I never felt a strong connection to my maiden name, and couldn't wait to ditch it. Did I really need to get married to do so?
My Maiden Name and Me--An Uneasy Alliance
My maiden name is weird. Growing up, no one in my town except the four people who lived in my house, plus my grandmother, had it.
Even though it is a simple, one syllable word that is actually a verb in the English language, people continually asked how to spell it, and pronounced it wrong. It caused me a lot of irritation because of this, and I didn't like the name in general.
As a child and teen, I looked forward to the day I could get married and drop it for someone else's last name. Surely anything else would be better, right?
Even though I didn't like the name, I was fascinated by its history, because it was such an uncommon last name. That is probably where my interest in genealogy began. I would look at the "family crest" by dad bought from some company that made them in the 1970's, and imagine the earliest people to bear the name, and how it originated.
Those companies, by the way, were common back then, and not legit....they just made up crests for you and told you they went back to medieval times.
The crest came with a little written explanation of the etymology of the name, but not much else. It seemed ancient and mysterious, something I wanted to explore, while at the same time wanting to drop it from my own first and middle names.
Of course, I was interested in the origins of everything in elementary school. I wrote dozens of papers on the origins of the letters of the alphabet, the names of the days of the week, the names of the months, and the names of the planets.
Being interested in the origin of a last name was part of that fascination with the ancient, unwritten, unknowable history of human society I've had for as long as I can remember. I seem to have been born with it.
As it turns out, my feeling of disconnection with my maiden name may be because I later found out it wasn't my maiden name at all, at least not biologically. My paternal grandfather had an unknown biological father, who I discovered through DNA testing. He had his mother's maiden name until he was five, when she married the man who would raise him, and took the surname that would become my maiden name.
The surname of his biological father, which was always a big unknown in our family until my DNA adventure, SHOULD have been my maiden name....and, I liked it a lot better than the one I got.
It sounded better with my first name, and was a name people could easily recognize, understand, pronounce, and spell. Maybe, on some biological level, I always knew my maiden name was borrowed from someone else, and not really mine.
Pen Names--My First Experiments in Changing My Surname
Even in high school, I was looking at ways of changing my maiden name, even in an unofficial way. Declaring my intent to be a self-supporting novelist during my junior year of high school, I decided right off the bat to use a pen name that would be my middle name and my mom's maiden name. That is how the world would know me.
I actually wrote some things with that pen name early on in my writing career, and still keep an email address with it, but I've come up with much better pen names since then, and use more than one. It keeps my options open.
I even practiced signing my pen name, much as other girls practice signing their name paired with the last name of the man they love.
Still, I thought I actually had to get married to legally change my last name, that name I so eagerly wanted to ditch. But, did I have to?
No.
I just didn't know it at the time.
Marriage--My Big Chance to Drop That Maiden Name at Last
When my then-boyfriend asked me to marry him, I enthusiastically said yes, because I was genuinely in love with him. The thought of getting to change my last name was just a bonus.
Granted, his last name didn't appeal to me much more than my own, but it was as least marginally better.
A lot of women drop their middle names when they get married, and turn their maiden names into middles. I didn't do that. I actually really like my middle name, and wanted to keep it. So, the maiden name alone got dropped, and I kept my original first and middle names.
I took a lot of glee in changing my last name on all of my official documentation, like my driver's license and Social Security card. Sending out Christmas cards that year to old friends and distant family who didn't know I'd gotten married, and using my shiny, new last name on them, was a huge rush of giddy schoolgirl excitement for me.
And, as a newlywed who was still in the initial passionate "Romeo and Juliet" phase of love (ah, if only THAT feeling was biologically designed to last forever), I LOVED it when people called me "Mrs." Being only 23 years old at the time, that "Mrs." was a huge sign of respect and acknowledgement of my adulthood to me.
And yet, there was one aspect about using a married name that irked me....and still does.
It's when people send me mail referring to me as "Mrs. My Husband's First and Last Name."
I HATE that.
I hated it from the first time it happened to me. I have an identity outside of my husband, you know. Just because I took his last name doesn't mean I became a subsidiary of him, or an annex. I'm not a territory he colonized.
I am still me, just with a different last name.
Don't try to hide my identity under my husband. That is not cool.
Now, I understand that, with older women, dropping a woman's first name entirely, and calling her Mrs. Husband's First and Last Name is traditional and common. They mean no disrespect by it. It still doesn't mean I like it.
And, Daughters of the American Revolution, which I joined in my mid-20's, still sends me mail addressed this way, even though I clearly joined using my own first name. Even some of my younger friends do it when sending invitations to both my husband and me, presumably to save time in writing two names.
I do not like it. It's a super pet peeve of mine.
My Husband's Feelings on the Surname Issue
It's not a subject we discussed much. He expected I would take his last name, and I had no problem doing it. Though I gave some half-hearted thought to hyphenating his name and my maiden name at first, being a young woman of the 1990's and all, it's never something I seriously considered. I always knew, deep down, I would take his last name.
However, if I'd balked at it, he wouldn't have married me. The only discussion we ever really had on the issue amounted to as much. He is a generation older than me, and believes in the traditional ways of naming. He made it clear if I did not take his name, there would be no marriage; it was a condition of wedlock for him.
It's a good thing I was all for it, before he even met me.
Genealogy and the Surname Game
Who is she, really? Before she got married? We may never know.
Being genealogists, it certainly makes things easier for us when the last names of children we are researching match up with the last names of their fathers. This usually means the mother took the father's last name, too. Fortunately, I've never come across a child who did not have the father's last name, except in cases of out of wedlock births or adoptions.
The tradition of a woman and her children taking the last name of the man she marries is a long one, going back centuries, to when surnames first began to be used in western society.
Other cultures did things differently. Some ancient societies used a form of surnames, and those were always handed down in the matrilineal line. Some non-western cultures still do this today. The Vikings gave a form of surname to boys based on their father's name, and to girls based on their mother's name. To know the lineage, you have to know the naming customs of the culture.
But, for most of us, it's going to be a typical "woman takes man's surname and gives that surname to their kids" scenario for at least seven or eight centuries going back.
My husband likes to complain that people who give their kids hyphenated last names, or women who keep their maiden names, are just making things more difficult for future genealogists. I used to think so, too. But now, I'm actually thinking tracing people may be EASIER if women keep their maiden names, and children are given a hybrid name. Either that, or boys get the surname of the father and girls get the surname of the mother.
So many times, it's next to impossible to find the maiden name of a female ancestor, and, therefore, research that branch of your family tree. This is because, in the past, women were considered the property of their fathers and husbands. When they married, they left their father's family, became part of their husband's family, and their old identity was forever obscured if no marriage record was kept.
Sometimes, you can get a clue as to a maiden name in first or middle names given to her sons, but without documentation, you can't rely on it as a definitive answer to a missing maiden name. If women always kept their maiden names, those names would never be lost to history. Genealogy research actually WOULD become much easier, at least with researching female ancestors.
Interestingly, once we discover a woman's maiden name in genealogy, we always refer to her by her maiden name, instead of her married name. To researchers, she regains her original identity for all time, regardless of what surname is written on her death certificate or carved on her headstone. The maiden name is all that matters.
It's an interesting dichotomy of standards and ideals.
So, What Should Women Do About Their Surnames in Modern Times?
Photo credit: FamilyTree.com
Most of my married girlfriends unquestioningly changed their surnames to those of their husbands. I think, as Gen X-ers, we may be the last generation where this was done without a lot of serious consideration. It was simply something traditional that was expected, and, when we were getting married for the first times, only the most radical feminists did it differently. Most of us just wanted to do what we believed was expected of us.
And, let's face it, there's something inherently romantic about taking your husband's surname and becoming "one." When you're young and on your first marriage (which, twenty years later, I still am), taking your husband's surname is kind of like living in a romance novel. There is something attractive about it.
It's only when we got older that some of us started to question it.
I think the Millennials are considering their surname options a lot more carefully than we did, and more of them are choosing non-traditional alternatives, like keeping the maiden name, the husband taking the wife's name, or choosing a new surname for both partners together. These weren't serious considerations for most of us even a generation ago.
The best answer to the surname game today is this....women AND men have more choices than they ever did in the past when it comes to deciding on what names to use or not use when they get married, as well as what names to give to their children. And, society is becoming more accepting of these choices.
While it may still be traditional, and still the most common thing, for the woman to take the surname of the man upon marriage, fewer people question it if a couple chooses to do something different.
The truth is, it won't make genealogical research harder for future generations. And, even if it does, they'll figure it out. Couples today have to do what is right for them today, not what may be easier or normal for future generations.
Some western nations have made changing one's surname illegal in all circumstances, even marriage. Even so, a woman (or a man) can choose to go by whatever name they like, even if it isn't on their "official documentation." We are always free to choose what we want to be called, today more than ever.
Women are no longer property. When it comes to their surname, they can do whatever they like with it.
And, whatever they choose is okay.
Conclusion--After 20 Years of Marriage, How Do I Feel About My Own Last Name?
Honestly, I'm not as enamored of my married last name as I was when I was a bit younger and blissfully in passionate, ecstatic love. Like I said earlier, my husband's last name, while more common than my maiden name, still doesn't have that lovely, lilting sound to it that I would prefer. It's just not a great name.
And, being well past the time of unending devotion and an almost co-dependent attachment in this relationship (which is normal), it no longer feels romantic to me to use his last name. In some ways, it feels like society looks at me as his property because I have it legally attached to me.
I dream of going to the courthouse and changing my last name. And, not back to my maiden name, either. I don't care to ever use that name again. It was never mine in the first place.
I actually find it strange that, knowing our last name was supposed to be something else, something cooler, my dad and my brother don't seem interested in changing their last names. But, they're content with what they've got.
Not me.
I rarely use my married name anymore. In fact, I only use it on things that have to go to the government, or are attached to my Social Security number, like taxes and mortgages and such. I use it so infrequently, it's starting to feel a little strange to use it at all.
Everywhere else, I use my pen names. I chose those names myself, so they feel more like mine than any other name.
If I ever do legally change my last name, it will be to one of those pen names. I identify with them. They feel like "my" names. I love them.
Endless pen names from which to choose.
When I have children, they will get my husband's last name. I'm not even going to begin to argue with him on that one. The kids can keep or change their surname when they're 18; that's their choice.
I have a choice, too. We all do. We live in a society where we can choose the names we prefer to be known by, and it's becoming more acceptable to do so. Fewer people question it, even the traditionalists.
When it comes to surnames, mine is whatever I need or want it to be at any given moment.
I love that kind of freedom.
