My sister heard the show this morning and recognized your name because I babbled about the Brooklyn reading so much! Yay!

I just want to point out that while some states (like Maryland which is where I live) don’t have laws that specifically allow men to change their names upon marriage they do have laws that are gender neutral. My husband took my name when we married and we didn’t have any problems.

Ariel…you’re smart

tannis, are you familiar with indiebride.com ? I know I’m not the only one on that board whose husband changed their name. I’m also willing to bet that there are couples where the man is changing his name in the Offbeat Tribe.

Playing devil’s advocate here… Keeping things consistent in the name change department sure as hell makes things easier on genealogists! I’m a big research buff, so I do wonder what kind of impact non-traditional naming practices will have on ancestry research in the future.

My fiance took my last name yesterday, two months before the actual wedding! He was legally changing his first name and threw it all in together. It’s very fun!

Oh, this is an argument starter in our house right now. Or, rather, he says “you’re changing your name” and I say “actually, honey, I’m not” then there’s silence.

If I were 20, I probably *would* have changed my name because my real sense of identity didn’t kick in ’till rather recently. At 38, there’s no way I’m changing it now.

And anyway, it would throw off my entire online persona: “missbhavens” is a happy accident. If I’m no longer a Havens, then the cutesy screenname doesn’t fly.

I’ve even suggested hyphenating, which TOTALLY doesn’t work because his last name is a two-parter already. I’ve asked him to change his. No go.

He’s a reasonable guy in other aspects of life, but he’s a big fat baby about this.

I’m at a loss.

I grew up with a hyphenated name, and then took the first part as my first name. I named myself a new adult name when I reached adulthood.

I’m young (early 20s), and that doesn’t mean I have less sense of myself- I’m strong in who I am and I know what I want.

My lover has a Joe Smith type of name, there’s 8 people with his first name at his workplace and because his name is so very common he gets mixed up all the time.

He was going to take my name, recognizing how important it was to my career (I work in the arts) and how I chose it myself. He just wanted to clear it with his parents- and his father had very strong ideas to the contrary. He called it emasculating.

Now, my lover really wants us to have a unified name, doesn’t want to offend his father by taking my name, and doesn’t want me to give up my name (he knows I don’t want to- and probably wouldn’t). So he’s suggested hyphenation.

I was hyphenated as a kid, I did it, it worked, there was some drama, but whatever- the point is- I don’t want to now. I like my new two-name self. Our kids can have three names.

I go back and forth, I want to make him happy (this is big). Many of our other big decisions worked out the way I wanted to (where we’re going to live, etc.)

I also feel very strongly about keeping my name.

(I also just don’t like the sound of his).

It’s something I’m making sense of, as best I can.