Women's Married Names | 07/28/2009 9:15 am

Women Celebrate 30 Years of Being Able to Keep Last Name After Marriage

What started out as a feminist movement has turned into something much more ordinary for many women. What do you think about women keeping their last names?

By The Staff at wowOwow.com

Lucy Stone is the first woman known to keep her surname upon marriage — and that was in 1855. The antislavery and female suffrage crusader began a trend that was latched onto by some prominent feminists later on, and in the 1970s, this trend exploded. Women were no longer always taking their husband’s last name when they donned a new wedding band.

Now, 30 years later, many women choose to keep their surnames, or tack their married names on to the end of their name, for a number of reasons, both personal and professional. Sometimes, women just like their maiden name better. But for federal and state government agencies, taking the husband’s name is much easier, particularly for record-keeping purposes. When one of our wOw staffers recently went to the Social Security Office in New Jersey to change her name, the woman at the window said, "Why don’t you girls these days just take your husband’s name? It makes things so much easier!"

In Rhode Island, the ACLU — which filed a lawsuit 30 years ago to allow women to decide which last name to use when registering a car in that state, according to The Providence Journal — said the matter was a simple one: "The very least you can have in this damned life is your own name." The organization is celebrating their landmark win, and says, "The struggle against gender-based discrimination continues to this day in the fight for equal pay for equal work and similar issues."

A question to our wOw audience: How many of you decided to keep your last name when you got married? And if you did, why?

72 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment

I did not see it as a distraction; what I DID see was her curt reply to Deb.

By phyllis Doyle Pepe on 07/28/2009 11:40 pm

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I took my ex-husband’s name because "C" is closer to the top of the alphabet than "L." I didn’t change it after our divorce for the same reason. (We all have our priorities).

By Nadene Cicero on 07/28/2009 2:32 pm

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LOL! I remember one older woman I met when I was in my 20’s in TX and we were comiserating about *men* and she said to me; " Honey… the only REAL reason to get married is to move on up the alphabet!"

By Rosemary Celeste on 08/04/2009 2:13 am

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I took my Maiden last name as my middle so that we would have the same name. I also gave my maiden last name to my son as his middle name!

By S.J. Morgan on 07/28/2009 4:47 pm

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I’m getting married in October, and I’m adding my husband’s last name to my own surname. I prefer to keep my surname to honor my late father.

By Nicole Tompkins-Crawley on 07/28/2009 5:25 pm

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The movement to keep maiden names began in the 1850s in Massachusetts, when a suffragette named Lucy Stone decided to keep her name when she married an abolitionist named Henry Blackwell at the age of 37. In 1921 the Lucy Stone League was founded in New York, and a circle of forward-thinking women devoted themselves to the preservation of women’s names. In 1925, a journalist wrote snidely "some of its resulting confusions are indelicate and therefore may merely be hinted at. Many moral hotel clerks are troubled at the assignment of rooms to the traveling Lucy Stoners and their husbands." But until the feminism of the 1970s brought a resurgence of interest to the issue, almost all women, including highly educated career women, changed their names to their husband’s when they married. Of course, the majority of these women were married before they were 23. Now that women marry later, and live more of their adult life with their maiden names, it can feel unnatural to assume another name, even for women who do not consider themselves feminists. Once you have "made a name for yourself" in the world it becomes more complicated, and even professionally damaging, to change it.

I have always kept my maiden name as my middle name––having had many other last names, that one remained constant–-the me in the middle.

By phyllis Doyle Pepe on 07/28/2009 5:49 pm

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Here in Japan (and some other parts of Asia), you are not marrying a person, you are either marrying into a family or accepting a new member into your family. A bride’s family can "adopt" her groom (thus he would take her last name), especially for social reasons (such as if the bride’s family has no sons and/or is of higher standing) or if the groom had otherwise no longer wished to keep his last name. It is, however, more common that the bride changes her last name than otherwise. Japanese law does not currently allow for married couples to have different last names, which may have something to do with the difficulty of syncing such a system with the current family registration system here in Japan.

By K H on 07/29/2009 12:24 am

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When I married my first husband in 1958, I took his last name because I thought it was a legal requirement. When we divorced ten years later, I was surprised to learn that it was only required in Hawaii — no other state actually did require it. It was just a prevailing custom. I took back my own name and have always kept it. I’m married again, but I never took my second husband’s name.

I have two sons, who have their father’s name. But their wives have kept their own names, too. I always say that we’re a modern family — we all have different names.

Even though I did use my first husband’s name, I never liked the idea of a woman having to change her name to his, even when I was a kid. This was before the Woman’s Movement, but I guess I was always a Feminist.

By Babette dYveine on 07/29/2009 7:00 am

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In Spain the custom is to have two surnames, the first one being the father’s and the second, the mother’s. Both of these names are fixed and do not change due to marital status. Personally I like the custom. It’s a form of family patrimony that everyone carries with them. While all Spaniards have two family names, some people are known only by their first surname; for example, Salvador Dalí (Domènech was his mother’s family name), while others routinely use both names, such as the Spanish writer, Carlos Ruiz Zafón. When I got married, I retained my surname and did not take my ex-husband’s. We got married in Spain, it was the custom, and a custom I happened to like. At this point, should I ever remarry, I think it’s safe to say that I won’t be changing my name.

By Elizabeth Parrish on 07/29/2009 9:07 am

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Elizabeth,

In Spain and throughout Latin America, it is customary for a woman to keep her name (father’s name followed by mother’s name), but when she marries she adds "de husband’s last name" — (for example Elizabeth Parrish Jones de Brown) in other words despite keeping the name she now belongs to the man she married.

By Lucinda Herbert on 08/03/2009 7:30 am

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Lucinda: Fortunately that custom has changed greatly in recent years, at least in Spain. I don’t know if that’s the case in Latin America or not. Just the other day, I was talking with a group of women about the differences regarding surnames between the US and Spain and the subject of señora de came up. They agreed that the custom has all but died out here and harks back to a time when a woman’s social status was largely defined by her husband’s position in society. Today it smacks of a time in Spanish history (post civil war, Franco) that most Spaniards are only too happy to distance themselves from. But I agree with you in that it carries the connotation of a wife belonging to the husband. One can only hope that the sense of possession has gone the way of señora de, but I’m afraid that content does not always follow form, certainly not to the extent that some would have us believe.

By Elizabeth Parrish on 08/03/2009 4:07 pm

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I was married at nineteen and took my husbands last name, divorced ten years later and had a devil of a time getting my maiden name back. I love my impossible to pronounce last name, all my life when people see my last name they address me by my first name, which I prefer. I now have an incredibly beautiful husband with a wonderful name…there are times I wish I would taken his name when writing checks but then I remember all the fun I had and the rhyme we have to pronounce it, I’m glad I kept it.

By Tee Zee on 07/29/2009 10:46 am

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I kept my name. Daughters can take their mother’s last name and sons their dads. Why not?

By Karen Poling on 07/29/2009 1:39 pm

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I kept my maiden name for three reasons: 1) I’m not a fan of the patriarchy, 2) to honor my dad, who died when I was 19, and 3) because a hyphenated version of my husband’s and my last names would seem like some medical syndrome that people give money to fight against.

By devon mclaughlin on 07/29/2009 3:16 pm

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The problem I had with hyphenating is then we would not be alphabitized together as mine would have begun with a M and my husband and son with a F. The as middle name I was still the same name. It was difficult since my former middle name was my moms..but she understood. Also..my attorney friend said I could go by any combination I wanted.

I always insist with official documents be written up in the full order using all four names if desired. First/ Middle/Maiden/Last…so there is no confusion.

Or that my maiden ( most commonly used as my middle) was written in full and not just an initial just like if my name was Mary Ann, or Betty Lou !

By S.J. Morgan on 07/29/2009 3:49 pm