180/360 — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:15:35 +0000

I took my husband’s name. I think if I had grown up with an amazing surname, I might have reconsidered, but I liked his name better and it was less of a mouthful. I have a brother that will carry ours on in the family and my sister has used it as a middle name with one of her sons. And like other people said- my name will always be a part of me.