I plan on doing the same. My dad Americanized my family's last name, and because my girlfriend is the same ethnicity as him, I plan on taking her name to undo the damage and go back to my roots.
And don't marry a man who insists you take his. That's a wall of control he's building around you and he won't stop until he's separated you from everyone and everything you love. Marry the man who accepts it's your choice to decide, along with every other decision about yourself.
My ex took my last name, because he had siblings with children and my family name would have died with me. It was a gift to my father that his* grandson would carry the family name forwards. And no, that wasn’t a red flag – we were married for 30 years.
I'll admit when I was in my early 20s, it was a point of contention with one girl I was dating. I was young and stupid, my mom took my dad's name, etc.
But by 30, wiser, less prone to drama, I was solidly in the "who cares, do what makes you happy" crowd.
My wife kept her last name. It's easier, and less confusing for her clients and networking.
Grow the fuck up. Stop being so needy and insecure. It's a bad look.
It's heart warming to see Jeffrey Combs is an incredible actor with good taste in the company he keeps. It's exciting seeing him vocally shouting down the fascists.
I read the comment in his slimy “Brunt- FCA” tone the way he addresses Quark. I loved him already but seeing this just makes him so much more respectable and admirable.
Hot tip, change HIS last name prior to the wedding and she gets the name change free.
I know a couple that waited until after the wedding to do that and the husband changed his name, then the wife was given the option of keeping her old name, or switch to his old name.
She ended up having to go through the entire name change process without the benefit of the auto-name flip from the marriage.
Warning: Taken from decades-old memories of things that I wasn't involved in or paying much attention to! Anyway...
In Virginia a man sued the state like 30 years ago because they wanted to charge him to change his name, when a woman could change her name free when she got married. The state could either have charged women or made it free for all. They chose the later.
This is really interesting, because in my state in Australia, this process isn't gendered at all. The man can take the woman's name just as easily, same with same-sex marriages.
Yeah, that's what we are running into. The marriage forms here in NC make it simple to take the husband's last name as part of the process, but any other kind of change requires a lot of crazy, expensive, and time consuming steps.
I'm more surprised that he took the time to use an accent mark. Either a copy-paste to make sure he got it right, or lots of extra time changing his keyboard back and forth.
If they're not on their phone (which they probably are as others have pointed out), maybe they're just a Pokémon fan. I memorized the keyboard combo for the accented "é" about 25 years ago because of this. (Alt+130)
I actually had the pleasure of working with him on a motion comic project once (which sadly never got finished) and this is 100% him. He's a very cool guy in person and this is exactly the sort of thing I would have expected him to say, although maybe not directly to Matt Walsh.
He's also a massive Radiohead fan. I'm not, so I mostly just sat there and listened when he gushed about them at lunch after hearing them on the radio in my car. Thankfully, the other people with us knew more about Radiohead than I did.
He also said one of the funniest things I've heard a pro like him say in a work setting, talking about a movie role he was offered: "I'll do it for $1000, but not if the script is shit."
My wife went double-barreled after I specifically told her I didn't care if she changed, kept, or anything in between. I didn't want to change my name, so why should she have to?
Who cares what name anyone uses .... my wife and I never got married and she's always had her name and we never bothered changing a thing because we never cared. No one cares ... not even the government.
Aren't you automatically married by common law in Canada after a certain number of years? I seem to remember that was the case with my uncle and his wife. But he eventually had to marry her because she's German and she couldn't get a long-term visa so he could work in the states when he was allowed to return. He dodged the Vietnam war draft. When Clinton allowed people like him to return, he got a job at the Library of Congress. Quite ironic.
Meanwhile, she continued to get paid for Canadian work because she was a professor at the (at the time) by-mail only Athabasca University.
If Uncle Sam was expecting them to stick around, they didn't. They moved back to Saskatoon after he retired. Canada treated him very well. He happened to be pursuing a folklore degree right at the time the Canadian government realized they needed folklorists to help preserve various cultures within their borders.
Yes ... that's why I say the government doesn't care ... after a couple have been together for a few years, they are more or less considered married, legally speaking. We thought of a ceremony for a while ... then waited for so long that we just never think of it any more.
I know some same sex couples that have been together for over 30 years up here, they got together years ago as 'friends living together' when the attitudes of same sex couples were still frowned upon. Now after all that time, they are more or less married couples and file their taxes just like every other married couple. When it comes to finances and taxation, governments and economics really don't care about sexuality or sexual orientation, as long as you pay your taxes.
I also know of a friend of a friend from the sixties who lived up north near Timmins who received US draft dodgers during the 70s. A couple of young professionals who eventually became high school teachers and college professors and ended up just living up here all their lives. They did a lot for people and gave a lot of their energy and expertise to people up here ... also excellent folk musicians and artists ... all because of some dumb war they were avoiding. There was some good that came out of those dumb wars the US was forcing their young people to die in for no reason.
Don't worry about rambling ... I always enjoy hearing from you.
Get more sleep ... never apologize for being a Ramblin' Man. Stay well my friend.
There are tons of reasons why one might not want to change their name. At a minimum you have to send a form to the state, update any licenses you have, contact your banks, your insurance, your place of work... Best case scenario it's an annoying hassle to deal with.
Was I appreciative when my wife took my name? Sure. But that's mostly because we also share the same first name so it's hilarious to share the same last name. But I told her many times before we got married she didn't need to do it. I never expected that out of her.
If having a matching name is a big deal with you, then you can change your name.
It seems reasonable for each partner to continue to use their original family name if they want to, even if it's only the husband's name on the marriage certificate.
If you go down the legally hyphenated name path, after a few generations, this could potentially devolve to family names like: Jones-Smith - Smythe-Johns - Longbottom-Allcock - Junior III (etc).
Yeah my wife has agreed that taking my name would be nice, but it’s a pain in the ass. And omg yes I love your attitude. Part of why I wanted to share a last name is so we can be Ms. and Mrs. Lastname.
"Andorian women are far more aggressive than Earth females. She made a... an overture. I had a choice - charge her with assaulting a superior or... marry her for 32 years and counting."
I almost kept my maiden, but now it's an additional middle name. I love my maiden name, but I changed my name to my husbo's because it has a Z in it and I was super stoked to have a Z in my signature. 😂I also like the way it sounds with my first name.
Sometimes, it's really that simple. My husband didn't care either way when we discussed it. It was just a choice I made.
It's illegal to change your name for wedding reason in Quebec (Canada). Something that followed the quiet Revolution and distancing government and religion. You don't own your wife. You can still pee on her shoes but it won't be notarized.
My maiden name was awful to have. Other people liked it because it looked cool, but it was a hassle for everything even in the US, where at least part of it was well known. I then moved to Germany, where it was just totally foreign.
My married name is under three syllables (vs more than eight), easy to spell, and sounds as German as possible. My husband would have loved to take my last name, but we couldn’t do it the way we wanted to (German naming laws 🙃). I would really have liked to at least have been able to keep my maiden name as a middle name, but alas.
I still feel very weird (about a year out) about it, but there are way more good feelings than bad.
However, it’s really annoying that people now assume I’m German. I put in a shit load of work to learn German well as an adult, and my strongest skill is in pronunciation. That combined with my name means people think I’m just a native German who’s bad at grammar, and they don’t correct me anymore.
I always wanted to blend in as a native, I just didn’t think about the middle stretch where I just seem a bit dumb to others, both because of the language and cultural things that people now expect me to know (I thought it was called handkäse because you can eat the little rounds straight from the hand, no need for bread, until last year).
I have a German surname, but my family changed the pronunciation to sound lest German during WWII so now Germans pronounce it "wrong" and no one else can pronounce it at all.
I read most of my news, so it took about a month to realize the VP candidates last name was pronounced “Walls,” so you’re among company.
I’m from Connecticut, which has a town called Berlin, pronounced BURR-lun (/‘bərlən/). That , like the pronunciation of many German-origin names, was changed during WWII, but it’s basically a shibboleth for locals now, like Houston Street.
German here. Took my wife’s name because she has publications and I don’t. I have no idea what you are talking about. In Germany any partner can take the others name in a marriage or even have a compound name (maiden name - new name). My father took my mother’s name, they divorced 20 years ago, now my father is going to change his name back to his old name.
My sister married her girlfriend, she took her name. Idk at this point it kinda became our internal family joke thing although our last name wasn’t that horrible
I already had a compound name, and we both have middle names, which are the relevant problems to combining our names the way we wanted.
In Germany, you can’t have a twice hyphenated name (not that I wanted one), nor can you use that hyphenated name as an additional middle name, if you already have one.
That seems pretty common to me as a Californian. However two couples I know greatly regret this decision because they both had long names to start with and now they can’t fill out any forms successfully.
My wife's first name and my last name would sound really awkward together, which is the main reason why she kept hers and why it never bothered me that she did.
It is annoying to have to explain to people at places like hospitals that we're married even though we have different last names.
I've always thought it was weird, the wife changes her name.
But in your situation? That's the perfect reason to do it.
You could also wear matching outfits every day! Like Jean and Gene from The Umbrella Academy season 4
The wife changing her name is one of the mildest things inflicted on women in traditional marriage customs. In some cultures when a woman’s husband dies she is forced to marry his younger brother!
I hate hyphenated last names. It’s more of an aesthetic thing though and not really something I actually care about. If I were a kid and had to put a long ass last name on every paper I’d be rather annoyed (my last name is long to begin with)
I'm inclined to agree. Main issue for me is that it's not a sustainable practice and you're possibly making this very problem more difficult for the next generation.
Particularly if you plan to have kids, I think it's nice to have one name. It just doesn't have to be a man's specifically. Name mashups are fun, or simply reversing gender stereotypes. I once went to a wedding where the couple flipped a coin to decide whose name they'd take forward and it was possibly the most exciting part of the day.
My girlfriend and I are talking about this, I want her to keep her last name, I want to keep mine, but I also want to share a last name with my future children.
I'm the last male with that last name, which is very unique - basically everybody with that last name is related and we can track it at least 400 years in the past and I want my children to be part of that history. But I also want my girlfriend to have the same, like having our children be connected to her family history as well. So we will combine our names to not sever those connections.
Only part of contention is which name comes first, I like it alphabetically which would put my name first, her first and last name are alphabetically following letters (like A-B eg. Anne Barn or Chloe Detmer) which is also nice, so I am torn about that question :D
Long story short, my wife and I have been married 10+ years. She just changed from her maiden name to mine a couple weeks ago. I kinda miss her old name, it feels weird having the same name now.
I'm Spanish (we don't change names after marriage there), and my (British) partner wants to take my name. Rationally I know that's typical in the UK. But subconsciously, I feel like the people who share last names are siblings. I don't want to feel like my partner and I are siblings, that's so weird!!
I'm a woman and paid to change my surname because it was difficult for everyone to pronounce. I can only hope my future husband will want to take my name rather than the other way around. I paid for it, it's kinda VIP now.
When discussing marriage with my girlfriend (now wife), she mentioned not wanting to change her name. I told her this wasn't acceptable - I expected her to change her name. But she repeated not wanting to change her last name. I told her she misunderstood, I didn't want her to change her last name, I wanted her to change her first name to "groupofcrows property", she can keep her last name. She did not accept this. (Yes this was a real conversation, yes we have been married for 7 years, no she did not change her name)
The time I got married, I asked my wife not to change her last name because the women in my family don't. (Even if they did, I think I would still find it off-putting. It's my last name. You have your own last name.) She insisted on changing it regardless of what I wanted, and that was the "red flag"...
The joke is on her. She had to go through the trouble of changing it back after the divorce :)
The joke is on her. She had to go through the trouble of changing it back after the divorce :)
That always sounded like a huge pain in the ass to me. People are so unrealistic about marriage so often though. It might end. Many marriages do. Don't do something stupid as if it never will to make things harder on you later.
I knew a guy who had his wife's name tattooed in huge letters on his neck. What a dumb thing to do.
My brother got his girlfriend's named tattooed on his chest as a surprise for her. Luckily they've been married for ~20 years now so it worked out, but that struck me as a risky move at the time.
When my parents got divorced, my mother didn't change her last name. She said it was her name most of her adult life and didn't feel the need to revert to her childhood name.
We decided our daughter would take my name because my wife's brother had two sons that would continue her family name. And considering my daughter is queer, it's not all that likely she's going to have a kid anyway. Not that we knew that at the time (although I used to joke that I hoped she would be because I wouldn't have to worry about her getting pregnant as a teen).
This happened in my family, to me, and yes. My middle and last names are my parents last names. Another person I know took the hyphenated version of their parents last names.
Asking with curiosity and respect, for those in the "keeping my name" camp -
You were given your name by your parents, and most often the surname is the father's surname.
Most of you adopt nicknames or pet names which change over time (what your family calls you vs your friends vs your colleagues)
Why is it a really big deal to you? Is it being asked / expected to change your name by a societal norm / being told what to do? Or the effort involved in changing it?
Source - male, changed my surname when I moved internationally, married, and wife's family expected her to change her name to mine because we were starting a new family and that would be the family name.
I didn't give a shit because my surname isn't my family name, it's one of my middle names, so it seemed arbitrary, and said so to both her and them.
Wife decided she would change her name and our kid has that name too. It was an absolute pain in the ass to do for her because she's lived here for much longer than me so had more things to change, so I understand not wanting to deal with that. But years down the track - everyone seems happy - reading through these comments tho many of you view this as wrong??
Generally, women are expected to change their last name to their husband's last name when they get married. It's viewed as wrong because it's needlessly patriarchal.
I'm in a similar boat of my name not being a big deal to me (also male). However, if a name is arbitrary, why should you change it? If it doesn't matter whether it's your original name or the name of your spouse, why on earth go to the trouble of changing it in the first place? "That's how we've always done it" has never really held much water for me as an argument. If it's of merit, it should stand up to scrutiny without the appeal to tradition.
However, to many people, names aren't arbitrary. From a historical point of view, marriage used to be considered a transaction of property, and a woman's last name had the connotation of ownership. Were I a woman, I would find that quite abhorrent, and even though that connotation has diminished I still don't think I could stomach it.
For some specific cases, names hold recognition. I'm a singer and have friends & mentors for whom performing is their full time job. To change your last name after building name recognition can do serious harm to your fame, and thus income. So most of them in that situation will retain their maiden name for job security more than anything.
Yeah it's not the changing, it's the expectation. My mom told me one "women don't have last names", meaning there is no matrilineal naming convention here. So basically she didn't care about changing hers because it was her dad's name or her husband's, but found it problematic. Why does "family name" follow the men like that, when the kids are born to the mothers?
I just see it as a hassle. Like why even bother? She would have to explain why she wants to take my name and I would try talking her out of it "What if we get a divorce in 7 years or so? Do you just have to change it back then?"
I'm sure that would go over well
Everyone has funny or unique stories about last names... Some people change their names for love, others keep them for work, and some even mix them up for fun. It’s like having many characters in one story, just like Jeffrey Combs does in acting—each name choice has its special vibe
I only recently found out he was Brunt as well as Weyoun. And had no idea about the others. (I still haven't gotten around to Enterprise.) What a talented guy!
As someone who slept on enterprise for a long time, 100% agree. Everytime I see antennae I know I'm about to be in for a good time, and I'm just a stupid pink skin.
I don’t mean this as a “gotcha”, but my understanding is that in the vast majority of places where marriage doesn’t change names, the children are still always named after the parent with an outie. I just want to push back against this “western bad” meme.
How normal is a maiden name? I thought mostly Christians did it. In a lot of cultures surname is just a father's name, so maiden concept never made sense to me.
I don't know what you think a maiden name is, but it is her father's surname.
It's a 'maiden name' because you're supposed to keep it until you're married, at which point you're no longer a maiden and you take your husband's name.
Sorry English is not my first language. I meant to ask, how common it is to change surname to husband one.
I think the wife should get to keep her surname because like I said in most cultures surname is a father/family name so once married, your father or family you were born in doesn't change.