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From: jcarson@cs.washington.edu (Janet Carson)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Name Change Upon Marriage?
Keywords: marriage names
Message-ID: <12827@june.cs.washington.edu>
Date: 19 Aug 90 01:52:42 GMT
References: <1157@tahoma.UUCP> <1990Aug16.191948.3908@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Sender: ambar@ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz)
Organization: University of Washington, Computer Science, Seattle
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Approved: ambar@ora.com

In article <1157@tahoma.UUCP> bcstec!tahoma!kgf2173@uunet.uu.net (Kerry G. Forschler) writes:
>I'm interested in women's opinions about changing names when they
>are married.

I changed my name when I got married, mainly because changing my
name was more important to my husband than not changing my name was
to me.  (I didn't want to change my name for reasons similar to those 
presented by other posters.)  I didn't like changing my name: either the
bureaucratic hassles or the emotional feelings associated with 
"abandoning" my maiden name.  (A lot of those feelings surprised me!)

Getting married wasn't the first time my name changed.  When I was a 
kid, my parents had the family last name legally changed from Czyzewicz 
to Chess, for convenience more than anything.  (Some of the other Czyzewiczes 
in the extended family had also become Chesses, I believe around the same
time.)  I don't remember this clearly; I don't even think I could spell
Czyzewicz at the time, but I do remember feeling uneasy about it.
I knew my name, and it was scary to think that it could just *change* all 
of a sudden.  I remember my mom saying something like, "If you really don't 
like it, you can be Janet Czyzewicz, and all of the rest of us will 
be Chesses."  To which I promptly responded "NO!"

What is valuable about a name is not the name itself, it's who you share
it with.  

Since I've gotten married and changed my name, I've found that 
I am much more neurotic about using my middle name or middle initial, 
perhaps because my middle name (Lynn) is shared by all of my sisters.  
It's a name that connects me to something.

When a couple gets married, they can have separate last names.  If they
decide to have children, they can give the children different last
names as well.  But I have to wonder, once the practice of multiple-named 
families becomes common, will those names be worth keeping? If the only 
other Chesses I had known were my mom and a couple of obscure cousins, would 
it have been such a big deal to become a Carson?  If my name hadn't been a 
part of something bigger, it wouldn't have been so difficult to let it go.  
It wouldn't have had the same meaning.

It's not the *name* itself that is worth preserving, it's the *meaning* 
of the name, the connections the name provides.   A name a daughter 
can share with her parents, siblings and extended family is a special 
gift that parents are free to give or not to give.  The daughter might 
not even appreciate the value of such a gift until she has to consider 
giving it up.

My opinions on name changing and child naming are not cut and dry.  I
don't like the historical reasoning behind a woman taking the man's
last name.  I don't like the bureacratic or emotional problems 
associated with changing a name.  I don't think it's fair that the only
way to pass on the family name under the traditional naming system is
to have a son.  But I have reservations about alternative naming systems 
that take away the most wonderful part of names -- the joy of sharing
them with others.
-- 
Janet L. Carson
jcarson@june.cs.washington.edu