Sometimes You Shouldn’t Hyphenate
When VH and I married, I resisted taking his last name. For one thing, I liked mine. Quite a bit, as a matter of fact. In comparison, his seemed dull and, more importantly, not mine.
Oh, sure, I realized that marriage meant mingling our incomes, our belongings and our body parts. But those things involved mingling, not a complete surrender and disavowal of the life I’d lived until the moment the “I Do’s” were done deals.
While I practiced law, he understood my reasons for keeping my maiden name for professional purposes. Once I left the practice, however, my desire to hyphenate became quite the issue. But I stood my ground for seven long years… right up to the point where he shut up about it. Then — and only then — was I willing to begin using his last name as my own.
Then again, neither of us had one of those names which should never, ever be hyphenated. C’mon, Aiken-Johnson? Wacker-Daily? Don’t these people read???
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My husband had a fit when I told him I wanted to hyphenate. He said that I was not confident in our marriage and wanted to keep my name, “just in case”. That sounded so inane to me, and was certainly not true, I wanted to keep it because of that whole sense of self thing you mentioned. But then I realized that what’s in a name anyway? That doesn’t really change who I am, so I gave in (at least that’s what I made him think) and changed my name on everything little by little between the time we got married and when Brandon was born.
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Mine was “little by little”, too. Had he made a big deal of it or said something like “Oh it’s about time!” I’d have resisted. Granted, there’s not much in a name but there’s a whole lot involved in recognizing that I didn’t stop being ME when I became his.
Personally, I liked Butts-McCracken. I would think getting rid of Butts would be one of the pluses to marriage.
I took my husband’s name with no problem because I really had no life prior to being married. In fact, if you Google my maiden name, there are no entries.
I can imagine it would have been a more difficult decision if I had some sort of career or something associated with my name.
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My ex-wife kept the name of her last husband, and it didn’t bother me. She had a good reason: it would confuse the school if her children had a different name from hers.
And, in fact, as things turned out, when she ran off with her next husband, it simplified things. She wasn’t Mrs. Tennant, and really never had been; so I only had to get her to sign a quit claim deed on the farm.
She was mildly annoyed when I insisted on addressing her as “Mrs. X” (eliding the name of her most recent husband), but I was more than mildly annoyed with her.
This is an interesting question. Would my ex-wife had held to her marriage vows if she took my name? I doubt it, because she was a liberal.
I went from an ugly last name to an even uglier last name. There’s no way I’d hyphenate the two and overrun the world with Gs. But, marrying into an ugly last name shows you really love the man.
hln
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I kept my name and still do just because I must not be very adaptable. It just seemed so odd to change it. And I don’t like to complicate my life, so I wouldn’t dream of hyphenating. But now that we have a child it’s complicated. Still, I’m hanging in there with my name. It’s much simpler to spell, too, plus nobody can link me with my crazy MIL.