Cultural & Traditions - Name Change Conundrum

View Quoted Comment Yikes; that sounds frustrating! That’s one of the reasons I want to get a doctorate, actually. It’s not the main reason, but it’s a nice bonus. The main reason, of course, is career related.


We don’t want children, but if we did, they’d get both names hyphenated. I have family members where each spouse hyphenated, so their children have hyphenated names as well. It works well for them, so I’m sure it would be fine for ours if an accident were to happen lol

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My fiancé is Puerto Rican and I'm the American lol! Thank you for sharing your take on it...all of these posts are great!

You should do what you want, whatever that is. It's your name.

I am planning to hyphenate mine; however, I'm considering not officially changing it to avoid the hassle and just adding the hyphenated part socially (social media, address labels, email signature, etc.)

View Quoted Comment That’s awesome! I agree thanks for posting this topic. I’m glad I’m not alone in the feeling.

I plan to take my husbands last name. However, coming to that decision was not easy. I have a successful career and people in my industry know me for my maiden name. I also take pride in being a feminist and even wondered if it is anti-feminist to take his last name. After months of contemplating, I decided that sharing a last name with my husband is something I want to do because it symbolizes the start of our own family to me.

My advice would be to follow your instinct. If you really want to take his last name, you can explain to his family why it's important to you and I'm sure they will understand!

I'm keeping my last name. His is wonderful, but my family connection and history is important to me. I also have a professional career with my name, so changing it would/could change my brand and that isn't something I want.

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SAME on being a teacher and cheers to having an easy-for-students-to-pronounce last name!

Yes. My FH has two last names unhyphenated. The first name is his mother's and the second name is his father's. In his culture, women rarely change their last names. However, in my culture, women always take the last name of their husbands. I really want to have the same last name as my FH for personal reasons so I will be taking the second part of his name (his father's name) and changing my middle name to my maiden name. According to my FH, this would be more "acceptable" than taking his mother's name. That being said, people always shorten his last name so that it only includes his mother's name. We ultimately decided it would be best to take his father's name because it souls be less controversial and his mother's name does not translate easily due to its spelling being a word with a negative connotation in English.

View Quoted Comment Taking his name is not anti-feminist. What’s important and feminist is that YOU get to choose and decide what you want to do. I think I posted that I am probably hyphenating. Was going to keep my last name, but then kept feeling like I wanted to add his name too. He may be adding my maiden name to his middle name. Whatever works for both of you!

View Quoted Comment Agree. This is the key part, to me. Not which choice you make, keep or change or hyphenate your name. The feminist choice is to decide what you want, for reasons that are important to you ( you personally, and you and future spouse), and not be pressured by others to do what suits their political, social, or religious agenda. There is nothing more personal than your identity. Choose the name that is important to you. Feminism is about being a strong and independent enough woman to do that. People before us had to fight for that right, so we are now free to choose.