The Name Game
Keep It? Change It? Start all over? Here's how to handle your, um, handle ...
By Anna Sachse CTW Features
Growing up a hippie, liberal, dare-I-say feminist girl in Eugene, Ore., I never thought I would change my last name. Anna Topea Hirsh was who I was, and I couldn't imagine being anything else.
But when I finally got married last year, I decided to make the switch. I had four reasons:
- My husband-to-be didn't insist I do it.
- I decided I wanted the new family I was forming - me, my husband and our future children - to all have the same name.
- I love my new in-laws and felt as if honoring them was part of the package.
- Much of my life has been unconventional, so there was something sort of sweet and almost original about following this one tradition.
I felt 100-percent solid about my decision but was surprised to discover how many people around me had something to say about it. While all my new Midwest relatives couldn't believe I would consider not changing my last name, my West Coast friends gave me tons of hell about it. The insinuation was that I was somehow throwing away my identity or caving to an old-fashioned ritual in which a wife becomes the property of her husband.
Nowadays, thanks to 19th century suffragists and women's rights advocates like Lucy Stone (one of the first to retain her maiden name after marriage), it isn't mandatory that American women change their last name when they get married. However, according to The Knot 2008 Real Wedding Survey, a whopping 88-percent of women still do, says Anja Winikka, an editor for TheKnot.com.
Be that as it may, the times they are a (slowly) changin', and modern brides have lots of options. They also have lots of opinions. Here is a selection of both:
Go the Traditional Route and Take Your Husband's Name
"In getting married, we are choosing to share our life together and I feel that sharing our name is symbolic of that," said my sister-in-law, Katie Sachse, who got married a few weeks ago. "I don't see it as losing my identity or myself but more as becoming a family."
Keep Your Maiden Name
"It's very simple," said Anna Joyce, a close friend from high school. "I didn't take my husband's name because it's not my name. It just didn't feel right."
Make Your Maiden Name Your New Middle Name
My husband's cousin, Amy Piper, made this switch for two reasons. "First because that is what my mother did, and I always liked it. And second because I still got to keep the last name that had been mine for 25 years."
A similar option is to simply add your husband's name on the end and have four names, such as Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton.
Legally Take Your Husband's Name, But Keep Your Name Professionally
If your name is a defining aspect of your career, keep it.
Your Husband Takes Your Last Name
"He might do it because he doesn't like his own last name or because his wife is an only child with strong family ties," suggests Winikka. I happen to know two couples (both on the West Coast) who made this choice.
Hyphenate
This one is pretty common, but in a twist on convention, both bride and groom could take the hyphenated name.
Whether or not to change your last name is a deeply personal decision informed by history, family, politics, romance, even commercial viability. I, for one, am still happy that I chose to change my name for the exact same reasons I changed it in the first place. Rather than losing my "identity," I feel like my conscious choice was an important part of figuring out who I am and what I want in this next stage of my life. In a weird way, it feels like a feminist act to have changed my name when most of the women in my circle have not. We all get to choose our own names, which is exactly as it should be.
But it is too bad I had to take a last name no one can pronounce or spell.
