Honestly this gives me fucking hives. I cannot BELIEVE how many women I know change their names. It’s so depressing to me. And yes, in my heart, though I don’t say this to them, I do think it makes them bad feminists. There is no good reason to do so and if you choose to for tradition or your feels then you have made…

Bro. No.

As a man my opinion on this might be biased but I think that a woman taking the mans name is a nice tradition, like women and children first or any basic chivalric practices. It plays well into the positive aspects of the male psyche. Just my two cents.

I very firmly believe that the person who literally gestates and births a human gets the final say on the last name. They are the cause of this tiny human being alive.

Why are you crushed? Would you be crushed by your daughter changing her last name? Did your wife take your name? Were you crushed by that?

My husband took my name. It made the most sense. My name is objectively better (shorter, easier to spell, more phallic), and I already lost it once in my first marriage and my husband didn’t want me to have to do that again. He gets more praise for it than you would fucking believe. And when people find out he adopted…

Ugh, I guess by that logic we should assume that no man is ever committed to the marriage either, right?

When I was engaged, he told me I would be taking his name. Never mind what I wanted to be called, he wanted to be a ‘real man’. Luckily the wedding/engagement/life he planned for me got called off and I kept my name.

Just out of curiosity, why? Do you think you’d have a similar reaction if your daughter changed her last name?

If it was really just for family unity, then as many men as women would take their spouses last name. But they don’t. So clearly it’s not just about family unity.

Haha, my parents are Dr. and Mr. as well. I even addressed my fancy wedding invitation to them that way. 

People can be so goddamned irrational about names. My stepmother never took my father’s last name, but her parents flatly ignored her decision and thereafter addressed all mail to her using my father’s name. This persisted until both of them passed away.

Married for a year, having a baby in a few months. I never changed my name, we are hyphenating baby’s last name. I might hyphenate to have the same last name as baby, not sure yet. My grandparents CRIED on Mother’s Day when they found out about baby’s last name. Begged me not to. Especially my grandma, oddly. People…

That sounds like the Curies. Marie Curie’s daughter married a scientist who took her name because there was so much status attached to it.

Well, if it wasn’t a loss of identity, more men would be willing to do it, don’t you think? It’s a loss of identity and women still do it because they’ve internalized the nonsense belief that they have less to lose by changing their names, than their husbands do, and because they buy the bullshit belief that you’re…

The only guy I know who did it also has an advanced degree but he did so because his wife’s family is super rich and he started working for their family business and it gives him way more status because they’re a very prominent family.

It’s not a harmless practice though. If it were, more men would change their names. But they don’t. Which makes it clear that it’s a sexist bullshit tradition that is demeaning to women and makes it clear that a woman’s identity is less valuable than a man’s.

I have a terminal degree. I kept my last name because it is my name, not because of the degree (not that it matters), so hubs and I have different names. Let’s say my last name is Smith. I LOVE when people say “Oh hi Mr. and Mrs. Smith” assuming my name would be my husband’s and therefore his is Smith. He finds a lot…

I mean, I wouldn’t change my last name to my wife’s name because my name is part of my identity, and I like my last name.

Never understood why anyone changes their name in marriage at all. My wife didn’t change hers, neither did my mom, so maybe I’ve got a warped perspective on this.