Spin off: Last names

[*anj*]

On the subject of changing one's own name....

 

My friend married a guy from Barbados who never had a relationship with his father. His mother had had several children and they didn't all have the same father, but she had given them each the last name of their fathers. All of his life, this guy wondered why his American father never had a relationship with him or tried to help him in any way.

 

Finally when he was a teenager he came to the US and lived with his father. He soon discovered that you should be careful what you wish for.

It was a bad experience.

 

So now this man still lives in the States, has no contact with his father, and has legally dropped his last name. He literally has no last name. He just goes by his first name (N******), that's it. So when they got married she naturally kept her own name, because well, what else could she do?

 

Their children use their father's name (N******) as a last name.

 

Over the years this has created quite a few problems. Mail is just ridiculous. Telemarketers are at a complete loss (that part isn't a problem.)

 

So anyway, this is the most unusual naming story that I know.

He is quite a unique individual, and this name thing is just the tip of the iceberg.... :glare:

[Catherine]

I like having the name I was born with, and symbolically, I am still the same person I was when I was known only as a member of my parents' family. My kids all have dh's name, and since there are plenty of Ms (his last name) and Ws (my last name) there was no issue with carrying on a name. Truly, after learning about other cultures' traditions regarding naming after marriage, and the tradition that accounted for women changing surnames here, I had already decided ahead of time how I planned to do this.

 

It has never been an issue at all with my kids that we don't all have the same last name. In fact, I don't ever remember them asking me once about it, in fifteen years of parenthood.

[Lorna in the boonies]

I didn't want to change my name and if I had to do it over again, I probably wouldn't. It was important to dh for me to take his name and being foolish and in love, I did. I loved my last name and it was very meaningful to me - there is even a road named after our family in the town we came from. My last name was a normal, but not overly common name that everyone could pronounce. Now I have an Italian last name that is never pronounced right and I have to spell it a few times for anyone to actually right it down correctly. The fact that I dislike his family and what they stand for, only makes it worse.

 

I could have written this (except for the road and the Italian parts!).

 

Also, my maiden name was very common and normal and it flowed with my first name. My new last name (which I've had for nearly 18 years, so it isn't very new anymore, is it?) is very guttural and it sounds like I'm choking on my lunch when I say it.

[WTMindy]

I took my husband's last name. But the question reminds me of a friend I had in college. Her parents didn't THINK when they named her Sandra! Why? Because their last name was Beach.....so my friend grew up with the name Sandy Beach! She was sooooo tired of the little jokes about her name, and was sooooo ready to get married and take her husband's name and be done with it!

 

Well, she met someone and ended up marrying him....DESPITE his name! His last name was Bandy! No kidding! So her name ended up being Sandy Bandy! Fate is cruel sometimes! :D

 

LOL! I think I would have gone by Sandra.

[Guest LaurieTX]

I also kept my last name and added his (at his insistance). We later divorced (please don't feel sorry for me) and I took my name back. My children both have my last name. Son has a duel last name, but that will change soon and he will only have my last name which is the only one he will answer to anyway. My daughter only has my last name. Former husband's family history is wonderful and very rich and I feel safe in saying that you would all recognize it. However, I am very proud of my family history. We can trace our family tree (with complete accuracy) to 1600's England. My last name is recognized in England and ancestors pictures are in museums there. When we go and change my son's last name we may actually be adding my mother's maiden name to his and my daughter's (daughter's only for uniformity since she may marry and take another name). My mother is the very last surviving member of her family and there are no boys that made it to adulthood. So, with my mother dies her family name. There is not the same rich history, but it is our history and it should not just go away.

[TravelingChris]

I kept my name and he kept his. He had no problem with mine keeping mine since I was the last in my family with that last name. He was one of four brothers. As it turns out, none of his brothers had any children so no one has his last name. He doesn't care. He knew that I cared that my father's brother's family had to change their name due to his (my father's) immigration to the US and his writings about freedom. I sign our mail as X-Y family. We both have long names so that wasn't it. The children have names like Susan Ann X Y where Ann and X are middle names and Y is my name. It made things a lot less confusing for us when we were stationed in Belgium because there you have to sign documents in your given name at birth, not any married name.

 

Near the beginning of my homeschooling journey, I made a friend who used to tell me how much she admired my husband for letting me keep my name and how she had wanted to keep hers. Fast forward a few years, he husband hid assets from her, filed for divorce, and then stopped working so he wouldn't have to pay child support.

 

I won't have a problem with my children if they decide to change their last names. I just never want my girls to marry men who insist on it.

[LibraryLover]

:lol:Sandy Beach Bandy.

 

What an awesome story. I love it.

 

Truly & totally love it. :)

[Mabelen]

I never had any name issues until we moved to Texas. In Boston it was very common to keep your maiden name and in Latin America you absolutely have to keep your name and tack on "de XXXXXX". If you don't have 2 last names you might cause some computerized or bureaucratized system to slip a cog ;). Our kids have both last names on their foreign documents and dh's last name on American ones and it's worked out fine.

 

Strangely enough, in Latin America having the same last name as your mother has the exact same social implications that NOT having the same last name as your mother has in Texas. On hs sign up stuff I've taken to signing things Julianna de XXXX, something I thought I would NEVER do. My Venezuelan friends are highly amused by the whole thing since this is something that 80 year old women do :glare:.

 

I am from Spain and legally you may NOT change your name by marriage. End of story. Everybody has two family names. Children traditionally take their father's first family name followed by their mother's first family name. Nowadays the law allows for the reverse order (first mother's family name followed by father's family name). Socially you can use your dh's name preceded by "de", but it is more "upper crust" and old fashioned usage these days. People my generation and younger just don't call themselves by "Mrs. So and So de So and So" any more.

 

My children have two family names in their Spanish official documents, and only my dh's name in their British and American documents.

[Crissy]

For me, dh's name was like a gift. I'd had so much trouble w/ my family, my dad in particular, & my mom was molested by *her* dad--to get to MY last name, you'd have to go back so many generations...I'd gotten to the point before we married that I'd considered picking a new last name & just changing it.

 

Then along comes this incredibly sweet man, who knows I need a family, & prays that God would somehow make me part of his. That his family would be a gift & a blessing to me. His name is rich w/ family & cultural (on a sm scale, lol) history. It can be traced back to Scotland, where even centuries ago, his clan was known for their family loyalty, just like they are now. Instead of being known by the local police, his family has parks & schools named after them. It's *honorable*--kwim? And that means a lot to both of us.

 

I know it's not like this for everyone, but for me, I'm SO glad to have dh's name. I feel like he's given me something precious, something that cost him & his family something over a long period of time.

 

That is a beautiful story, Aubrey.

[Sahamamama]

... in Egypt, where his parents are from, the naming system is that the child's last name (male or female) is the grandfather's name, the child's middle name is the father's name, and the child's first name is his or her own. So.. if your grandfather was Hanna (John), and your father was Yacoub, and your first name is Negwa (a girl's name), you are "Negwa Yacoub Hanna" all your life, even when you marry. The exception to this is a doctor's wife (prestigious, so they are called Mrs. Husband's Name), and some modern couples who do it the typical Mr. and Mrs. Husband's Name way.

[LizzyBee]

My maiden name is German and unusual, so it is mispronounced quite often. I didn't mind changing it when I got married. My first husband had a name that I thought was pretty simple, but it still got butchered quite often. When we divorced, I considered changing my name back to my maiden name. But since we got divorced in another country, it would have been a hassle to change my name when I moved back to the states, so I never did it. When I remarried, it was a no-brainer to take my dh's name since I couldn't keep xh's name. We have a common last name, but his family uses a different pronounciation so it still gets mispronounced a lot.

 

Elizabeth

[kokotg]

We came close to combining our names when we got married (adding them together; two last names, no hyphen), but we never really got around to it. I didn't really consider changing mine to his. The kids have both, mostly because it seemed like the fairest way to do things. Both names are long and have to be spelled every time (they're not difficult to pronounce, especially, but they both have common alternate spellings), so I pretty much expect the kids will drop one of them when they get older (in fact, my seven year old already chooses to use just his father's last name when he writes his name). That's perfectly fine with both of us. I like both the names very much, and they both bring something to the table, I think, so I like that the kids have both. Put together, they tell a story about their heritage. Neither name is common outside a particular area/group of people. My name is very common in the specific area where I grew up and where we live now, but rarely heard elsewhere. I'd hate for them to miss out on hearing, "like the road?" because they only had my husband's last name ;)