I recently spoke to my dear, feminist mother about changing your name. This conversation started out very generally about name-changing and quickly morphed into a minor rant on the absurd inability of men to change their names upon marriage compared to the relative equanimity with which women do so. My mom bemoaned the fact that my father stoutly (in a rather “oh but I wish I could!” kind of way) refused to change his name to hers when they got married, even though hers was by far a nicer name. And this got me thinking. So I decided to ask a male friend of mine his opinion on the matter. The resulting uncomfortable conversational shimmying that he displayed was singularly impressive for its attempt to dodge the bullet alone, but also because he illustrated a definite difference in the way men and women view their last names.
Men seem to view a last name as a legacy, as part of who they are and what their family stood for, and something that (like their freedom!) can never be taken away from them. More basically, they tend to be more plain old attached to it. Women, I find, seem to have a more fleeting relationship with their last name. It’s there, it’s nice but when that right guy comes along, it should be easily given up and traded for his name, bizarrely used here as a symbol of their unification as man and wife. (It seems to me that something that inherently requires one partner to give something up and become the same as the other hardly shows a unification so much as a hostile take over.)
Why is this? Is it simply society once again impressing something different upon little boys versus little girls as they grow up? As a female, I must say that changing my last name has always seemed inevitable if a little strange (why should I be forced to deal with the weird feeling of having a different name from my own?). Perhaps it is a generational shift that while I do assume I will one day change my last name, I still firmly insist upon “Ms.” My mother’s generation unthinkingly changed their names upon marriage and hopped on the “Mrs.” bandwagon and perhaps the next generation will not be so eager to do so and will equally unthinkingly use “Ms.” Maybe we’re just in the middle of a shift, but even if that’s the case, it still seems highly unlikely that the opinion of men regarding last names will ever be changed, judging by my dad (previous generation) and my male friend (new generation, same old protests).
6 years ago
2 comments:
Eh, I know this is anecdotal evidence, but I refuse to give up my last name. We only have one family member right now passing on the Wutz name, and he only has a daughter, who will eventually change it, I'm sure.
I'm quite willing to take a man's name as my middle name and give any children a hyphenated last name. But it's MY NAME, you know? I can't imagine giving that up.
Excellent and I'm glad to hear that this "it's MY NAME" business is not limited to men these days. I was thinking about all this because there's a woman in my office who is marrying a man whose last name is "Finklestein" and she changing her name (a very nice one, too) to his. I asked her and she said, "Of course! What else can I do?" The sheer inevitability that she felt was just astounding to me.
I think perhaps my conflict lies in the fact that I don't like my last name and do want to chuck it very much but not necessarily in lieu of my hypothetical husband's name. I don't like the precedent but I really want a different name! :)
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