[Bethany] The Last Name Project

In this new series co-hosted by from two to one and The Feminist Mystique, we will be profiling an array of individuals and couples about their last name decisions upon marriage or what they expect to choose if they marry. The goal is to explore how individuals make decisions about their last name, and to highlight the many possibilities. We will be posting profiles periodically and encourage you to stay connected via Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.  If you would like to participate in this series, email Danielle at danielle [at] fromtwotoone [dot] com or Shannon at hill [dot] shannonp [at] gmail [dot] com.   

The following post is from Bethany, a straight, liberal, agnostic librarian who gets surprisingly irked when dual last names aren't alphabetized properly (but rarely shushes people).

I got married a year and a half ago.  I knew for many years that I wouldn’t want to marry someone who demanded that I change my name, and I had thought that meant that I wouldn’t change my name.  My husband left the choice entirely up to me, and I surprised myself by taking his last name when we applied for the marriage license.

I like the name I was raised with.  It’s a huge part of how I see myself.  Long before we got married, my husband and I talked about our names.  He wasn’t comfortable changing his surname (can’t blame him--neither was I), and neither of us like the hyphenation game.  I suggested that we both change our names a little bit.  We could both have my last name as a middle name, and his last name as our family name.  We could drop our given middle names.  Both of our families would be represented in both of our names, which has a wonderful air of fair and equal partnership.  For a while, it was a mutually agreeable option.

Here’s what I learned afterchoosing his last name on the marriage license application: it’s easy to change your last name when you get married.  Your middle name, however, isn’t always up for discussion.  In my state, you have to go through the probate courts if you want to legally remove and change any other part of your name for any reason.  That means filing papers, paying legal fees, publicly announcing the name change, waiting for objections, appearing in court, and finally walking away with a spiffy new name.

I’m not lazy, and I’m not flaky.  But I am pragmatic.  The prospect of changing both our middle names was more hassle than the symbolism was worth to us.  My husband kept his name unchanged.  I opted to include my first, middle, maiden, and unhyphenated married name on my new Social Security card, which somehow wasn’t a problem.  My driver’s license, bank accounts, will, and W2’s show the three names I really want.  I use all three professionally and socially.  I’m alphabetized by my married name, which conveniently bumps me many letters up the alphabet.  Sometimes I capriciously use only my married name, which is much shorter to spell over the phone.

Someday, when we have children, our whole family will have the same last name.  Neither my husband nor I will have an oddball last name that doesn’t match everyone else’s.  We won’t need to consider giving our children different last names to represent both of us.  We’re strongly considering giving any/all of them my maiden name as a sole middle name.  If we do, we will have come full circle to our original plan.  What our children do with that name is up to them--just like it was up to us when we got married.

What Are You Going to Do With Your Last Name?

According to a recent study, 50% of Americans still believe that a woman should be legally required to take their husband's last name when they get married. Because we are, apparently, living in medieval times.

I know that today, the majority of women still change their last name when they get married. In fact, a 2006 article claimed that 80% of American women still choose to participate in the tradition. This number is much lower for academics, which I know from personal experience (I can only think of one female professor at Yale who even hyphenated her last name) and from a study that I can't find now that said only 30% of female academics change their last name.

The sexist symbolism inherent in the assumption that women will change their last names when they get married is left over from the days when US law followed the doctrine of coverture. This doctrine meant women had no legal rights; their father was legally responsible for them until they got married, when the husband took over. Who had coverture of a woman, including all of her property, was indicated by her last name, either her father's or her husband's. (Fun fact: Because women legally couldn't have property, husbands not only had to leave property to their sons in their will, but had to give custody of their children to a male relative - not the mother. If your husband died when you had a child that was, for example, five years old, that child became the "property" of one of your husband's male relatives, and not you).


Some people are content to say that since the US no longer abides by the doctrine of coverture, changing your last name is just a tradition. A nice tradition that enables you to share a last name, make it easier for people to know you're married, and for both of you to have the same last name as your children. But why is it the woman's responsibility to ensure all of these things? Why is it still the woman who has to change her last name?

Because it is a sexist tradition, a symbol that reinforces gender stereotypes and women's inferiority. I've heard many a (conservative) religious person argue that women should change their last names because doing so recognizes the man's headship of the family. And while I disagree with them that the idea of male headship is a great, necessary thing, I do agree with them that that is exactly what a name change implies.

I've spent a lot of time obsessing thinking about what to do with my last name when I get married. For me, the traditional route is simply not an option. I don't like the sexist implications, and I don't like what it says about the equality of me and my (future) partner in our (future) marriage. I am 90% sure that I will not change it or hyphenate it; that I will just stay "Shannon Hill." I like that I get to keep my last name, and symbolically demonstrate that we are distinct equals. I also like that I wouldn't have to spend any time, money, or energy on changing my last name on any documents.

A small part of me, however, does kind of like the idea of having the same last name as my partner. If I marry my current partner, pretty much nothing will change when we do get married because we will have already lived together for who knows how many years. It would be kind of nice to have some sort of symbolic change to represent our marriage. And it would be kind of nice to have some sort of symbolic, "oh hey world! we're a team!" throughout our lives. If we went this route though, he'd have to change his name too. We would become a team together; it wouldn't just be that I'm jumping on board Team Brett. Ideally, in this situation we would both end up hyphenating our last names, so I would be Shannon Hill-M and he would be Brett Hill-M. Sometimes, I actually think that doing it this way is more progressive, because the idea of a man changing his last name for a woman is even more unheard of then a woman just keeping her own. Additionally, then our names would match our children's, because our children would have Hill-Maiden as their last name regardless of whether or not I keep my maiden name or we both hyphenate them. (Although, honestly, I'm not too worried about this. I went through childhood having a mother whose name was Joanne Hill, then Joanne Maiden Name, then Joanne Step-Father's Name and no one ever got confused over who my mother was).

Another very small part of me wants to somehow incorporate my mother's maiden name into the equation somehow, because I love her and I hate patriarchy.

So, I would love to know, what do you think you will do with your last name when you get married, and why? If you're already married, what did you do with your last name, and why? Was it not important to you to break with the tradition? Or do you have a fun, creative way of disrupting the system that you'd love to share?