Him changing his name

Mayzoo · Jan 4, 2011

Bro_Sam said:
The Church submits to Christ. Christ does not submit to the Church.

So honest question here...if the fiance (male) states it is his desire to take her name after marriage, then his taking her name in that instance would be in accordance with your comment, correct?

Luther073082 · Jan 5, 2011

Bro_Sam said:
I think it's great that you did that, but for us Christians, it's about much, much more than just tradition. Marriage symbolizes the relationship between Christ and the Church, Christ represented by the husband, and the Church represented by the wife.

In Christianity, wives take the husbands name as a symbol of the Church's submission to the authority of Christ.

Error: You are using scripture to defend a western cultural tradition.

There are many Christians in other cultural traditions that don't have the wife change her last name.

I think if he's ok with taking her last name, then thats fine, but as a normative women should usually take their husband's last name.

FaithPrevails · Jan 5, 2011

~Lynz~ said:
i am a traditionalist sort of person. i want to take my husbands name and then have our children and live happily ever after however thats not the set up we have. the kids are already there.
this is the exact reason i ask... i wouldnt want to appear disrespectful towards my husband, but is not taking his name disrespectful. i will submit to my husband i do all the wife duties that is expected of me. does taking his name matter all that much? it is only a name after all. (and he is not attached to his second name its not his family name it is his ex step fathers)

i would take my to be husbands name in a heartbeat. its a name i like and i personaly like it more than my maiden name.

i dont want to force a new surname on my children they are 5 and 2 yrs old and will be 7 and 4 yrs old when we get married so they will be well old enough to know there surname and as my husband had his surname changed by his step dads arrival he doesnt want to do that to my kids as he hated it when he was a kid and he would have been the same age as my eldest will be.

i dont want to have a different surname from my kids either. my elsest son has already been though a name change as i gave him his fathers name when he was born and changed it when his father left which was before my youngest was born so was able to give him my maiden name when i regestered him.

in scotland under 16 you can only change your name once (you can chnage it again through depol) but really my eldest son cant change his name again untill he is 16.

and finally my other reason is i want the same name as my husband "Mr and Mrs"

so to sum up..
i want the same name as my kids
i dont want to force a new surname on them
i want the same surname as my husband.

it only seams logical.

the only other option i have is to double my surname and have both. but im not sure how legal that is.

I totally understand wanting to have the same last name as your kiddos. I kept my ex-husband's name until I remarried for that reason alone. And the kids did worry that we weren't a family anymore when I took my husband's surname. I assured them that we are all part of the same family even though we have different last names now, but it is a bit awkward, IMO.

Would your future husband prefer to have his given (birth) surname back? Maybe he could change his name back and you could hyphenate your surname once you marry. It's perfectly legal here in the States, which is why I suggest it.

Also, if you are able, you could use your maiden name as your middle name. So, if your name is Jane Marie Doe and you are marrying John Smith, your name would be changed to Jane Doe Smith. That's what I did. You can even use your full name on documents if you want so that your children would still be identified easily with your name.

LovebirdsFlying · Jan 5, 2011

Up to the two of you alone. Sometimes it's not a submission issue, and certainly there are other ways to show deference besides the woman automatically taking the man's last name. Maybe he has a goofy last name that people have cracked jokes about all his life, and hers is more mainstream. I can relate. My maiden name sounded like a body part. I was GLAD to get rid of it, and I think I married too soon, just to do that. Probably because of the ridicule I suffered, there have been men I refused to date because they had a really silly-sounding last name, because I didn't want to ever be in a position where I might be expected to take that name. A body part was bad enough. I didn't want to go from the frying pan to the fire.

Another option would be both parties scrapping their last names for an entirely different one.

Quick question: If the wife taking the husband's name is strictly a Christian practice symbolizing Christ's headship of the church, then why do women of other religions or no religion take their husband's last name as well?

Mayzoo · Jan 5, 2011

How would one submit to a husband who has no leaning preference on the subject?

IMO, thinking that the man's name must be taken is Christian Submission issue is a culturally narrow perspective. In some cultures it is custom for the man to take the woman's last name or for both to keep their given names. That does not make less of a Christian in my opinion.

c1ners · Jan 5, 2011

I wish my daughter's husband would have taken her name instead of her taking his. We lost her dad when she was just a baby and she's one of the last ones in her generation. Her husband has three other brothers, so that name has the chance of continuing on whereas my late husbands doesn't.

Nienna_Lady_of_Tears · Jan 6, 2011

I honestly would only hyphenate if I were widowed and remarried, especially since I dislike my maiden name because it reminds me of my psychotic family, and I'd want to keep part of my current married name alive by the hyphenation. I took my husband's name. If I were widowed, and a man couldn't understand that I'd like to keep it, then I don't know if I could marry the man.

Mixolydian · Jan 7, 2011

My wife's family's tradition was that girls weren't given middle names so that when they got married and took their husband's last name, their maiden name became their middle name with no hyphenation. I was happy to carry that on with our three daughters, none of whom have a middle name.

We once had a neighbor couple who took each other's last name and hyphenated, so he was John Doe-Smith and she was Jane Smith-Doe. They had one child and I was too polite to ask what her last name was, Doe-Doe-Smith-Smith? Smith-Doe-Doe-Smith?

FaithPrevails · Jan 7, 2011

Key · Jan 10, 2011

It's all up to him.

If he has no attachment to his surname, then go for it.

No big one way of another.

AndOne · Jan 10, 2011

Luther073082 said:
Error: You are using scripture to defend a western cultural tradition.

There are many Christians in other cultural traditions that don't have the wife change her last name.

I think if he's ok with taking her last name, then thats fine, but as a normative women should usually take their husband's last name.

I agree with Bro_Sam on this.

The western tradition of this stems from roots in Christianity. It is indeed a sign of submission for the wife to assume the man's name and this practice is appropriate for Christian married couples to engage in.

waxlion10 · Jan 10, 2011

Behe's Boy said:
I agree with Bro_Sam on this.

The western tradition of this stems from roots in Christianity. It is indeed a sign of submission for the wife to assume the man's name and this practice is appropriate for Christian married couples to engage in.

Do you have scholarly evidence to support this assertion? I'm just curious because I have never heard that this western tradition (of the woman taking the man's last name upon marriage) has its roots in Christianity, so I'd be interested to become more educated regarding this topic.

Captivated · Jan 10, 2011

Behe's Boy said:
I agree with Bro_Sam on this.

The western tradition of this stems from roots in Christianity. It is indeed a sign of submission for the wife to assume the man's name and this practice is appropriate for Christian married couples to engage in.

So what happened in those western countries where this isn't, and hasn't, been practiced? Even if you're right about the practice being rooted in Christianity, it is still a relatively recent practice for anyone in the western world to have a surname at all, as I pointed out in my earlier post. So the 'roots in Christianity' thing, if true, is also a relatively recent phenomenon and certainly not as old as Christianity itself.

Not saying you're wrong in claiming this but I also would be interested in seeing the scholarly evidence; this sort of thing is fascinating to me.

Mayzoo · Jan 10, 2011

So far what I have found seems to be the same as what I learned when I was younger. Surnames were started for legal and distinction reasons. It appears that China was one of the first countries to start using hereditary surnames. I have not done a very expansive research on this yet.

Surname Origin & Last Name Meanings. Free Family Name Dictionary with Family History & Genealogy Resources by Ancestor Search

Excerpt:

The use of a surname is relatively new in history and was adopted in order to legally distinguish two individuals with the same first name.

At first, these last names were not passed down to the next generation.

The Chinese were among the very first cultures to adopt the use of hereditary surnames about 5000 years ago. In Europe, surnames weren't used until the 10th or 11th centuries AD in Venice. Gradually throughout Europe, all nobility and gentry adopted surnames until eventually surnames were used by all Europeans of all classes.

I will see what more research produces .

ChildByGrace · Jan 10, 2011

I took my husbands name. I didn't look into doing it any other way.

I don't think having your name as the family name us wrong, as long as he is totally happy with it. I can understand wanting all the family to have the same name. If it was me though, I'd take the new name and change the childrens to the same.

MacNeil, D. · Jan 10, 2011

Mixolydian said:
My wife's family's tradition was that girls weren't given middle names so that when they got married and took their husband's last name, their maiden name became their middle name with no hyphenation. I was happy to carry that on with our three daughters, none of whom have a middle name.

We once had a neighbor couple who took each other's last name and hyphenated, so he was John Doe-Smith and she was Jane Smith-Doe. They had one child and I was too polite to ask what her last name was, Doe-Doe-Smith-Smith? Smith-Doe-Doe-Smith?

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