Apparently I've used "Oppressive tool of the patriarchy" in a poll before.

[andrewducker]

[Poll #1623051]

Comments

[andrewducker]

And, of course, the Wikipedia discussion page already has an argument over what name her page should have...

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Courtney Cox-Arquette is listed at Courtney Cox. It's the only analagous sitch I could think of to check, I'm sure there are more.

[lilaanne.livejournal.com]

I took added O'Leary to my name when I got married meaning I now I have Conway (mother's maiden name - my birth name) Robertson (father's name - acquired when my parents married when I was six) O'Leary (husband's name).

I wanted to have the same name as any children we might have had so I decided that I should be an O'Leary. When we had Joey she got Conway O'Leary (as a nod to my late grandfather and my mother).

I never considered it anything but a personal choice and my reasons for having such a strange name and also giving my daughter an unorthodox combination were always my own and i don't think that they would have changed if I'd be marrying a woman - it is an important part of identifying a family unit and I'd like to maintain that unity even if it is just a name.

Having said that I love it when couples both change their names to a compound.

[0olong.livejournal.com]

I'd always assumed it was so that your initials (middle names aside) would be LOL.

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

Perfectly valid personal choice *if she chooses it*. If she *doesn't* choose it, as in for example Miriam Gonzales Durantez or Cherie Booth, but is referred to by that name anyway in newspapers, then definitely oppressive tool of the patriarchy.

[naath.livejournal.com]

This.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

Yes, that does piss me off. But then the publications that tend to keep on referring to people in that way tend to be those which still think men should control their wives.

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

I answer to both my name and my wife's, and the other way around...

We gave the kid's both our names, but use only mine because that's still traditional - so requires no explanation - and it's not fair to burden them with a double-barrelled name.

[spacelem.livejournal.com]

When my parents remarried when I was 3, I ended up taking my stepdad's surname (before I even really understood the issues). Many years later my father refused to come to my own wedding because I wasn't getting married in his name. It was the stupidity of this issue that led me to not care about surnames. Do whatever the hell you like. I'm better known by my first name or by "spaceLem" anyway.

As for my wife, she just said that she was giving up one man's name for another. I never once asked her to do it.

[princealbert.livejournal.com]

Very similar story here. Born with name I, adopted by stepfather aged 3 to name McN, at 21 decided to use my original birthname again.
(in Scotland you dont need Deed Poll, you can just start using chosen name as long as there is no fraud implications)

Stepfather was sure that I had disinherited myself with the name change.
(Not true in Scotland)

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

It can be a perfectly valid personal choice, but it isn't one made completely free of patriarchal influences, otherwise we'd see a lot more men taking their partners' names.

[andrewducker]

That'd be pretty much my view. There's always going to be a lot of people taking the culturally easier path, to avoid having repeated explanatory conversations, if nothing else.

[yalovetz]

I know that a marriage certificate is legally considered sufficient for changing names on official documentation (no other legal documents are required). I wonder if men who take their wives names ever have trouble getting their paperwork changed with just a marriage certificate or whether they end up also having to do a legal name change to back up their choice?

[birdsflying]

requires a deed poll, apparently, according to my best friend's husband-to-be who is taking her name when they get married next week. To say he is unimpressed is putting it lightly. (also, deed poll is not the case if he were to be marrying another man and taking his name, so... Sigh.)

[coughingbear]

Both?

I haven't changed my name, and I have had to explain this quite a few times. No one's asked hano why he hasn't changed his name. Not sure how oppressive this is, but I think it suggests there's still plenty of cultural pressure for women who marry men to take the man's name.

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

It took two years for my wife's mother to stop addressing letters to "Andrew & Holly Hickey", even though she *knew* she hadn't taken my name (partly because she thinks the idea is stupid anyway, partly because Holly Hickey sounds ridiculous, and partly because she was emigrating two days after the wedding and the paperwork would be ridiculous).

As bills are mostly in her name, though, the presumption tends to be more the other way - I get a lot of people from energy, telephone etc companies phoning and addressing me as "Mr Matthies", even though I keep telling them "I'm Mr Hickey, Ms Matthies' husband". At least one company has lost our business in large part because their telephonists couldn't remember this even when reminded three times in one conversation...

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

This time I want to vote "perfectly valid choice" but have the poll change it to "tool of the patriarchy" some time over the next 100 years... :)

[andrewducker]

Go and make that suggestion for an upgrade to the polling system :->

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

When you take your partner's name you are just doing the bidding of the albino elite who live in the cornfields and rule the world behind the scenes.

[meaningrequired.livejournal.com]

Choice is important to me, and something I consider to be part of the whole free speech thing. In the same way I don't want to be told or the system to be that I would HAVE to take my partner's surname, I don't want to be UNABLE to.

Urg. That didn't come out well. I've not had lunch yet, there isn't enough sugar in the bit of my brain that makes sentences :)

[andrewducker]

Nope, makes perfect sense to me. Same as the hijab - I want people to be able to choose not to wear it, which means they should also be allowed to choose to wear it. Taking their choice away is always bad.

*wanders in from friendsfriends*

[birdsflying]

for me it would very much be a matter of personal choice but I wouldn't want to take the choice away from people (er, if that makes sense? like, I wouldn't want to say that you could never take the male surname or anything.)

Me, I have one of the world's commonest English-speaking surnames (Jones), which is a blessing and a curse vis a vis professional use/search engines but tbh, the decision would partly rest on the other name and context, frex: My partner has quite a nice and unusual surname and his only other sibling has changed her surname to something else for personal reasons via deed poll, so if we got married I would factor that into the decision because wow, the world is not going to run out of people called Jones any time soon...

Re: *wanders in from friendsfriends*

[andrewducker]

Yeah - it's stiuations like this that make it clear that there's no simple solution - everyone is going to have personal reasons for whatever decisions they come to.

We seem to have an interesting cross-section of friends. I wouldn't have connected some of those people at all!

[rm.livejournal.com]

That said (personal choice for both) I am often uncomfortable when women take their husbands names (not always, when the new name sounds better with their first, or they are estranged from the family that raised them, then I don't blink). But, regardless, I know all that is my issue that, while coming from a reasonable place, I don't need to dump on other people.

[zz]

As an occasional genealogist, it's a pain in the arse when people change names. first names within a lifetime are bad enough, but changing surnames (or even spelling of the same name) somewhere up an ancestry...

I think I'd want my kids to have my surname officially, partly for the above reason and that my dad indoctrinated me with a sense of the family name.
I don't think I'd change my name to a partner's, as I'm used to mine. I wouldn't expect them to change theirs, and if they did might have to mock them for being conformist before accepting it as a sweet gesture of family unity or something.

[missedith01.livejournal.com]

More than anything else it strikes me as just a really weird thing to want to do. Those married types. They're just all strange and unsettling.

[garunya.livejournal.com]

The amount of paperwork it would involve to actually do this in Vietnam would be ridiculous... so while my wife is very happy to be known as Như Miller, it's likely that her documents will always say Phạm Lâm Quỳnh Như

[xquiq.livejournal.com]

I am completely comfortable with people doing as they wish in this regard, but think it should be what they wish, not some expectation.

For me at nearly 30 changing my name would seem a bit odd. I'm quite attached to it.

T has an uncommon name and I could see benefits & drawbacks to taking it.

That said, we're unmarried and in unfamiliar circles I'll answer to both, but correct where I feel necessary.

To be honest there are other things that irritate me more than people assuming am / will be Mrs K.

[laplor.livejournal.com]

When I married I took my husband's surname for the purpose of getting away from my birth name. The more distance the better.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I always planned to do that, change my surname to my wife's to escape my (father's surname), but unfortunately I got bored of waiting and changed my surname anyway a few months before I met the lady who is now my wife. Doh!

[d-c-m.livejournal.com]

A woman taking her partner's name after they marry
Portia De Rossi taking Ellen DeGeneres' surname
None of the above. ;)

[random-redhead.livejournal.com]

I took Phil's surname when we married and I've not given it back since we seperated. BUt this is mainly because I Hate my maiden name owing to bullies chanting it.
I occasionally wonder about changing it to something else but it seems more hassle than its worth.
Wherever you go, there you are.

[0olong.livejournal.com]

Like leg-shaving and high heels, it's probably at least a bit of both.