@jillfilipovic @kristinrawls @jamilsmith @scatx I want to know why we're evaluating women's choices at all rather than social pressures?
— Ana Mardoll (@anamardoll) March 7, 2013
I feel pretty okay with that.
I am a woman who changed her name at marriage -- twice! -- for complex social reasons that I would like to see meaningfully discussed and addressed rather than being told that my reasons were nonsense and that part of feminism is being "fundamentally opposed" to a choice that I and many other women knowingly make for their own protection in a misogynist society. I think we can have that discussion about society without judging women for making that potentially very painful choice.
Nor do I think it is valuable to approach this conversation without acknowledgement of the fact that many men do attempt to take their wives' names in marriage -- and have been legally discriminated against for doing so. It is not helpful to obscure that context or to invisible those men who are being discriminated against by the kyriarchy by removing them from the discussion and framing the issue of name changing as nothing more than a choice that either party in a mixed-gender marriage can make with equal social pressures and legal tools on either side.
Nor do I think it in any way appropriate to insist that one's name is one's identity, or that it "situates [one] in the world" for eternity. That sort of thing should be confined to I-statements, and does not mesh with ally-intersectionality for a number of different groups: trans* persons who do not believe their name reflects their self, people from abusive families who do not wish to be tied to that family through a shared name, and numerous other marginalized groups who have the right to reject any framing that insists that the name given them at birth is part of their intrinsic identity.
On a related subject, you need to go read this from Amadi at Amadi Talks because it is amazing.
38 comments:
Honestly, that sounds like a good plan :)
For me, it's helped by the fact that my name was ALREADY complicated before marriage. See, my name is actually Jennifer. My middle name is Christine. I've been going by Kristy, for various reasons, since I was about 13. So while having my legal name be Jennifer Smith (not actually Smith) and my social name be Kristy Smith Jones (not actually Smith Jones!) may seem awkward, it's actually not much more awkward than it would have been anyway!
As far as a family name - his family generally refers to us as the Jones family, my family and most of our friends call us the Smith Jones family. As long as everyone knows who's meant by it, it's not really a problem.
(Side note: when my daughter was born, we had decided in advance that I got to name any girl children, while SpouseMan could name any boy children. Which is why her name is not Batgirl. Anyway, as I had naming privileges, I think he assumed she would be a Smith, but at the last minute I decided to make her a Smith Jones. So yes, my baby girl has two last names, officially, and four names total. Makes registering her for stuff a little more complicated, but again, I'm used to complicated name explanations.)
Honestly, that sounds like a good plan :)
For me, it's helped by the fact that my name was ALREADY complicated before marriage. See, my name is actually Jennifer. My middle name is Christine. I've been going by Kristy, for various reasons, since I was about 13. So while having my legal name be Jennifer Smith (not actually Smith) and my social name be Kristy Smith Jones (not actually Smith Jones!) may seem awkward, it's actually not much more awkward than it would have been anyway!
As far as a family name - his family generally refers to us as the Jones family, my family and most of our friends call us the Smith Jones family. As long as everyone knows who's meant by it, it's not really a problem.
(Side note: when my daughter was born, we had decided in advance that I got to name any girl children, while SpouseMan could name any boy children. Which is why her name is not Batgirl. Anyway, as I had naming privileges, I think he assumed she would be a Smith, but at the last minute I decided to make her a Smith Jones. So yes, my baby girl has two last names, officially, and four names total. Makes registering her for stuff a little more complicated, but again, I'm used to complicated name explanations.)
FWIW, I actually do have a friend literally named Jennifer Smith. She chose to keep it on marriage because she wanted to keep the level of relative anonymity it gives her.
FWIW, I actually do have a friend literally named Jennifer Smith. She chose to keep it on marriage because she wanted to keep the level of relative anonymity it gives her.
That seems very feasible. It's what the French do--socially, women usually use their husband's last name, but I believe the name doesn't actually change on legal documentation.
I was in a similar situation as you when I got married--I already had 3 degrees in with my original name, and while I didn't want to get rid of my original last name, I also wanted the name recognition/identification with my husband's side of the family. I also didn't want to just make my last name my new middle name, b/c I like my middle name. I hyphenated b/c I like both names, but that's not always easy. It's surprising how some places don't deal well with hyphens in names. It is frequently amusing--I get mail addressed to every possible variation of my name.
My mother changed her name when she married my father, and after he died and she remarried, she hyphenated both married names. Then she divorced and went back to her first married name. When she got married for the third time, she didn't change her name. Partly b/c she didn't want to go through the hassle, and partly b/c she had a business rep built up with that name. The interesting thing is b/c my stepfather moved to where she lives, she knows more people, and a lot of the time he gets called Mr. Herlastname. That's happened to my husband too, so it's become almost a family joke.
That seems very feasible. It's what the French do--socially, women usually use their husband's last name, but I believe the name doesn't actually change on legal documentation.
I was in a similar situation as you when I got married--I already had 3 degrees in with my original name, and while I didn't want to get rid of my original last name, I also wanted the name recognition/identification with my husband's side of the family. I also didn't want to just make my last name my new middle name, b/c I like my middle name. I hyphenated b/c I like both names, but that's not always easy. It's surprising how some places don't deal well with hyphens in names. It is frequently amusing--I get mail addressed to every possible variation of my name.
My mother changed her name when she married my father, and after he died and she remarried, she hyphenated both married names. Then she divorced and went back to her first married name. When she got married for the third time, she didn't change her name. Partly b/c she didn't want to go through the hassle, and partly b/c she had a business rep built up with that name. The interesting thing is b/c my stepfather moved to where she lives, she knows more people, and a lot of the time he gets called Mr. Herlastname. That's happened to my husband too, so it's become almost a family joke.
My mum kept her maiden name. She's been a great feminist inspiration for me, so much so that I've considered changing my last name to hers. Matronymic, you know.
The problem is that my maternal grandfather, the one whose name she kept, is a racist misogynist asshat. But I barely knew my maternal grandmother, so there wouldn't be anything particularly personal about taking her last name; and anyway that was her father's name.
So basically I'm considering, when I get married and when I have a chance, tracing all the way back up my maternal line to far enough that I can find a matrilineal ancestor with a first name that'll sound good with -dottir added.
My mum kept her maiden name. She's been a great feminist inspiration for me, so much so that I've considered changing my last name to hers. Matronymic, you know.
The problem is that my maternal grandfather, the one whose name she kept, is a racist misogynist asshat. But I barely knew my maternal grandmother, so there wouldn't be anything particularly personal about taking her last name; and anyway that was her father's name.
So basically I'm considering, when I get married and when I have a chance, tracing all the way back up my maternal line to far enough that I can find a matrilineal ancestor with a first name that'll sound good with -dottir added.
My first inclination was toward hyphenation, but I have a long first name and married a man with a long last name, and it would have been a little ridiculous. He wanted me to change it*, so when we got married I started using his name. For about a day. It felt wrong, it wasn't my name, and I hated it. The thought still frankly makes me a little nauseated. I won't lie, I'd like to see more women choose any option other than reflexively taking the man's name because that's what's done, but that's because I want to see everyone have the chance to make their own considered choice, without the pressure. My own reaction was visceral. I didn't expect it at all, and while the choice I finally made is in line with my general beliefs, I didn't anticipate the strength of that emotional response, and the fact is, that was really what made the decision for me. It can be a lot more complicated than change/keep-->finished, is what I'm saying.
*He felt strongly at first, and wasn't that happy when I decided not to after all. Luckily, he is a very logical guy, and when I finally said "Do you have any objections that are not just as easily solved by you taking my name?" he suddenly understood. I think he realized all he was left with was tradition, and he is not the sort that thinks that is a good enough reason all by itself (a key factor in my decision to marry him in the first place, natch).
My first inclination was toward hyphenation, but I have a long first name and married a man with a long last name, and it would have been a little ridiculous. He wanted me to change it*, so when we got married I started using his name. For about a day. It felt wrong, it wasn't my name, and I hated it. The thought still frankly makes me a little nauseated. I won't lie, I'd like to see more women choose any option other than reflexively taking the man's name because that's what's done, but that's because I want to see everyone have the chance to make their own considered choice, without the pressure. My own reaction was visceral. I didn't expect it at all, and while the choice I finally made is in line with my general beliefs, I didn't anticipate the strength of that emotional response, and the fact is, that was really what made the decision for me. It can be a lot more complicated than change/keep-->finished, is what I'm saying.
*He felt strongly at first, and wasn't that happy when I decided not to after all. Luckily, he is a very logical guy, and when I finally said "Do you have any objections that are not just as easily solved by you taking my name?" he suddenly understood. I think he realized all he was left with was tradition, and he is not the sort that thinks that is a good enough reason all by itself (a key factor in my decision to marry him in the first place, natch).
Not quite my province, but I can see Quebec from my apartment and apparently it's almost impossible to change your name there for any reason--they do demand a reason, and 'I want to' is not accepted, nor is 'I'm getting married'. I haven't researched all of the reasons for this, but I'm told some part of the justification was that some hardcore equality folks (who apparently didn't prize agency so much) wanted to remove the social pressure for women to change their name upon getting married.
What this means in practice is that, for example, my cousin is listed as Givenname Birthsurname Husbandssurname whenever it's in an informal capacity, but her name on any legal document will only be Givenname Birthsurname. Attaching her husband's surname is a social convention, by all accounts one she's perfectly happy with.
Apparently the main way to get a name change is to just start using a new name, and if you can prove that you've been living with the new name for at least five years, you can apply to have it become your legal name.
My mother kept her surname, and I've got it as one of my middle names. I'd like it if there were some simple way of always keeping a trace of both parents' names in each generation, but haven't yet figured out how to handle the exponential growth in length over time. Sometimes I just want to say "Heck with it, everyone chooses their own full name at the age of majority and we move on with our lives". (I'm not sure mine would have changed at all, because it's pretty awesome, but I'm open to hyphenation if I get married and my spouse also has a sufficiently awesome last name. Rare but possible.)
Not quite my province, but I can see Quebec from my apartment and apparently it's almost impossible to change your name there for any reason--they do demand a reason, and 'I want to' is not accepted, nor is 'I'm getting married'. I haven't researched all of the reasons for this, but I'm told some part of the justification was that some hardcore equality folks (who apparently didn't prize agency so much) wanted to remove the social pressure for women to change their name upon getting married.
What this means in practice is that, for example, my cousin is listed as Givenname Birthsurname Husbandssurname whenever it's in an informal capacity, but her name on any legal document will only be Givenname Birthsurname. Attaching her husband's surname is a social convention, by all accounts one she's perfectly happy with.
Apparently the main way to get a name change is to just start using a new name, and if you can prove that you've been living with the new name for at least five years, you can apply to have it become your legal name.
My mother kept her surname, and I've got it as one of my middle names. I'd like it if there were some simple way of always keeping a trace of both parents' names in each generation, but haven't yet figured out how to handle the exponential growth in length over time. Sometimes I just want to say "Heck with it, everyone chooses their own full name at the age of majority and we move on with our lives". (I'm not sure mine would have changed at all, because it's pretty awesome, but I'm open to hyphenation if I get married and my spouse also has a sufficiently awesome last name. Rare but possible.)
Are you an occupant of the National Capital Region?
(Just curious, since that's where I am! Of course no pressure to answer.)
Edit to add relevancy to topic: I didn't change my name, and haven't really felt any pressure to do so (partly it may be that I don't notice stuff like that very well). I have started fantasizing about doing it, though, slightly -- merely because my long name is a pain.
Are you an occupant of the National Capital Region?
(Just curious, since that's where I am! Of course no pressure to answer.)
Edit to add relevancy to topic: I didn't change my name, and haven't really felt any pressure to do so (partly it may be that I don't notice stuff like that very well). I have started fantasizing about doing it, though, slightly -- merely because my long name is a pain.
I changed whole name too, which my mother gives me no end of grief about. I don't see myself as specifically a feminist, but I think everyone should be able to choose their own name for whatever reason.
I changed whole name too, which my mother gives me no end of grief about. I don't see myself as specifically a feminist, but I think everyone should be able to choose their own name for whatever reason.
Also, wow, just started reading through the comments on that first link, and the amount of shaming in every direction just makes me sad...
Also, wow, just started reading through the comments on that first link, and the amount of shaming in every direction just makes me sad...
Before we got married my husband joked that he was going to change his name to mine because he doesn't like his. (He didn't, and I didn't much care either way, but it was a possibility.) Because of where I live (the Pacific Northwest) people are pretty disinterested in what my marital status is and nobody blinked when I said I wasn't changing my name.
One of my cousins has the most interesting reason I've encountered yet for changing hers: she's a scientist and her first and last names are both pretty common. Her husband is Hungarian. So she added his last name to hers. Presto! Much easier to find in scientific databases and much less likely to be mistaken for someone else. (I'm a librarian and name authority, i.e. the identifiability of an author as a particular individual, is one of the issues I tangle with all the time, so this made total logical sense to me.)
True that.
I kept my last name (although I use both last names socially), and it is indeed a headache. I have had to explain to people (yes, really!) that yes, I really am married, even though our names are different.
I felt (and still feel) very strongly about identifying with my last name and what it means to me. That being said, my situation is absolutely not everyone's, and I know of some very, VERY good reasons to want to change your last name upon marriage (or in some cases, any time at all.)
So yeah. While I do think it's important to examine the social pressures behind the choice, I also think it's important to bear in mind that it IS a choice, and not to demonize anyone for her individual decision.
True that.
I kept my last name (although I use both last names socially), and it is indeed a headache. I have had to explain to people (yes, really!) that yes, I really am married, even though our names are different.
I felt (and still feel) very strongly about identifying with my last name and what it means to me. That being said, my situation is absolutely not everyone's, and I know of some very, VERY good reasons to want to change your last name upon marriage (or in some cases, any time at all.)
So yeah. While I do think it's important to examine the social pressures behind the choice, I also think it's important to bear in mind that it IS a choice, and not to demonize anyone for her individual decision.
I also recommend this by Melissa McEwan.
I also recommend this by Melissa McEwan.
I changed my first name a few years ago, kept my surname. What I use - what I feel to be my name, rather than the name I have for legal purposes - is a third name again, and one not often encountered. But I was careful to choose, for my legal name, something that plausibly shortens to my use-name. People say "That's a funny name!" and I reply politely that it's short for legal-name, and they nod and think they understand and, importantly, drop the subject. So I don't have to explain anymore that I don't go by my legal name, or that I've changed it. When people know I've changed my name, they pester me to tell them what it used to be, as if what was on my birth certificate was my real name, and the name I use and chose and answer to is just a nickname I've gotten too serious about.
"That's a funny name!" is, incidentally, often the first thing someone says to me after "Hello". It is tiresome, but probably unfixable.
I teach ESL, and having conversation class on the day that we talk about names is *fascinating*. Korean, Brazilian, Mexican and Spanish women do not generally take their husbands' names on marrying. Some students from other nations are absolutely boggled by this and it's led to a number of spirited discussions. (Including an incident between a Korean man and a Japanese woman where I had to gently intervene and suggest that shouting was not necessary.)
My sister declined to change her surname to the surname of her son's father consistently and persistently against serious pressure from both sets of parents for about six months.
The main reason the "I'm keeping my own name" fight was only six months was because once her son was born, the pressure switched to trying to make her give her son his father's surname instead of hers - not just from parents/parents-in-law, but from virtually everyone who wasn't a feminist and some who said they were.
She resisted it all, and I'm very proud of her. And my nephew.
That seems to be pretty common practice in some areas--as I mentioned above, I have family living in places where it's very hard to change your name legally, and they cheerfully use different surnames socially than would show up on their identification or what have you.
I have been engaged for a few months and am really just starting to seriously consider this issue. I'm a researcher and have had a few abstracts published with my current last name. My undergraduate diploma is that name. It's a kind of unique last name, too, which I like. My fiance is likewise attached to his last name. I agonized a little bit because we're planning to have kids and I'd like to have a family name, or at least not have to deal with awkward introductions or questions when my last name doesn't match his. He said I should stop worrying about it and just use whichever name I like whenever I like, so that's my plan right now. I'll keep my current last name legally (for convenience) and professionally (because of reasons listed above). Socially, though, I'll use his last name. We can be The Hislastname Family. Does that seem feasible to those of you more experienced with the name issue?
O_o
That's worse than my mom's brief argument with Social Security. Also, quite boggling to me, since I deal with various types or blended families and just families with multiple last names going on _all the time_. Why is that so hard to deal with!? (hint: it's not. Some people are just assholes.)
My sister admitted that one of her reasons for holding out strongly for her son having her surname was that when interacting with children's services (from doctor to nursery to school) the parent is always assumed to have the child's surname, and given the social presumption that wives take their husband's surname, she would find it a lot tougher explaining that no, her surname was not the same than her son's father would.
(If anyone wonders about the circumlocution, it's because my sister and her son's father are no longer together, and I find that my only positive relation to the man is the fact that he is the father of my lovely nephew. So I think of him like that.)
I'm a woman, who's marrying another woman in six months. (Eee.) Our original plan was that she would take my name , which had the advantage of giving her the excuse to get rid of her hated middle name. Then there was Family Drama (unrelated to the name issue except insofar as it was people sharing my last name who were bringing the Drama), which resulted in Fiancée being unwilling to now take MyName. Instead, for multiple reasons - the aforementioned drama, HerName being much shorter and easier to spell than MyName, and others that are only occurring to me as I type - I'm taking hers.
I don't think we exactly sat down and talked about name changes and Why Do It At All. It's just something important, that we share a name. Not helpful, that.
Congratulations!
Also, I think feeling that sharing a name is important is as good a reason as any.
I think one of my bigger reasons for taking my husband's name is that I wanted our future kids to have the same last name as both of us. One of my cousin's kid's was given the father's last name at birth and since it didn't match the mother's last name they have had so many problems! People don't take it on faith that the kid is actually hers. Instead she's at best a caretaker, at worst a kidnapper. She had to carry around his and her birth certificates any time she was interacting with any public service, even just making arrangements with daycare and school. The father's grandparents also tried to use the last name to seize custody of the kid after the father took off. Names are a mess!
I didn't want to hyphen either. I have two long middle names already and my name only just barely fits into the boxes on legal forms as it is.
There are some circumstances in Europe where a man may be under heavy social and legal pressure to take his wife's name - specifically if the wife is a "von X" (or the French, Dutch, etc. equivalents). This happened to a German co-worker of mine when he got married a few months ago. Apparently aristocratic privilege trumps male privilege...
When my sister took her (now ex) husband's name on marriage it surprised the whole family because neither she nor the guy she was marrying liked his last name.
The divorce gave her a free name change and she simply dropped her last name (rather than changing it back or something) thus converting her middle name into her new last name.
I rejected the idea that the name given to me at birth represented any part of my intrinsic identity so much that I legally changed it at sixteen. And I don't just mean my first name. I traded the whole thing in.
My mom went through two last names as a child (her mom got divorced and remarried) and she changed her name again when she married her first husband. She kept that last name for a variety of reasons and didn't change her name again when she married my dad. (Though Social Security tried to change it against her will and without her knowledge when she got me my Social Security card.)
I have a pair of friends who wanted to pick a new last name when they married, but weren't legally allowed to just by getting married. (They are still sluggishly going through the hoop jumping process to get the last name they both want.)
I see families all the time at work that have an assortment of names.
Names are complicated. I'd love to see things change to the point that people are not pressured, mocked, disbelieved, mistreated, etc based on what they choose regarding their names.
I remember with fondness some advice column or other- I think it might have been Miss Manners?- where a guy wrote in because he was feeling uncomfortable that his fiancee wanted to keep her first husband's surname. Many people would probably find this objection more sympathetic than an objection to keeping the "maiden name" (the fiancee's stated reason for not going back to hers was that it would make her feel like a child again) but the columnist was firm: Names are deeply personal, and you shouldn't expect someone to select theirs for your comfort.
I remember it vividly because it seemed so weird to me at the time- my own mother kept the name she got at birth, and I've never really grokked why someone would want to do otherwise- but also made so much sense. Definitely a Your Preferences Are Not Objective Truth wake-up call for me.
Yes! I remember it too - you're right, it was The Awesome Miss Manners. Seemed of a piece with the rest of her advice, which dealt a lot with minding your own business and not policing other people's choices.
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