When my boyfriend proposed I had a rogue thought that I never imagined could infiltrate my brain: I want to take his last name.
Ack! ACK! Who am I? Who am I, if not a feminist? Who am I, if not a Peterson? I wanted to jump in the shower and clean the dirty, dirty patriarchal thought off my person.
Before we got engaged, I was certain I'd keep my last name. After all, the Peterson name dies with me. My sisters -- epic traitors that they are -- changed their last name years ago. They also insisted on having a bunch of worthless girl children, which left the responsibility of keeping the Peterson lineage up to my nonexistent male heir. I took this duty seriously. After all, at the core of my family was the fact that we were Peterson People. We had a Field Guide to Birds, a legendary jazz pianist and a smattering of city streets in honor of our namesake.
But then I fell in love with a Sobel. SO-BEL. Saying it is like eating a handful of sand. It gets caught in your throat like a partially chewed piece of flank steak. It lacks the distinguished tradition of a name like Peterson: a moniker for mustachioed Vikings and meatball connoisseurs with blonde braids. Peterson: that which gracefully swishes around the mouth like an expensive Beaujolais.
So there I was, in love with a man whose surname could not be more offensive to my tongue, and it was abundantly clear that the only option was keeping my last name. No hyphenate, just two separate names representing the two separate individuals we were. Once I birthed the male heir I would steal off into the night and raise him a Peterson. (Full disclosure: I would force my fiancé to take my last name, but he is also the last Sobel in his family. Therefore, kidnapping his first-born son is the only reasonable solution.)
But the proposal changed things. The question itself was no surprise -- hello five and a half years of dating! -- and I knew my boyfriend (the Sobel) had an heirloom diamond he wanted to pass on. But on that fateful afternoon, he opened the box and spoke of giving me a diamond that had been in his family for 100 years, a gem that his great-great-aunt and then his mother wore, and how he planned to honor commitments the way ancestors did: steadfast and true. At that moment, my last name seemed trivial by comparison to the union we were forming.
I realized that part of why I love being a Peterson is that it was my family name, a name all my people shared that symbolized the unions of those who came before us. There were no hyphenates or separate surnames, for that might diminish the power of the Peterson. Furthermore, what if we do have a child and they became a Peterson-Sobel and then married a Hemlock-Sterling. Will their offspring be Peterson-Sobel-Hemlock-Sterling? Where does it end?!
Still, I am not fully confident in these newly formed values. I feel shame and guilt telling my female friends who chose to keep their last names or hyphenate. Now I feel like a traitor, a saboteur to hundreds of years of progress. Et tu, Brute? And while I relish the joy of starting a new family name, I remorse in abandoning the name I've known for 30 years. While I plan to keep Peterson as a middle name (an occurrence that is quickly replacing the hyphenate), it is simply not the same. A piece of my identity is gone.
There are no winners here. Women who keep their last name lose the joy of a collective family name. Women who take their husband's name lose a part of themselves. Women who hyphenate take a really long time to fill out forms. Perhaps one day a better solution will be on the horizon. Most likely the solution of everyone being named Peterson. Well, everyone but me, I guess.
Anat Shenker-Osorio: I Do, Unfortunately, He Doesn't: Name Changing and Egalitarian Marriage
If this name issue was actually egalitarian, then men would be changing their names as often as women, but it's not, because it's an odd tradition that signifies man's importance over woman's.
Steff
Some women don't have your luck.
No one is begrudging you. In fact, there are some posters on this thread who think women who don't change their name are kicking marriage in the behind.
It's really no one else's business what name a woman chooses to be addressed by.
Give every child, on turning 18, the choice of taking whichever parent's original last name he or she prefers.
Under this provision, even if Ms.Peterson became Mrs.Sobel, one or more of her children could still take the name Peterson if they preferred, on turning 18.
I took my wife's last name. While I understand the different viewpoints, I think we're forgetting the fact that marriage is, in a sense, a celebration of owning one another.
The last name envelopes you in a way. Taking it is like having your partner put their coat over you to keep you warm as you're walking to the fire works show in down-town. It's always bigger than your body size, and while it's just a piece of clothing, it makes you feel safe and weak at the knees at the same time.
Everything also seems to feel more amplified in your mind. You worry constantly. Whether your partner will like the dish you prepared for them that night. If they'll be too tired to just talk to you because you've been so lonely. If she'll notice the shirt I wore just for her. People say you shouldn't have to worry about meeting a certain standard for your partner. That you're perfect the way you are, and people shouldn't have to change themselves. Maybe we worry about that stuff because we want to? Maybe it's all part of becoming one that makes it so exciting?
Funny how a name change does all that. ;-)
It's a label put on a girl by a guy. Inacceptable.
One can dream :/
Like many commenters have pointed out, if I kept my last name, it is still my fathers name. I would love to take my mothers maiden name, but that is still her fathers name. There is only imperfect solutions here, no insults or regression of women kind. Only a flawed system from the start that we have to deal with.
You're still the same person, just with a different last name. Nothing has been lost...if anything, you have just gained more to your identity. There is no shame in taking your husband's last name if it's what you truly desire. What there is shame in, is the self deprecation that we feel over it unnecessarily. What was good for your friends may not be good for you. If they are truly your friends, then they wouldn't judge you over something so silly.