Would you take your wife's name?

dowie

dowie

dowie

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Since it is [current year] and feminism is still trending would you be willing to take your wife's name instead of her taking yours?

Also lots of women these days seem to keep their maiden name when married and just use "Ms" [maiden name] - in that situation would you be ok with your kids being given the wife's surname?

I guess double barrelled names have been around for a bit and perhaps have originated from this second issue - they're also often seen as being a bit posh and perhaps part of their origin, rather than being rooted in feminism, is rooted in the rich father in law deeming his family name to have some importance (and perhaps it being rare too) and well it is better for little Rupert to share the name if he wants that inheritance...

I know of one person who has changed his name - he and his wife combined their names to form a new surname.

I know of another case, not a friend of mine but of my sister's, where the husband has just accepted his wife's name... no double barrel option, just taken the wife's name. If that sounds a bit ****** then for other reasons it seems that this person literally is.

Fully star swearwords and DON'T give hints to what the word is
 
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Nope and nope, my wife took my name even though it never bothered me but she’s old fashioned in that respect. She thinks the whole double barrelled name is beyond stupid as well.
 
We did go for double-barrelled because we're pretentious and weak of thought.

The reason we ended up doing that is because we couldn't agree on who would take which surname. There's something unsavoury about [X] saying [Y] take my name because I have the best name, also probably a penis.

We're still pretentious but now we have the stupid surname to prove it!
 
Why bother with the tradition of marriage at all if you're going to be half baked about it.

Get a civil partnership if your missus doesn't want your name. Or better still, just dump her - she's gonna be 100x more neurotic in a few years time.
 
what happens if two people get married that have double barreled surnames..
do they become Mr & Mrs Jones Smith McDonald Peters? and what if their offspring married someone that also too many surnames to mention?
 
then you get exponential surnames... but it's OK, that sort of family tree should end within two generations - infertility due to excessive soy consumption
 
I'd insist that we both change our full names to that of the same feminist icon on Instagram and sell our story to the Mail for a few quid to wind up usual suspects.
 
Yes and yes. Not fussed.

If you were being logical you should simply go with the best name as per suits your choice of children's names, the most unique name or the one with the most limited lineage.

Don't know why people get so tied up about double barreled names either.
 
Sure, I already have for my Chinese name on any official documents. She uses my English surname, I use her Chinese surname, seems like a fair setup :p
 
My wife took my name when we got married, but I'd happily choose something else if it suited her. Either way, i would want us and our kids to share the same name.
 
If it was anything to do with feminism the question wouldn't arise because I wouldn't marry a self-declared bigot who was irrationally prejudiced against me. That would be a very foolish thing to do.

Otherwise, I wouldn't care either way. I'm assuming we're talking about my hypothetical wife's family's name, not her name (despite the OP stating "her name"). Being called Ruth or Mary or whatever would be an inconvenience I'd rather avoid.

Doubling family names is just passing the issue down the line. Just 10 generations later and each person would have 2048 family names. A ridiculous idea. Besides, if people are going to argue over family names, why would they agree on the order? Smith-Jones or Jones-Smith?

No family name changes would work fine but you might well have the question of which family name any children have. I'd be fine with a 50/50 RNG of some kind(*) to answer that question.

It seems to me that the best default option is for people to agree on a new family name when they get married. It's not the custom, but customs can change. For example, for most of recorded history in Britain it was the custom to not use family names at all. Most people only started using family names towards the end of the high medieval period and to a large extent that was imposed by the authorities for admin reasons (for taxes, unsurprisingly).



* Apparently in actual use the standard tossing a coin isn't quite 50/50.
 
Don't care all that much, my surname doesn't have any meaning to me. It's only a name, if she had a strong argument for it then I'd be up for it.

I certainly wouldn't want it to be mine, because I'm a man etc. Though I can guarantee I'd get a ribbing for it.
 
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