Noorah101

Yes, I'll be taking my husband's last name when we get married. He's got a 2-part last name though, the second part being really long and almost unpronouncable...lol So I might just take the first part of his name when I change mine, then if he becomes a citizen down the road, he will drop the long second part of his last name. It's funny, until I met my fiance, I was dead set against changing my name with anyone I ever considered long-term....but now, I don't know, it just feels right to share his name :-)
Rene

Khadija

Hi,

I changed mine but took the adding it to my maiden name route vs. dropping maiden name. As an only child it seemed respectful to keep my family name alive somehow.

However, when space is short on a signature line, just the married name wins out.

Patty Khadijah

Khadija

P.S. My husband thought it was funny that I took his last name. In his country (Egypt), the wife retains her maiden name. So, if I use his name when we're in Cairo, folks would assume I'm his sister and not his wife. To signify I'm his wife, I'm introduces as Madam Abdo or Madam Abdel-Khalek.

However, since he understands the custom of the wife taking her husband's name in my culture, he's very flattered that I wanted to add his family name to mine.

OlenkaKyiv

I will....the last name of my Lovely is short, not like mine

Olenka

Noorah101

Patty, that's interesting...my fiance's culture is the same way, the wife keeps her maiden name on all official documents, but is known as Mrs. "husband's last name" only with close friends and family members. But he's so excited about me officially taking his last name, even though it's not part of his own customs...lol...it's so cute! :-)
Rene

ScarlettHill

I took Garth's last name. He was perfectly willing to take mine but we thought it would be simpler this way. My last name before marriage was the same as my children and it was the last name of my first husband, who died. I felt it was a bit too much asking him to take the name of a former husband, and someone who died to boot, however easy-going he was about it. When the adoption goes through we will all have the same last name and meanwhile the school calls the girls by our surname on everything except legal docs.

I don't have great feelings about the change-thing either way but I think kids like to have the whole family with the same name. Otherwise they are named after one parent and not the other, which feels a bit one-sided.

We thought of making a new surname for a new start but never got around to it - we had enough paperwork to deal with

Regards
-=-
Scarlett

Pallyn

We considered the concept of a brand-new last name for everyone involved, but the other parents for the children involved wouldn't sign off on that. I hyphenated to keep a name in common with both my daughter and with my stepchildren. My daughter was born with my maiden name and chose to hyphenate her dad's on when she was older. It doesn't always make sense when you hear the name of one or two of us, but when you see the whole family listed you can follow the dots and see the relationships. Plus, all of our names are short, Anglo and common. The hyphenation makes it so I don't have to give my date of birth when someone is searching alphabetically for me.

dbark

I will be proud to take Kurt's last name as mine when we marry. I see it as the ultimate in sharing! His name is pretty unusual, so I am sentencing myself to a life-long series of "can-you-spell-that-please" everywhere I go!

Debbie

hmiller

I took my husbands last name. His is a 3 part last name but for every day purposes we just use the first part. I had thought about whether I would take his name or keep my maiden name for the last year. He was supportive either way but it was important to me that as we were becoming a family and new children would be added that we all shared that in common. My daughter uses our new last name for everything but legal purposes as well.

Duckie

lol, that is funny. the need to spell my first name i already know of. and it is only a 3 letter name, but i have to find the american to be able to pronounce it correctly with first try - name beeing "Uwe". my fiancee will take my last name - and that wont be easier to spell or pronounce as it is a german word.

Caro

I took my husband's last name in the US, because it is just easier to identify us as a family. In France, I never lost my maiden name (all my French IDs/documents now read: maidenName married marriedName), and then, there is the "nom d'usage", meaning the one you want to use for non-administraive purposes (which can be marriedName, maidenName, marriedName-maidenName, maidenName-marriedName). For work (publications), I use maidenName-marriedName, as the first ones only have my maiden name. And people at work are so confused that they solved the problem by writting on my door firstName marriedName/maidenName.

Caroline

timesup

I was going to change my name until I lived in hubby's hometown for a while. Most people don't change their name there. In fact, I could not legally be known by my married name where we lived. So I had documents in both names and it became way too confusing. (I know my id card says Annie X, but could you write the prescription to Annie Y because my insurance is in that...etc.) Also it's too weird for people to think you're brother and sister because you have the same last name.

I've gone back to my maiden name and can't imagine it any other way. It seems to be becoming more common in the US for women to keep their maiden name so there aren't too many questions

Dekka's Angel

For my first two marriages, I kept my maiden name. I come from a huge tribe and I just AM one of them, in looks and personality. My maiden name is very important to me.

So in my first marriage, I refused outright to change my surname. Plus I just don't LOOK like someone with the name I would have had. The idea had value only when I was still a math major, fantasizing about the sheer surrealism and terror-inducing potential of an African American high school math teacher with a Hebrew first name and a German Last name. (Imagine being 15 or so....waiting in your seat on the first day of high school trigonometry or calculus for your teacher Mrs. Ruthie Berg to show up, creating a picture of your new teacher in your "I know everything" teenage mind based on stereotypical views of the world at that time .........and having ME walk in ).)

For my second husband, I tried to change my name, because he he insisted that this was important for him to be happy and he would not consider either a hyphenated name or changing his to mine. I said I was going to change it but needed time to work up to making it official. I really did try, honest. So I practiced regularly on things like ordering seed catalogues and making dinner reservations and setting up our DSL account. I also brought out the "professional name" excuse -- largely to myself -- more and more as time went on and it remained unchanged. But I never could bring myself to send in the forms to make it legal. It just never felt right. I guess that says something, given the outcome.

Despite this.......from the moment I met Dekkie and we discussed marriage, I have *wanted* to take his name if we ever got married. If I'm honest from the moment I first heard his last name I wanted to marry him just so I could share it with him. It is a beautiful name. For a beautiful person. Derek is more than willing to take my last name so long as we share a surname. (Theoretically it is also for the sake of "having a family name for any children we have" but I'm under existing-child edict to produce no further children, under pain of death). It's weird, feeling this drive to expand a central marker of who I am for the first time ever in my life.

So I've gotten all my forms, and already filled them out, *and* have started practicing my new signature because my new last name is going to be a challenge after squiggling my name illegibly for the last 12 years. My first name will then be my existing middle name (I never did like Ruthie; I'm way too wild and crazy a chick for that name and besides nobody other than my mother and a couple of folks who knew me before I left NYC at 17 has called me that in years, other than the government). My maiden surname will become my middle name, and my surname will be my Dekkie's last name. Woo hoo! I can't wait.

Caro

Waow! You got an early start! I remember how surprised I was when I went to change my driver's license in MI and the clerck asked me to sign it on the computer pad that makes the signature look really bad anyway...

Caroline

JohnCindy

It is going to be a great honor/honour on July 19th to become Mrs. Wilson and I will carry that name til eternity Wow only 6 weeks away now!!