I honestly don't think people should get a divorce unless the vows are broken. Some people, I feel, get divorced for very stupid and petty reasons. As an example, one of the episodes I watches this morning was someone wanting a divorce because she leaves the lights on in whatever room she is in and doesn't turn them off and won't take out the garbage every day like he wants her to. Seriously? Damn.
But there in one trend that I am noticing that doesn't make any sense to me. There seems to be more and more women who keep their maiden name when they get married. I can understand hyphenating your last name. Hell, my mother did it when she got married the second time around. The way she did it is a little odd to me, but that was her choice.
When she married my father she took on his last name. When she married her second husband she hyphenated my father's last name with her current husband's last name. Normally when you hyphenate your last name it's your maiden name with your husband's last name. But she never changed her last name back to her maiden name. She said she did that because my brother was still under the age of 18. But like I said it was her choice and at least she didn't just keep my father's last name and not take on her current husband's last name at all.
I personally took on my Master's last name. I did not hyphenate it with my maiden name. I was old fashioned about it. Should the unthinkable happen and we happen to get a divorce I would go back to my maiden name. I would rather go through that inconvenience than just not take His name.
Maybe that's one of the reasons why someone wouldn't change their last name. They don't want to go get a new driver's license or their social security card, etc. and so on.
For me, I was excited about it. The minute I had our marriage license in my hot little hands I went to the DMV to change my last name on my driver's license. I literally went down to the court house to pick up the marriage license and I didn't even go home. I went straight to the DMV. That did take a long time as the DMV always does, so I had to wait until the next day to go down to the local social security office.
Once I got all that together I made sure my last name changed on all my other legal documents. I went to the bank and changed that and ordered new checks. And my first day back to school (I was in college at the time) I got there a good hour and a half early so I could get my student ID changed. Like I said, I was excited. It's not like I hate my maiden name, because I don't. But I was just excited that I was now legally His wife and I wanted to make sure everything was official as soon as possible.
Why, aside from a few days of going to different places to legally change your name, would you want to keep your maiden name? If I were to have kept my maiden name and was still called Mrs., which you would be because you are now married, it would make me think of my mother, not me.
Just out of curiosity, have any of you, my readers who are married, kept your maiden name after getting married? If so, why? Like I said I'm just curious. Maybe I'll understand it more if someone explains it to me.
I kept mine because it's very uncommon, there is only my family around really, and there's only me and my sister. Once we go, that's it for the name. I have three sons, my ex-husband's name and the 'sense' of his family goes on. Not so for mine.
ReplyDelete*shrug* It made sense to me. And when I left him for being abusive, it saved some steps.
Now the even more odd one, although it makes sense in its own way is my mom. She took my dad's name when they married, got all her professional degrees, and kept it when they split. She also kept it when she remarried for professional reasons. She said, essentially, that it was her 'grown up' name. So 35 years later, she still has her ex-husband's family name.
We're odd balls.
Thank you for sharing that. I appreciate it and that does make sense to me.
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