12 August 2009

Should brides be required to take their husband's name?

To my amazement, a substantial proportion of Americans say "yes."
Some 70 percent of the respondents in a new study feel [new brides] should take their spouse’s surname - and 50 percent say that it should be a legal requirement for a woman to take her spouse’s last name.

The study, presented Tuesday at the American Sociological Association’s annual meeting, was done by the Center for Survey Research at Indiana University, as reported by USA Today.

When the respondents were asked why they felt women should change their name after the wedding, Hamilton says, “They told us that women should lose their own identity when they marry and become a part of the man and his family. This was a reason given by many.”

Other respondents said they felt the marital name change was essential for religious reasons or as a practical matter. “They said the mailman would get confused and that society wouldn’t function as well if women did not change their name...”

I suppose I should stop being startled by the underlying conservatism of the American public. In my own family, in about half of the marriages in my generation (including my own), the bride has retained her maiden name. I knew that wasn't the "norm," but I didn't realize the extent of the countervailing viewpoint.

19 comments:

  1. my wife has also retained her "maiden name", and this is increasingly commonplace among professionals, simply as a matter of convenience. however, when spouses have different last names, there arises the question of how offspring are to be named. in this, i found the american public to be even more conservative, in that even couples with different last names almost always elect to have their children take the husband's last name.

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  2. Wowee! I'm shocked. When my husband asked me to marry him, I said I would, but that I wouldn't take his name. So far, we are 28 years along in a very happy and stable marriage. We DID give our kids my husband's surname because we didn't want to do the hyphenated thing. Funny thing is that several of my brothers insist on addressing me by my husband's surname. I don't know why they don't "get" it.

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  3. Your brothers don't call you by your first name??

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  4. "there arises the question of how offspring are to be named."

    Girls receive the mother's last name, boys the father's last name. In a genetic hereditary sense, this even makes a bit of sense (since the Y chromosome is passed down the male line and the mitochondria is passed down the female line).

    Worse case scenario is that people would assume the boy and girl are step siblings or half-siblings from prior marriages.

    If a kid is neither male nor female, flip a coin or something. A last name is going to be the least of their adaptive problems.

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  5. I know men who have taken on the women's name, mostly because the female was the last of that line whereas the male wasn't.
    My partner and I have talked about which name we'll take, mine, his or both. However, we both have long last names so taking both might be a problem. We've also talked about just making a new family name.
    We haven't decided anything yet, but will probably keep our names, give one of our surnames as a "middle name" to our kids and the other name as a surname.

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  6. While not a big deal, the reasoning for the other way needs to be explored, also.

    Without legitimate reason (convenience does not count), man and wife are supposed to be one flesh. Why wouldn't you want the same name? People treat marriage as such a joke, divorcing for everything up to mere convenience. And they wonder why marriage is in so much trouble.

    If you are getting married, both should take on the same name, whatever it is. Seperate names is just ridiculous. Business professionals can just get a D.B.A. (doing business as) if its such a big deal.

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  7. I have been using my maiden name for 30 years of marriage. It's dreadful that people think a woman should lose her identity when she marries. Stupidity is the biggest threat to America's future!
    In old English law, a wife was property of a husband. PROGRESS! Improvement in social attitudes! that's what this is, folks.
    My surname is a little difficult, so we used it as a middle name for our daughter and gave her my husband's surname.

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  8. When (or if) I get married, I'm happy for the kids to have my husband's surname but I'd like to keep my own. However, I'm not sure the Australian government likes that.

    When my sister-in-law married my brother, she applied for a passport. She wrote the application using her maiden name. She also filled in the spousal information, stated she was married and had written my brothers name as her husband, and they automatically processed and issued her passport with my brother's surname, essentially assuming and forcing her to adopt it.

    She was rather annoyed, especially since she is from Hong Kong generally it's common for a woman to leave her name as it is after marriage there.

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  9. Reason enough not to get married. I like my last name, spent my entire life with this name why would I change my whole identity? Isn't the man marrying me as I am, not as his property.

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  10. It could be argued that your surname is not your identity and is just as much a mark of ownership as any other. Be happy with the 'brand' you were given at birth, I suppose.

    I tried to convince my wife to let me take her family name on marriage, but she insisted that she adopt mine. Damned shame as her name was so much more interesting.

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  11. "And they wonder why marriage is in so much trouble."

    I don't mean to start an argument but if you think marriage is in trouble because of wives not adopting their husbands' last name, please back this up with some statistics on divorce rates under both naming conventions.

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  12. Wow. In Quebec (a province of Canada) it is against the law to take your husband's name. You MUST retain your maiden name. I'm not sure why, but it's been that way since 1981.

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  13. Oddly enough, my postal delivery has never been affected by the fact that my husband and I have different surnames. Apparently delivery is based on the street address and the delivery person doesn't have to memorize who lives where!

    Both of my daughters have both of our last names, but not hyphenated and my last name is last. (Had either of them been born male, the last names would have been the other way around.) This has not even caused a great deal of confusion at school.

    A bonus side effect of having different last names is being able to instantly identify telemarketers. If they ask for Mrs. HisName or Mr. MyName, they obviously don't actually know us...

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  14. In a fit of individualistic pique, I legally changed my entire name. two years later, I met my husband; my decision to hyphenate upon marriage was mine alone. (He got to keep his name, he was happy.)

    Almost every call-center drone has had a total brainfart when they ask for my last name. I have to say it at least twice, then spell it, because the cadence sounds like a full name.

    And it's my first name that actually difficult.

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  15. Surnames first appeared in the early millennium as a way for others to identify you. For example, a surname of Johnson meant you were the son of John, and Johnston meant you were from the town of John. If you and your parents grew up in different towns, it was entirely possible for you to have completely different surnames, so surnames aren't always hereditary. So the fact that people expect women to take on the husband's surname leads me to agree with a previous comment that this convention was established such that women were viewed as the man's property.

    Reading these comments makes me realize how there's actually quite a wide spectrum of naming conventions. I feel like the "traditional" method of taking on the husbands' last name is only considered traditional in the sense that white Christians have been, for centuries, doing what they can to exert power on women and the rest of the world, insisting that their way is the only way.

    I don't know about the traditions from other cultures, but Spanish/Mexican families honor both last names and it's very common for Chinese women to retain their own last name.

    As someone noted before, it's very common for anyone with a PhD to retain their own surname because ALL of their publications prior to marriage was produced under their own last name. It would also be really difficult for anyone looking for their publications to find their work if they didn't know that they had more than one surname, and if no one reads their work, they would not get very far in the field.

    So short answer for me is, no, brides should not be required. It would cause quite a bit of a mess for non-white/christian cultures as well as anyone with a bit of higher education.

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  16. y'know, I think Americans (the US ones, anyway)just keep getting more backward by the day. my wife kept her name 26 years ago and i'm glad she did. she's "her", not "mine". and i can't recall it ever causing any confusion.

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  17. To the third Anonymous [why don't you guys just sign a name. it would make these long comment threads much easier to navigate] -

    You said "Without legitimate reason (convenience does not count), man and wife are supposed to be one flesh." Who says they are supposed to be "one flesh" and who says "one flesh" means "one name." That's a Biblical adage, not an eternal truth. You shouldn't try to impose your Christian religious beliefs on the rest of the world.

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  18. Spyra, my lecturer was one of the males I mentioned whom changed his name to his wife's last name.
    He would give students his papers that he wrote before he married (which of course were published under his maiden name) and would ask them to critique it.

    (His papers and book published after marriage are under his married name.)

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  19. what's really hilarious is that young women today are mostly taking their husband's name as they don't want to be identified with the old hags of the previous generation http://honeymoons.about.com/cs/eurogen1/a/weddingstats.htm.

    I predict that in five years no one under 25 will have a tattoo for the same reason.

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