A Question of Names

[Guimauvaise]

I know it's been several months since this thread has seen a post, but I wanted to throw in a couple of comments/questions.

My boyfriend and I have been together for two and a half years, and we have discussed marriage. I'm not inherently attached to my last name, at least not from the standpoint of it being "cool," but it is important to me to publish and be recognized academically/professionally under the name I was born with. I think part of it is that I want to give my family a bit of the credit for my accomplishments.

However, I have no problem with the traditional practice of women taking their husband's name upon marriage. Even though I'm a bit of a feminist, I don't find the practice offensive or in some way demeaning. My problem, though, is that my potential-future-husband's last name is Smith...way too common for my comfort from a professional standpoint. I wouldn't feel right asking him to take my last name, though; it's not a respect thing...it's more of a cultural weirdness thing. What do you all think about reverting to one of the husband's family names? My boyfriend's parents are divorced, and he took his step-dad's name. Have any of you done this? In my case, we could take my boyfriend's father's name, which is MUCH more unique and distinct for publishing purposes.

[ktel]

This is a very interesting topic, and I have some examples to share.

My father has a long and hard to spell German name and my mother has a simple English name. They did not get married until I was 10, so obviously she has always kept her maiden name, partially because there was no point switching after 10 years and partially because who wants a more difficult last name. When I was born I had my mother's last name, but when my brother was born they gave him my father's last name. They then switched my last name to my father's last name before I started school so that we would have the same last names to prevent any confusion.

I would probably just change my last name if I was switching it to a simpler one. It would be so nice to not have to spell my last name every time I tell it to someone. The only problem I have with this is at the moment my brother is adamant he does not want to have kids so I would guess the name might die at my generation.

Another woman I know is a prison guard, so safety is of concern to her (doesn't want convicts tracking her down). Since her maiden name is very common, she has kept that at work to make her somewhat more anonymous.

[BlueRose]

I'm keeping mine. In part because it's my name, darn it; in part because it's rare and short, therefore easily searchable (apparently my clan tangled with the wrong medieval warlord, thus the rarity); in part because I've already published with it, and I'd rather not broadcast my marital history on my CV.

In my families of origin (German heritage), the kids usually take the father's name as their last name, and the mother's maiden name becomes their middle name. I'm fine with that. After all, once you get divorced and remarried, you won't have the same name as the kids anyway...*ducks*

As for reverting names - both my brother and I are children of first marriages, and we changed our names to match the family we're in now. (Both first marriages ended spectacularly badly; neither of us are/were on speaking terms with our other biological parent.) He changed his last name to his mother's maiden name and took an old family name as his middle...IIRC he did this in his middle school years, before our parents remarried. When I turned 18, I swapped out my middle name, changing from my birth mother's maiden name to my custodial mother's. This was slightly more annoying because I'd already applied for college and been set up in their (many many) databases, and had a publication in the works that didn't get changed in time...but no, it wasn't a great publication, and I don't care that some of my alumni emails have my old name in them.

And I'm with starmaker - I've never had a problem with being a blended family. There's sometimes a bit of explanation in order...yes my brother and I look quite similar, no we're not blood relatives at all...why yes, that is us in that wedding picture...yeah, my birth mother was taller...but I've never, ever been given grief for it. My parents, though, are MUCH more awkward / embarrassed about it. I think it's a generational thing. Nuclear families with one last name just aren't the default assumption anymore.

Edited July 22, 2011 by BlueRose

[med latte]

Just wanted to bump this topic and hear from more female married academics.  Did you change your name? Hyphenate? How has that affected your academic career, if at all? What would you suggest to engaged PhD students and potential students who will need to make this decision soon?

[memyselfandcoffee]

other people have mentioned hyphenated and i know academics who have done this and it works, for example you new name is poco puffs-smith and you publish under poco puffs

[Lisa44201]

I ended up taking my husband's name, and using my maiden name as my middle name, so FirstName MaidenName LastName; this is how it appears on my business cards, as well. I have a very German maiden name; while I was rarely teased for it growing up, it was routinely mispronounced, and hardly ever spelled right the first time; my husband's last name is much easier to spell. That, honestly, played a huge factor in me changing to his last name professionally. He's not in a research/publishing career, so I wasn't worried about being mistaken for him in print.

[juilletmercredi]

^I did what Lisa did.  It was important for me to both retain my original surname and include my new married identity in my name, and yes, I did think about how my husband felt because that's what you do when you get married - think about the other person's feelings as well as your own.  My husband describes himself as a feminist and didn't care whether I changed my name either way; his main concern is that I be happy with whatever I decided.  I decided I wanted us to share a surname and not have to make weird choices when we had children, and I decided that I wanted to take his surname in addition to my own.

 

So Melissa Jane Smith became Melissa (first name) Jane Smith (two middle names) Black (new legal surname).  I go by Melissa (Jane) Black personally and socially.  Originally, I intended to just be Melissa Jane Smith professionally, but I accidentally added my married surname to the top of my CV (as in Melissa Smith Black) when I submitted it to a postdoc and so professionally, now I go by Melissa Smith Black.  I publish under Melissa J. Smith.  This has not caused me any problems.  Most people put two and two together, especially when they are all listed on my CV lol.  I've seen academic women with more complicated name histories, including those who have changed their surnames completely with no trace of their original names, in secure academic positions.  It just doesn't seem to be a big deal anymore.

 

I changed my name at the SS office with zero hassle, so my SS card reads "Melissa Jane Smith Black" with Jane Smith being my middle name.  My driver's license says the same.  My bank accounts are still in my original surname because I have been too lazy to change them (I have to bring my marriage certificate to the bank - they won't let me do it with two forms of ID, which is a hassle because who carries around their marriage certificate?) but it has actually given me zero problems.  The university has my name in a variety of formats because while I never intended to change it from Melissa Jane Smith (because I wanted my diplomas in my original name since I did most of the work in my original name - this was actually my husband's idea, lol), I think I filled out a W-4 when I started working for the university in a different capacity under my new legal name (Melissa Smith Black).  So some university records (mostly financial) have Melissa Smith Black and some (mostly student based) have Melissa Jane Smith and one even has Melissa Jane Black.  LOL!  I just kind of roll with the punches.

 

It sounds confusing, but it's really not that confusing honestly.  It's more amusing than anything else, lol.  And it literally makes zero difference.  I get checks made out to Melissa (Jane) Smith, Melissa (Jane) Black and Melissa Smith Black depending on which agency is paying me and what stage of my life I was when I started working there, and they always clear with no issues.  I get mail to all of those names and once the doormen realized that Smith was my original name that didn't give me any issues either.  People sometimes add a nonexistent hyphen and that never makes a difference either.

 

I would imagine that once I leave my graduate institution and go to a new institution, it won't be an issue.  At the university at which my postdoc will be, I am Melissa Smith Black period, and all of the checks and financial and administrative forms bear that name (also sometimes with the nonexistent hyphen).

 

When I can only fill out one middle name, I make a judgment call based upon context.  But I almost never have this problem because combined my middle name actually does have the same amount of letters as Jane Smith, and most places take spaces, so it's not really an issue.

 

And my signature has become Melissa Smith Black (it was Melissa Jane Smith).  I always sign my name Melissa Smith Black regardless of what I'm signing.

Edited November 17, 2013 by juilletmercredi

[random17]

I'm coming at this from the different perspective of having married another woman, so there are fewer societal expectations for what I should do, but I didn't change any part of my name after marriage.

 

I got married right before I started my PhD program, when the only work I had out was a bunch of conference abstracts and one submitted paper, so changing my name would not have been a major problem in terms of tracking the majority of my publication record, though I do like that I still have the same name as is listed on my BA and MS diplomas. However, even before I decided I wanted to go into academia, I had no intention of changing my name. I have a family first name, my mother's last name as a middle name, and my father's last name as a last name and the combination is just who I am and I had no interest in ever altering that.

 

In contrast, my non-academic wife has never been very attached to her name and was totally okay with not passing it on to the next generation, so future children will have my last name as a last name and her last name as one of their middle names. When we got married she added my last name after hers, so she now has a two word last name, because it was important to her to share a last name with her children. Both of us grew up with mothers who kept their maiden name and this never caused any problems or teasing, but we figure that our family is already going to get enough questions about which of us is really the mother of our children that having a common last name will simplify things. She likes having retained all portions of her original name, but is totally okay with us being referred to as the "Smiths" even if that's not technically her last name and will use only Smith when it's simpler than explaining about the double, non-hyphenated name.

 

Short version:

Jane (Brown) Smith married Emily (Elizabeth Johnson) Miller, who is now legally Emily (Elizabeth Johnson) Miller Smith. I publish under Jane B. Smith and use that as my signature, same as before I was married. Her signature is now E.M. Smith.  Our children will be Baby (Middle Miller) Smith. Socially, we're Jane Smith, Emily Miller Smith, and Baby Smith. 

[danieleWrites]

I've got a couple of perspectives. First is my own. I married young to a guy in the military and took his name. Frankly, my maiden name is a single syllable and, coupled with the iamb that is my first name, doesn't sound pleasant. My first name should have been either a trochee or a dactyl. Anyway. It was important to him and I didn't care about names (still don't) and filial history. Why should I? I was raised in the she cleaves unto her husband's family paradigm. Surnames are about descent, so in terms of family, I would have insisted on a single last name for everyone, whether it was hyphenated or not. When the kidlets get married and have to deal with four surnames, they can fight it out. Anyway. I graduated high school the year after I married (long and not tragic story). The only official documents I have that has my maiden name are my birth certificate and my marriage license. I considered what I would do with my name should I, for some reason, remarry. I decided that my name, the one on all of my official documents from diplomas to military records, will be the only name I will have. If this mythical, not-likely-to-exist "he" wants to have matching surnames, he can take mine. If the mythical he doesn't like it, he can kiss my grits; he's not the replacement hubby for me. I'm keeping the one I have and doubt I'll remarry even if he per-deceases me by a long span of time, so it's pretty much a moot point.

 

So, this kind of leads into the publishing thing and John Cougar/John Cougar Mellencamp/John Mellencamp thing. My thinking is simple. Once you've been published, use that name for publication and professional purposes from then on. While I've seen people go the hyphenated route post-marriage, there's still that bit of confusion for those who don't know the newly renamed person personally. John CM spent two decades changing his name in the public sphere simply so the people who liked the stuff from his early work and first big album (his John Cougar work) would associate him with his John Mellencamp work. While we're not all going to be the next Einstein, whose celebrity is powerful enough to have to deal with the Mellencamp-style naming issues, we are hopefully going to be known enough in our fields that we'd like our work to be connected to us, individually. Name changes, even when the expected thing to do, don't help.

 

The other perspective, and this is particularly for women, is the one of Ben Barres: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/07/060714174545.htm Gender discrimination is a huge problem in academia. There's an even larger discrimination problem when it comes to women who get married and all of the domestic assumptions that go with. A woman changing her name is a signal that she's decided to shift her focus from her research to her household. This is not true, and most people know that intellectually, but we've all been socialized to think that a newly married woman is more into picking out china and getting pregnant than single women, so her work will suffer in quality. Men don't have to put up with this. A woman should be aware of this bias when making the name decision, if for no other reason than to be aware of the new battle that must be picked.

[guinevere29]

I really wish we (meaning American soceity) had a more fluid naming process both after marriage and for naming children. Specifically, that people could give equal consideration to taking both last names regardless of gender and ultimately choose to keep one or both last names. For same-sex couples and transgender couples, this is already the case - there is no protocol or pressure to choose one partner's name over the other's. However, for hetereosexual couples, there is still considerable pressure for the woman to change her last name. The thing that really frustrates me is that the name-change issue can create legal issues for the woman should she get divorced or choose to go with a non-traditional name change.

 

However, on a theoretical level, to what extent to we really "own" our original last names? I have my father's last name (no hyphen, no mother's maiden name), so does keeping my last name really represent female sovereignty or does it just come down to choosing one patriarchal name over another? And then, if the relationship is a healthy relationship of equals in which one person doesn't force the other to give up their goals or aspirations due to gender roles, what inherent value does the name have other than a practical means of identification?

 

Everyone has brought up great points in this thread and this issue continues to perplex me. I try not to view it as a choice between femninism and patriarchy, but it's just not that simple!

[maelia8]

If I marry my partner some day, I plan on taking their name, but unlike many here who fear negative professional repercussions for changing their names, I anticipate positive results to come of it: 

1) The fact is, I am an historian of a specific region, and frankly, many of the people within the US who write about this country either come from this region, or have ancestors from this region, meaning that more than half of all historians of X that I know have last names from the language of this region and it seems to strengthen their credibility (marginally, but nonetheless somewhat). Since my ancestry from this region is maternal, I don't have the "right" last name, but marrying my partner, who DOES have a proper X region name, would solve this problem and probably improve my credibility as an historian of X. 

2) My mother has changed back to her maiden name since my father divorced her, and frankly, I'm not on such great terms with him either, and sharing his name isn't something I'm particularly proud of. If it were free, I would change my name to her "right" maternal name as well, and my sister too, but it's too expensive. Thus, I look forward to a free change if I marry my partner!

3) My last name (and my father's) is a very fluffy-sounding French name that, combined with my first name, makes me sound like a romance novelist. Not the best name to publish under academically, in my opinion (think along the lines of "Angeline Devereaux").