I took my husband’s last name at the age of 25.
We’d already been together for more than a decade, and I’d imagined over and over again what this would feel like.
My maiden name was a glorious one—a much better pen name actually—but it didn’t mesh well with his. At all. (My maiden name is Friend.)
No one told me that it would be hard to say goodbye to my old last name. No one shared with me that a mini death was taking place as I changed everything over legally.
But, despite having a hard time letting go, I would again take his last name in a heartbeat.
I personally think hyphenated names are ideal, although, for me, this didn’t seem a plausible option, given the, frankly, less-than-exciting combination of our two “word” surnames.
Instead, I chose to bury “Friend” and embrace being a “White.”
Yet, in this contemporary moment of feminism—where, thankfully, women who claim to not be one are called out for their absurdity—I’ve never felt more judged for sharing my husband’s last name.
I’m not judged on a daily basis or even by most people, but, specifically as a writer and a feminist, it’s almost like I’m supposed to apologise for my choice. I do not apologise.
I also don’t apologise for staying home with my kids, and I know full well that I work full-time too—just inside my home. I don’t apologise, either, for sharing my last name with my husband and our daughters. Ironically, I couldn’t care less if a woman does or doesn’t keep her original last name upon marriage, or if she works outside or inside her home. Instead, I support her ability to choose.
Staying home is not an option for every woman. Another aspect of modern womanhood is the simple reality that many have to work to feed and clothe our children. (My mother worked more than full-time as a teacher.)
What I have difficulty understanding, and even less capability embracing, is how women want to place themselves into separate, opposing camps from one another, instead of unifying and collectively embracing that “woman” encompasses a whole hell of a lot of ground.
Anytime a group, especially a minority group, pits themselves against each other there is only one group that wins, and it’s not “us.”
We should not be concerned over working mum or stay-at-home mum, or married or single or Mrs. White or Ms. Friend—at least not to the deficit of promoting a woman’s right to live within her personal choices.
What should overwhelmingly concern us most is that I don’t expect to be exactly like another person because we’re both women, but, regardless, there’s a shared kindred knowledge of what still needs to be done in order to best lead my own two daughters into a greater space of equality; into a better world.
So take your husband’s last name or leave it—I couldn’t care less.
I would, as already professed, take my husband’s last name time and time again because I like sharing my name with him, but don’t for one second falsely think this makes me less independent or less or more of anything. These, like my last name, are only labels that don’t properly contain or display my worth.
This post originally appeared on the blog of Jennifer S. White.
Jennifer is a voracious reader, obsessive writer, passionate yoga instructor and drinker of hoppy ales. She’s also a devoted mama and wife (a stay-at-home yogi). She considers herself to be one of the funniest people that ever lived. In addition to her work on elephant journal and The Huffington Post, Jennifer has over 40 articles published on the wellness website MindBodyGreen and her column Your Personal Yogi ran in the newspaper Toledo Free Press. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in geology, absolutely no degrees in anything related to literature, and she currently owns a wheel of cheese. Her books, The Best Day of Your Lifeand The Art of Parenting: Love Letters from a Mother are available on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ .
Top Comments
I think it's amazing that she has the right to make that choice. Instead of judging her for her choice, applaud her. A name is just a name.
I'm not married, but I used to think if I did get married I would keep my name but have since pondered this idea only because I think there is a whole lot of logistical problems involved, i.e. what surname do you give the children? Instead do you go for a double barrelled name, which then becomes double barrelled again and again with each generation? The other reason is that I've recently become very interested in family history and I have noticed that having one name going down the line is so much easier research wise. If the tradition had been to keep the woman's last name since time began then I would think too that would be easier to follow that tradition, but because it has been the tradition (sexist or otherwise) to keep the man's last name I do see that changing this with every generation becomes difficult with family history research. Although having said that, first names too tended to run in families, so if someone was called Joan or Arthur then that was because it was a family name. I know people who do family research who will say "Oh his name was Arthur Smith, Arthur wasn't a name in our family so he is unlikely to be one of ours, on the other hand this guy Jeremy Smith might be one of ours because Jeremy was a family name." And of course in some cultures there were further traditions, e.g. the first son was named after a grandfather, the first daughter named after one of the grandmother's etc. So in recent years, probably since the 60s people haven't been following the first name tradition either. Which of course impacts on family history research too, but I think that the changing of surnames will eventually make it rather difficult to research family history, though on the other hand our record keeping is much better, which in some ways negates the reasons for keeping all the traditions, because in the days when things weren't written down people kept similar names so that they could keep a track of their bloodline.
Of course someone is probably reading all this thinking, who cares about family history and I do see your point, but for some of us who are interested in this it will make researching more difficult, then again one thing will be easier if a woman doesn't change her name, and that is it makes it much easier to find her death certificate, because often you know someone's maiden name but can't figure out when they died because the death certificate may be in their married name.
Also as already mentioned there are logistical issues in what do you call the kids or the whole double barrelled thing going on generation after generation until people's names become 100 letters long!
So whilst I am not adverse to women keeping their maiden names I do think there are so many logistical issues to it. Perhaps an idea is that both partners change their name on marriage to be a combined name, but just the first three letters of each's name, so e.g. a Smith marries a Jones so it becomes Smijon and then there kids have the last name of Smijon also, then when the child Smijon gets married to Black it becomes Smibla. Yes I already see the problem with this the words are too weird too pronounce! Also should it be Smijon or Jonsmi! Maybe it just goes alphabetically so it has to be Jonsmi because J is before S.
Screw this, easier to stay single and childless!