Will women ever achieve complete equality with men as long as a surname change is part of the marriage tradition?

I agree that it is indeed likely a factor in holding back the full recognition of equality, especially when one considers that the entire distaff side of history is wiped out as soon as the tradition is implemented.

I am disappointed that Hilary Rodham took on Clinton after major politics came into the picture. She had more credibility with me when she had her original name.

Yeah, that’s why we don’t do that in my province… it’s highly unusual for a woman to give up her name after marriage here. Considered a bit backward, really.

Huh, I just Googled this, and discovered that it’s actually illegal to take one’s spouse’s name after marriage here. The More You Know!

More women now are hyphenating their names (maiden, married) or keeping their maiden name for professional purposes.

I kept my last name when I married my husband 32 years ago. I think it is an outmoded tradition. I have never regretted it.

It’s just a name. Most women I know have their husband’s surname; some don’t; some couples combine into something new.

One name for each nuclear family is a tradition in Western Civilization, especially English-speaking countries. If women believe that they’re being held back, they need to do something about that and stop blaming a simple custom.

By contrast, women in Asia and the Middle East don’t take their husbands’ names; they keep their birth names. Some of those countries have the most subservient, oppressed women on Earth. I have my husband’s surname, and I’m completely free and independent; I even have my own CPA firm and the trust and respect of many clients. Compare me to someone in Saudi Arabia who has her maiden name but is required to cover her face and body and isn’t allowed out in public without a male, family escort.

I don’t think it matters. It’s nice being the same name as your husband. You two are the unit. When you have kids then the entire nuclear family has the same name.

I’ve said that maybe the couple should come up with their own name.

I know 3 young couples that didn’t change their last names at all, and 1 couple that combined their last names to make an entirely new last name.

I’d imagine the wife taking the husbands last name will become less common as society evolves.

I know several women who didn’t take their husband’s last name upon marriage, mine included. I have a sister-in-law who kept her maiden name and their kids use a hyphenated name that combines both the mother and father’s names. One friend of mine not only kept her name, but her and her husband had an agreement that any girls born would be given her name and any boys born would be given his name (they had two girls, but no boys).

It’s been becoming more and more common for women to keep their birth name since about the 1970s. I regretted that I took my huband’s last name although I did retain my original last name as a middle name. One of the good things about the divorce was that I reverted to my original name.

I don’t think we have to change laws since they are not prohibitive; I think it’s a change that’s a coming.

My daughter said she had an inkling that her last relationship was not going to work out when her fiance pitched a fit because she mentioned that she was going to keep her last name but was willing to hyphenate it with his if it bothered him. She was right, it didn’t last.

When my wife mentioned this to me she informed me that she remembered that I was not thrilled that she intended to keep hers. I don’t remember it being an issue or even coming up for discussion which kind of indicates how important it was to me. When we got married she did hyphenate her and my name and used it that way for a couple of years. Over time her maiden name became her middle name (probably because she got tired of correcting it on forms) and at some point she dropped it and went back to her original middle name and just took to using my last name.

If your biggest gripe about gender equality is woman’s surname change when she marries, then it shows that the genders are pretty much equal. Stop worrying about it.

@rojo That’s why I tell people I think it’s better not to hyphenate. Americans don’t deal with the hyphen well. The name also can wind up annoyingly long. I say keep your maiden as your surname, or put the maiden in the middle, or put the husband’s surname in the middle and keep your maiden name last. In fact, as I think about it, it might be neat for the husband and wife to use both names in whatever order they might like to as middle and last names.

I dropped my maiden name, but now I kind of wish I had put it in the middle. I call myself by my middle name when talking to old school friends or sometimes when talking to my parent’s friends. I actually say might last name a lot when I identify myself on the phone or if I run into someone and they haven’t seen me in a long time, because my first name is so common.

My Inlaws are Mexican so they keep their maiden name typically and drop their mother’s surname when they marry, but sometimes people still refer to them by their birth surnames. In America my MIL just uses her married name, but her MX passport is still her maiden name.

@janbb “It’s been becoming more and more common for women to keep their birth name since about the 1970s”

I’ve read that it’s recently become less common. During the final decades of the last century, it was increasingly popular for brides to hyphenate or keep their birth names. Lately, there’s been a backlash and a return to tradition. I think @tynamite found the reason for the trend; women have achieved so much, they’re no longer as concerned about labels and formalities.

Personally, I wanted to take my husband’s name. I was madly in love with him, and still am, so I liked becoming Mrs. ______. In my opinion, it was lovely that the man of my dreams wanted to share his name with me. There was no compromise on my part, just gain.

For reference, I know a man who’s a true misogynist and woman-hater. He gets great pleasure from bullying and condescending to women. He’s been divorced twice; he belittled and degraded both wives so much, often literally screaming at them in public, that they left him. Yes, he’s tried disparaging and talking-down to me many times. I refuse to let him treat me that way; I once stood up to him and said, “I’m not one of your wives. You can’t bully me.”

Anyhow, this guy wouldn’t let either of his wives take his name! He thinks he’s a huge feminist, despite the way he treats or talks about anyone female. So, instead of letting the wives make their own choices, he forbid them from doing so. Unbelievable…

From someone who has dabbled in genealogy from time to time I would like to say it is a disgusting habit that has made my research much more difficult and it needs to stop.

@tynamite It is understandable how you feel. That was my first reaction when reading the original post (OP). Upon reading it again, and @ibstubro correct me if this is wrong, what he is saying is once the big issues of gender inequality are resolved, is a surname change once married another, albeit less important, stepping stone towards equality?

The lists of pros and cons for this topic are both long. The decision should be up to the couple to decide what to do, if anything.

@ibstubro, I don’t think the name change is based upon religion(s). It seems to be more cultural. The traditions are less important in some areas. It’s becoming more accepted for a woman or the couple to go by what they desire. I like that.

@rojo LOL! I know what you mean.

Here’s a question for anyone who believes that married women should keep their birth names:

I’ve met plenty of women who have done that. Almost inevitably, the couple’s children have their father’s surname. In my entire life, I’ve known literally one maiden-named wife who gave her own name to the children, and that was because she had a vile hatred for her in-laws. No matter how much of a feminist the mother might be, she’s almost always 100% on-board with the kids getting her husband’s name. Why?

If her name’s so significant, why doesn’t she insist that her children carry it? Or, why doesn’t the couple switch with each child, name the first after Mom and the next after Dad? I think it’s simply to keep things simple and less confusing. Given that, does it really matter if the entire family shares a single name?

@rojo So true! I have been trying to find descendants of one of my grandfather’s sister for five years! Flipping name change makes it more difficult. My maiden name is extremely rare, and if that name had been maintained down the girl
side it would make the search much easier.

@Love_my_doggie Other than we live in a very patrilineal society I can’t tell you why, I can tell you I disagree with the practice. IMHO children should ALWAYS have the mothers name The mother is the mother no matter what, while the dad may or may not be the father.

I need to temper my comments by assuring everyone that I’m all for individuals choices. If a bride wants to keep her birth name, take her husband’s name, keep the name from a prior marriage (because of children), or whatever, it’s none of my business. It’s up to the couple and nobody else. No judgments.

I absolutely hated my first name. It was an ugly, old-lady’s name, and I grew up cringing whenever anyone said it. I spent my childhood getting teased and mocked. That might be the reason why names are just labels for me and not all that important; I legally changed my given name when I became an adult, and of course I was still the same person with the same thoughts, smile, and laugh.

@rojo “The mother is the mother no matter what, while the dad may or may not be the father.” I think that’s the true reason why children get their fathers’ names. Dads don’t get to carry a baby for 9 monts, give birth, or nurse; nature gives them fewer connections to their kids. When a child has his/her father’s name, it builds a bond.

You’re entitled to your opinions, as am I and every other Jelly. I’ll be grateful if your don’t refer to my own choice as “disgusting.”

The difference, @Love_my_doggie, is that most women have lived for decades with their birth name, and have established a level of identity with it, whereas the baby has not.

When girls married very young they hadn’t really “established” themselves before they got married. Now, women already have careers and networks of people who have come to know them as an adult with their maiden name. They did already identify themselves with their name, and that certainly is enough for me, but it’s much more of a deal changing your name once you’ve been in the adult world a while. It partly is the reason why women who divorce keep their married name. Often it has to do with already having children, but sometimes it’s just the name a woman has been using for so long she keeps it.

Probably not.
On the other hand, at that point, why would anyone get married in the first place?
Marriage has always been sort of a compromise between male sexual restlessness and female desire for stability.
If there is no quid pro quo, why would anybody make the compromise?
I wouldn’t-I’m divorced from an idiot who figured marriage was a means to an end.
I certainly would not make the same mistake twice.
Would you?

Women don’t have to take their husband’s name. They are not and should not be compelled to give up their name. I did in my first marriage and haven’t in my second. Women have choice. Therefore, they can equally reject this old-fashioned convention. Personally, I wouldn’t give up my own name again.

There is no law that says you to change your name. many people don’t nowadays. it is up to you. I didn’t change my name until about 2 years after marriage and it was only for travel purposes. Nobody cares nowadays unless they are old fashioned and boring. What part of the world are you living in.

IN most developed countries no one cares. Sometimes people are even married and you don’t even know because they don’t think it is any one’s business. Some people get legally married for tax reasons and never reveal it to anyone. When I lived in England I met many people that were legally married but still called their partner their boyfriend. Really no one cares.

What I hoped to convey in the details is much the same as @rojo‘s genealogy experience – taking the husbands name at the time of marriage largely erases the woman’s life up to that point, but for close family and friends.
I can’t look at a 30 year old yearbook and read the names of the females, then examine the face for traces of familiarity like I can with males.
I can’t look for commonality using surname (“Are you one of the Zaricks from Podunk?”) with a married woman like I can with males.
I can’t search for contact information on a former female acquaintance who’s marital status has changed like I can for males.
@JLeslie can’t find the descendants of one of her grandfather’s sisters because, presumably, that sister married and the new surname wasn’t recorded sufficiently.

Carly Fiorina is running for arguably the highest public office in the world on her second husband’s surname. Takes a little digging to find that her father has his own Wiki page.

One thing I will say is that the digital age has made surname hugely less important than it was in the day when @JLeslie‘s great aunt erased herself by marrying.

To @tynamite, @Love_my_doggie, et al. that seem to think I’m critical of a women choosing to take a her husband’s surname? I’m male, I never liked my surname, and my surname came with, literally, no living family. Had I married I would have preferred taking my spouse’s family name.

I think one spouse taking the other spouse’s name should be more a societal choice as opposed to the default.

@ibstubro I don’t think it has to do with recording it, it has to do with her marrying a Miller. Do you know how many people have the surname Miller? Then she had two girls and those two girls had the surname Miller and basically their mother’s maiden name is lost. It would be on their birth certificates, but that’s it. Someone was helping me search. I think she is trying to find where my great aunt is buried, and then trace where the people are who took care if the burial, most likely a daughter or her daughters, who likely are no longer Miller if they got married. Those daughters would be in their 70’s now if they are still alive.

@ibstubro, there are marriage records that record the woman’s maiden name and who she married and so allow genealogists to identify a woman’s married name. A quick search shows Birth, Marriage and Death records in the UK can go back as far as the 1500s. Prior to that, there would be church records. A woman’s history was not erased because she married and took her husband’s name.

@Earthbound_Misfit In the US it’s no so simple sometimes. I’m not sure why. I think part of the problem is birth, marriage, and death certificates are done at the state level, not the federal level. The US census helps, but I think census records are released going back 75 years and more. So if you need census info from 60 years ago you can’t get it. That’s the way I understand it anyway. I think an analogy would be you trying to find your great grandmother with the married last name Miller, or rather I think it’s Muller in Germany, a very popular name there too, but she only lived in Germany as a young person and later moved to Austria and her children married, changed their name, and at least one moved to another country where the name is still just as common, and possibly has moved 5 times since then to other countries.

If I google my myself I can see a history of places I’ve, and I can be figured out pretty easily, but some women probably never had social security numbers back in the day (a federal number that would help track someone no matter what state they lived in) which makes it harder to find older people with common last names.

@JLeslie, but that difficulty would appear to be about the way records are managed in the US rather than women taking their husband’s name. You need to know the state the person was in, but that would be true of trying to find a man called Miller too. @ibstubro suggested a women’s history was erased because she married and took her husband’s name, but that’s not true. The records are there. You just need to know how and/or where to access them. As to what women (or men) did with their lives beyond, births, deaths, marriages and census info, there’s often a lack of content and detail whether you’re a man or a woman.

Men are easier to find, because they don’t change names. I found a cousin I didn’t know existed on Facebook, because our name is rare and he is a son of my great uncle. I found a cousin of my father, because his mom’s surname is rare, and the cousin is hyphenated on Facebook. I don’t know if her legal name is the hyphenated surnames, or if she just did it for Facebook. When I try to search for the combination of my maiden name and Miller, no
one comes up, not even my aunt who is on Facebook, and married a Miller completely unrelated to the other Miller. She didn’t bother to put her maiden name as a search tool.

It is true that part of the problem here is the system of bookkeeping, which affects both genders, and having a common name makes it even more difficult. It’s not that women are erased, but they are much harder to find. Just with the unofficial Facebook example, a man typically wouldn’t change his name, so I wouldn’t have to worry about searching under the wrong name, or how he set up his surname in his profile.

Typo: grandson of my great uncle.

Possibly. No real way to know if it would make a difference. I kept my maiden name as my middle name.

@JLeslie “Men are easier to find, because they don’t change names.”

For what it’s worth, I have an older half-brother. My mother gave him up for adoption shortly after his birth. Both his given name and surname were changed by his parents. With just his birth information – nothing about his life after the adoption – I was able to locate him easily. Doing so wasn’t even a challenge.

So, changing one’s name doesn’t make a person difficult to find. If anything, the internet makes it too simple; each of us is so readily traced, there’s no privacy. A two-second search of my married name reveals every name I’ve had, each place where I’ve lived since childhood, and the members of my immediate family.

@Love_my_doggie I said the same thing about me. You can put my maiden name in a search and it shows every state I have lived in and my closest relatives. A listing even shows up with my current legal name and current city and state, and doesn’t even show my maiden name. Possibly that partly has to do with having a social security number since 1st grade, and having my name on documents, which happened less for women 100 years ago.

What I’m mainly talking about is trying to find descendants of my great aunt. Her daughters never had her maiden name, plus they might have changed their own last name if and when they married. One thing we are trying to find is where my great aunt is buried to help the search, but I’m not sure where she died, or where she is buried. She is buried under her married name Miller I’m sure. Do death certificates and cemeteries record maiden names and AKA’s? I don’t even know the answer to that. The mom of a friend of mine is helping me with the search, she loves doing that sort of thing.

@JLeslie, if you know her husband’s name and you can find their marriage certificate, that should show her maiden name. Her maiden name won’t help you find where she’s buried. You need to have some idea of where she died. If you know where the husband died, or even where close relatives died, that might help you to find her. You could also search obituaries. Newspapers are now archived, so that might help you find her if you’ve got some idea of where she died. Again, if you can’t find her, look for her husband. Having an idea of the place is really important though. Without it, regardless of whether it’s a man or a woman, if they have a common name, you’re pretty stuffed.

Exactly my point, @Earthbound_Misfit:

”...if you know her husband’s name…”
“If you know where the husband died…”

And if at some point she was widowed and re-married? Double the fun.

Her husband’s name is Miller. I said this over and over. She died a Miller. Her daughters are born Miller and probably married and changed their names. Their children, assuming they had some, have whatever last name their father have them.