For the last 33 years, my daughter has shared my married surname. Four months ago she married. She's keeping her maiden surname for work purposes, as all her medical certificates and achievements (such as papers written and published) are in her maiden name and it is too complicated to change. But otherwise she has assumed her husband's surname for all other purposes. Seeing her now referred to as the new Mrs ******** still hits me as very strange. I just can't get used to it. I suppose my parents went through the same emotions when I married and changed my surname. Of course it is no longer a requirement that women change their surname on marriage anyway, or they adopt double-barrelled names to incorporate both. If they have children then the double-barrelled names would become quadruple-barrelled and so on. That would make form-filling a nightmare as there'd never be enough space. Probably changing one's surname on marriage is the most straightforward, but it's still taking me a while to adjust to hers.
1 comment:
When we lived in France it was the norm that the woman’s maiden/birth name was her legal name and all legal documentation defaulted to this. I think, personally, that this is how it should be - you were born with this name and so this is your legal name.
No doubt others would disagree but I know that my daughters have taken their married name as it can get “tricky” in certain situations in the UK if they did not do that.
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