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Friday, February 20, 2015

Do You Take This Name To Be Your Own


Do You Take This Name To Be Your Own

What does a wife do with her name these days when she marries?   It did not use to be an issue.  She would take the surname of her husband.  These days she has several choices.  She can keep her maiden name, take on her husband’s name or join the two with a hyphen. 

Many women don’t want to lose their maiden name as they have built up business contacts with that name. Changing their name could cost them connections, and or cause office confusion.

Some women don’t want to take on a new name as it somehow seems demeaning, as if they were simply property.  Hyphenating the name solves many of these issues, but can be cumbersome, and after a few generations the surname can get ridiculous.

Sometimes a woman will change their name simply because they like it better than their maiden name.  Both spouses having the same last name may simplify certain legal issues, and it is less confusing when children are involved.

My recommendation for women who don’t want to lose their identification for work purposes is to simply use your maiden name for business while legally changing it to their husband’s name to simplify legal issues.

Mrs. Cranky did not change her name when we married.  She did not want to go through the red tape of changing her driver’s license, her bank accounts and other documents.  She kept the name of her first husband.  

On social media she is known by her maiden name and her first married name.  At work she is legally a “Barboe” but many know her as “Hagy.” Many friends know her by her maiden name “Lavery” but remember to call her Barboe, and have to ask should it be Hagy.  This results in constant explanations of who, what, and why.

When she makes a hotel reservation, she uses her legal name Barboe. When we check in and I hand over my credit card name Hagy, we always get “That look” because of the different names.  We could offer an explanation to the clerk; I prefer he think we are both just fooling around on the sly.

It all gets so complicated these days, no matter what name you choose, maybe the best thing is for both spouses to change their name to some combination of both names.  Marriage is all about equality, that way both parties will be equally inconvenienced and confused.

Mr. and Mrs. Lavbohag

Sure both spouses will lose business contacts, friends will never find you on social media, and around the country old friends will receive Christmas cards and ask, “Who the frig are the Lavbohag’s?” but you won’t get the stink eye from hotel clerks.


23 comments:

  1. Spanish cultures do it right. You can marry maria lopez garcia perez ortiz gonzalez rivera ortega ramirez, pay cash at hotels, and hope she gets drafted.

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  2. Who cares if you get the stink eye from the hotel clerks? I'm just saying.

    Yep, it's a pain to change your last name. I've done it a couple of time. I do have hubbies last name. I couldn't wait to get rid of the ex's last name.

    Have a fabulous day. ☺

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  3. I kept my maiden name this time around the first marriage ended and it was such a bitch to get my own maiden name back. I also have a killer last name and my husband was like girl you can't change that name their is culture attached to it {he is not a fan of his last name} so this time around I kept mine and our daughter has my last name instead of his. We never get looks though - Crazy Californians we are ;0)

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  4. Just think of all the fun and games with aliases though. Reminds me of Ron White in his story about his alias, Tater. :) She would have a very hard time getting a drivers license here in the State of West Virginia though with what they call the "real ID" aka "federal ID" however.

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  5. i hyphenated mine. a bit cumbersome, but there was already another woman at the company i worked with at the time that had the simpler married name and i figured that was a good indication of how many there'd be in the world with 'johnson' as a surname. i can almost guarantee i'm the only one with my maiden name and married name combination - in texas, for sure. maybe in the world. ;)

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  6. My daughter kept her name. The children have his. I don't question anything anymore.

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  7. I know several people from college who married and hyphenated the last name. All of them have since simplified and gone over to just using the husband's name. I guess it has a lot to do with what that last name is. If it happens to be Windsor or Kennedy, that hyphen is pretty darn safe.

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  8. Both my daughter & I use our maiden names as our middle names & our husbands' names as our last names. The kids all answer to "Hey, you!!"

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  9. Hey, at our age, I think getting the stink eye from a hotel clerk would be pretty cool. Make us feel more exciting, ya know?

    I took my hubby's last name when we got married, because at the time, that's simply the way it was done. Besides, my maiden name was "too short"... much better to take on a good ol' nine-letter Polish name. I reckon our daughters-in-law felt the same way, because they changed to our name, too. And our daughter took her husband's name. I guess we're too doggone traditional.

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  10. I used to work in Human Resources. I found that the people who hyphenated rarely used a consistent format. It was Susie Smith, or Susie Jones, or Susie Smith-Jones, or Susie Jones-Smith. Or Susie Smith-Jones-Smith.

    I could never find their damn file. I've been married twice and took the dude's name both times. My maiden name has 12 letters.

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  11. I kept my ex's last name when we divorced out of convenience and it really did go better with my first name. .

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  12. Took my husband's name when we married since mine was a Polish name hard to pronounce or spell. Hubby's last name could be spelled "en" or "on"; its "on" but everyone wants to spell it "en" but at least it is pronounceable.

    betty

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  13. I just recently got married and she took my name. I told her beforehand that I was 100% ok with whatever she chose, but she freely chose to have my last name :)

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  14. The only time I regret taking my husband's name is when the duty roster comes out at the beginning of each school year. Alas, now that I'm a "C" I am scheduled more frequently for duties than when I was an "L."

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  15. Your passport requires the exact same name as your birth certificate or as you legally change it. If she can keep them all straight, all the more power to her. I changed my name because I had two brothers to carry on the family name, except neither one had kids, of course!

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  16. I changed my name to my husband's, twice. My maiden name is a German name with a character in it that doesn't exist in the English alphabet. Why make things complicated?

    In Germany when you get married, you have to "declare" that last name that you will go by. So if John Smith and Jane Miller get married, they can pick the last name Smith, or they can pick Miller, or they can pick Heitzenreiter, if they so choose. When my cousin got married, he chose to take his wife's last name.

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  17. This is too funny! I kept my maiden name as my middle name when I took on my husband's name.

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  18. My maiden name was Polish, 9 consonants and one vowel right at the end, I couldn't wait to be rid of it. When I divorced and wanted nothing to do with my married name, (he was a jerk) I didn't want to go back to my maiden name either, so I chose a new name from the phone book and legally changed.

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  19. I just use Smith. Easy peasy.

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  20. I was married briefly at 20 and took his name.

    When I married the man who became my kids' dad, I went from my first husband's name back to my maiden name. And in fact, a law had just been passed in Quebec (my home province) that women had to go by their maiden names and would have to apply and go through a whole process to take thier husband's name. My kids got both of our names - hyphenated Mine-His.

    The main reason I wanted to go back to my maiden name was that my dad was the only male of his generation. And he only had daughters. My sister took her husband's name. I didn't want the name dying out with our generation. I hope my sons will continue to keep it going but of course, that's up to them.

    And I don't believe you get the stink eye from hotel clerks.. not these day. :)

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  21. I got married at 26 and changed my name because my maiden name was boring and meant nothing to me while his was foreign and interesting (hence I would become interesting, naturally) and because I wanted to have the same name as our kids when we eventually had them 10 years later. These days I wouldn't change my name but unsure what to do about kids. Hyphenated name probably then when THEY have kids each partner gives first or last piece of THEIR hyphenated surname to THEIR kids.

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