Changing your name when you get married: Your decision or Society’s?

About 90% of women in the United States elect to change their last name when they get married. I have pondered recently what’s behind this unanimity in marital name changing in the United States.

In fact, I conducted my own survey and reached a similar conclusion. Over 90% of my survey respondents indicated they changed their name when they married. The majority of these women answered in a follow-up question that they were glad that they had made the change. So, case closed. Or is it?

In reading some of the comments posted to these questions, it doesn’t seem quite as easy to interpret. For example, some of the women who changed their name when marrying had this to say about it:

• I did not really want to do the traditional thing of changing my name; it seemed too patriarchal to me. Finally, I compromised and hyphenated my name. I hated it, really. I disliked it because it did not feel like me and because my name was so long and difficult, it just left people saying “what?”
• I actually would have preferred to have kept my maiden name when I married, but it was very important to my husband that I take his name. So I took his name as a gesture of love.
• I briefly considered keeping my name or hyphenating it, but…simplicity seemed best.
• I feel it reflects commitment in a marriage.
• I guess it’s more “my name” now.

Many women today may not realize that there was a time when women weren’t even allowed to keep their maiden name when they married. In fact, in the early 1800s a married woman wasn’t allowed to own anything. In a sense, a wife was basically owned by her husband. So maintaining her own name was not really much of an option.

Just as women suffragists fought for the right for women to vote, there have also been those who have fought for the rights of a woman to keep her last name after marrying. One of the first women in this country to keep her birth name was Lucy Stone. There is now a Lucy Stone League which advocates for equality in decisions about whether a woman changes her name or not.

Other examples of women who fought to keep their names include:

• In 1924, Dr. Marjorie Mason Jarvis sued to be able to maintain her birth name after marrying. She worked for the federal government (as a physician), and the policy was that all married women who were federal employees had to use their husbands’ last name for payroll purposes. She could have appealed the decision, but she left employment of the federal government.
• In 1945, Antonia Rago was told that she couldn’t vote unless she changed to her husband’s last name.  The state she lived in had a law requiring married women to use their husband’s name to vote. Many states had such laws or quickly adopted them to nip this issue in the bud. Rago lost her case, but others began to make a dent in public law. The cases illustrated that it was not law, but custom that dictated women changing their last names when marrying.
• Wendy Forbush, in 1972, could not obtain a driver’s license in her own name because of a state regulation that required a husband’s name. She lost this case and the reason cited was administrative convenience.

There are other cases that could be cited, but the point is this: the option of choosing your last name upon marriage is something that was fought for. These women were often ridiculed and ostracized for their choices. They often lost cases and frequently fought on through appeals with one thing in mind: that a woman should have a choice about whether or not to take on the name of her husband when marrying.

One woman in my survey said this about changing her name after getting married: “It felt like who I was was being swallowed up by who my husband was.” It’s understandable to feel that way since your name can be a big part of your identity.

Some women don’t like their birth name and are happy for an opportunity to change it. However, if you don’t fall into this category, know your options. Some of these include:

• Women can keep their birth name
• Men can take on the surname of their wife (I know examples where this has happened)
• One or both members of the couple can choose to hyphenate their two surnames
• The couple can create a new last name (possibly some combination of their surnames) that they both change to
• One or both members of the couple can have two last names (a combination of the two surnames)

I know it is a difficult decision to make because I’ve done it recently. When I married my husband two years ago, we struggled to decide what to do with our last names. Finally, I decided to add his last name, but with a space between the two last names. I felt in this way I could have the option of continuing to go by my birth name (which I love), while still being a part of his family (which I love as well).

There have been downsides to this decision. Right now it is almost impossible to do any type of online check-in for a flights. For some reason, the two last names throws the system for a loop. So although I took both last names, I wish I would have kept my driver’s license with one last name so things like this could be a little more convenient. It’s not as if online check-in has been around that long to spend too much time grieving its loss. In the long run, these types of snafus will resolve themselves, so I’m not too worried about it.

If you have different ideas on last names and marriage, please post your comments. I don’t really believe there are any wrong ways to do it, as long as you know what your choices are and what influences are present and impact your decision. What’s most important is to make the best decision that’s right for you.