DU (straight) men: do you want your wife to take your last name?

[truthspeaker]

I'm not married but I may be someday in the future. I would be flattered and honored if my future wife took my last name and it would make me feel good for some reason. But I don't think I'll even tell her my preference so she can make an uninfluenced decision. I totally understand why many women want to keep the last name they were born with.

[underpants]

1. My wife did

If she had decided otherwise I don't think it would have bothered me much.

[trumad]

2. Been married 11 years

and my wife still goes by her Maiden Name.. I find it unimportant...

[Screaming Lord Byron]

3. No, I asked my wife to keep her last name.

She wanted to take mine, but I wasn't comfortable with it, and the notion of wife-as-property. She hyphenates, which makes her sound like an upper-class English woman, which she'd probably like. :-)

[DBoon]

12. I'm glad her hyphenated name sound so wonderful

Ours would sound like some horrid ethnic stew!

[Screaming Lord Byron]

14. Halliday-Clark.

How Anglo is that?

[tigereye]

19. you know it's funny

I kept mine and that was very important to me at the time, and my husb didn't really care, as I recall. However, now I suppose I wouldn't really mind having his. I feel pretty established in who I am.

I think it is neat that you wanted her to keep hers. I think there are some cultural/ patrilineal-matrilineal issues that people are missing though in these discussions. I'll have to consult my anthro pals.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

20. Cheers. I was uncomfortable with the whole heritage of ownership,

property and patriarchy. On a personal level, I find it rather disturbing. Maybe I'm just getting hung-up on outdated models and semantics, but that's what I get from it.

[supernova]

23. Wow! Can I marry you too?

:loveya: :D

[Screaming Lord Byron]

26. Well, I might have to run it past the wife first.

But I can't see her having a problem with that, can you? :evilgrin:

[tigereye]

24. so Byron are you a Cancer

or another water sign? per a previous post.

Cancerian here

[Screaming Lord Byron]

25. Cancer. June 23rd.

[vi5]

4. I'm not single but before I got married.....

...I told my wife that it was her decision. I'm all in favor of any actions that a woman of today might feel the need to take in order to assert herself independently and maintain her identity beyond just being someone's wife. If she felt taking my name was an archaic patriarchal custom then I would have had no problem with it.

The only issue that I raised is that I would be sort of dissapointed if she was selective in which archaic patriarchal customs she takes a stand against. I assumed if she didn't like the idea of taking my name because it was an outdated, somewhat sexist custom, that she would not want her father to walk down the aisle and give her away as though she were property. Or that she wouldn't be using a veil or wearing a white dress or all of that.

Ultimately I would have been fine with whatever she chose, I just felt it important to lay my feelings on the table as well.

[mac56]

5. No. My lovely wife has kept the name she was born with.

Ever since I was a little kid in the pre-enlightenment '60s, I thought the name changing was a weird ritual.

[Beware the Beast Man]

6. Well, Mrs. Beast Man already has

Though not officially yet. I actually wanted to take her name, because it had a better ring to it.

[gpandas]

16. yeah mrs. beastman would raise eyebrows. eom

[ret5hd]

7. it matters not a whit...

what's a whit anyway?

[gpandas]

18. a particle, or bit, mostly used in negative statements eom

[GOPisEvil]

8. I think it's a decision we should make together.

I have no preference either way, really.

[Misinformed01]

9. Michael doesn't care

one way or another-

[ewagner]

10. We discussed it 29 years ago.......

in fact, her Father (who I really loved) offered me MONEY to encourage me to have MY last name CHANGED to hers...he said mine was too common and hers very distinctive.

We talked about it and decided that the conventions of the time would have made things more complicated and we didn't want that to happen. All-in-all it's worked out okay and I don't think my wife has ever had any regrets.

[DBoon]

11. My wife kept hers

She said because her professional credentials were all in her maiden name. I secretly suspect there is some element of ethnic nationalism involved.

Soemtimes it would be convenient if she took my name - mainly in commercial transactions (airline tickets, etc.). We get tired of explaining 1) We are really married 2) We have different last names.

On Edit: Personally, she is just wonderful with her own name.

Funny incident - I called her work and left a message that her husband called. When she got the message, she wondered why her father had called her - message was from Mr. Her-lastname!

[Cybergata]

28. In 1974, I had to explain why I had a different name than my husband,

but since I married a second time in 1994, no one seems to even notice or care. It is so common these days.

:hippie:

[charlie105]

13. Personally, it's not that important to me. But it helps with a lot

of thing in real life. Like medical insurance, health club memberships etc. An elderly member of my family is having a tough time with his and his wife's social security eligibility because they have have different last names. I don't know the details but I'm sure it's an exception rather than the norm.

For the record, my wife did change her last name - of her own accord.

[mrboba1]

15. My wife took mine...

it was easier to spell!!!

[XNASA]

17. Mrs. XNASA's maiden name was very difficult to spell and pronounce.

While I have a familiar Anglo-type name.

That was the only reason she changed.

[BiggJawn]

21. They change back after they dump me, so why bother?

Used to matter, now it doesn't.

[ProfessorGAC]

22. My Wife Did - It Never Even Came Up

We got married in 1980. The topic never came up. It apparently wasn't that important to her. I never suggested she should. She never suggested she didn't want to.

I guess i see this issue as sort of a tempest in a teapot. There are way more important things that keep a marriage strong, than what the monogram becomes.
The Professor

[ScreamingMeemie]

27. MrG never mentioned it. I just wanted to.

:hi:

Besides that, it makes the phone calls from the school office so much easier to decipher. ;)

[Cybergata]

29. I always ask my students before I call home,

what their mother's name is. I guess because I work in a University area & a liberal neighborhood, I just expect the mother to have different name. Most of them do.

Then I have the remarried mothers with different name, and the 1/2 siblings with different names. In the 1970s, I had a who string of 5 half brothers who all had a different last name. As a teacher, I'm just use to it.

:hippie:

[Magrittes Pipe]

30. It was part of the deal when I bought her from her father.

Now there's four chickens I'll never get back. x(

[skippysmom]

31. I took my husband's last name

but that's because my last name caused me to be made fun of as a kid (and also caused idiots to ask me as an adult, "gee, were you amde fun of a lot?") as it contains a pejorative. So I changed it.

But if my name were any different I would have kept it. Changing my name was a pain in the ass. And my mother in law really wanted me to change it, and far be from me to do anything she wants! :)

[geniph]

32. I've been married twice, and never even considered changing my name

It's my NAME. That's who I AM. Had either of my husbands wanted me to change my name, I'd have insisted they also change theirs, and that we pick a neutral name new to both of us; why should one person go through all the hassle of re-doing all their checks, credit cards, etc., and not the other? Fortunately, both my husbands preferred me to keep my own name; neither want me to become some sort of appendage. Any more than I wanted either of them to become some sort of appendage to me.