NAME CHANGING at Marriage

An amusing look from three perspectives

Joanna  Scott says:

Seems simple right? But women who change their name because they get married are accused of giving up their identity and jeopardizing their careers. However, the estimated one in 10 women who choose to keep their name, are faced with the problem that it might confuse the children and upset the natural order of things.

And while we consider this a woman’s problem, men get their fair share of flack too, being accused of all sorts of horrors from ‘owning’ their wives to seeing women as fundamentally inferior. The raging debate makes it clear that this issue means a lot. But dare I say it … it’s only a name. I’m getting married later this year. We’ve talked about it, and it’s clear it means a lot to my fiancé that I take his name. This is the same guy who will patiently discuss the minutiae of my career every day, who helps me celebrate when I get a bigger bonus than his and who sees me as an equal partner in every sense of the word.

And when it comes time for our sons and daughters to make a similar decision, I hope they’ll have the strength of character to have conviction in their own beliefs and forget what the bloggers say! Changing your
name (or keeping it) does not signify your position in the feminist debate. It’s trite to suggest it’s that simple.

Nigel Bowen says:

My wife decided to take my name when we married, and I don’t recall us ever having a discussion about it
If adopting my surname was meant to the first step in her submitting to my patriarchal authority and subsuming her identity in mine, I have to report things have not worked out as advertised – she has thus far failed to morph into a Stepford wife. Come to think of it, neither has any other woman I know who has taken her husband’s name.

Frankly, I don’t get the whole feminist outrage about surnames – it’s somehow letting the sisterhood down to hang onto the surname of your father (who you didn’t choose) rather than your husband (who you did)?
Now, if we’re going to talk about naming injustices, perhaps we should just wipe the slate clean and let everyone choose what to call themselves at any stage of their lives.

I say:

I was delighted to take my husband's name. Not only because the Bible says that "The two shall be one flesh", but because it gave me a sense of belonging to him, not as an object, but as one whom he would love and cherish. I had kept my single name as an unmarried girl, but now I was a married woman and together with my husband we were a new family unit.

What do you honestly feel about it?