A woman is upset that her fiancé isn’t on board with her idea to take each other’s last name when they get married.
In a lengthy post on Reddit, the woman began by explaining her personal stance on the common custom of wives taking their husband’s surname. “I have always felt very, very strongly about not changing my last name when I got married, not even so much because of my own ancestral history, but just because I cannot get over the patriarchal history of the women taking the man’s last name … the whole ownership thing,” she wrote.
She said she questioned the custom even as a kid, and when she would ask her parents about it, they would simply tell her it’s “tradition.”
“They just couldn’t come up with a good answer!” she said. “It just doesn’t seem right to automatically err towards the man’s last name — I’m getting married into a partnership, and I want to express that outwardly to the world, and way more importantly, to my future children.”
So she decided to take a different approach and proposed to her fiancé that the pair “take each other’s last names and do a hyphen scenario … and pass that down that to our children.” But his reaction to the idea surprised her.
A groom and bride during a wedding ceremony (stock image).
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“While he is fine with ME doing the hyphen, or even just keeping our own individual last names, he feels very strongly about not hyphenating his own name,” the woman explained. “When I ask why, he says the same thing my parents did when I was young: ‘tradition.’ “
She continued, “I explained that he wouldn’t be changing his last name, just adding on another. Didn’t make him feel better.”
The woman wrote that she feels she’s “really leaving ego out” of her desire for her fiancé to take her last name.
“So many things in life are grey, but this tradition just feels ….. kind of outdated and wrong?” she said of a woman taking a man’s name.
She concluded her post, “His response and strong feelings about this surprised me and are really bothering me,” before inviting opinions from other Redditors. “How do I go about this and am I out of line?”
In the comments section, many people pointed out to the woman that she is so focused on her own feelings that she is disregarding her soon-to-be husband’s feelings.
“You feel very strongly about not taking his name — that’s ok and very reasonable. What isn’t reasonable is you being upset that he has strong feelings about something too,” one person wrote.
A couple (stock image).
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Another added, “He’s not pushing you to change your last name. You don’t get to push him to change his.”
Someone else suggested that the most reasonable solution is for the woman and her fiancé to both keep their own last names. “That’s honestly the most fair, egalitarian approach, especially if you’re against the patriarchal connotations associated with taking his name. Most people in my circles aren’t bothering with name changes,” they commented.
“His POV is very reasonable even if he didn’t really explain himself well — he’s on board with whatever you want to do with your own last name, and also wants to do whatever he wants with his own name. He’s allowed to make the choice to keep it,” they added. “Lots of people like their name and want to keep it. I wouldn’t want to be prodded into a hyphenated name either if I was him.”
Another commenter noted that opting for hyphenated names is just “passing the issue along.”
“If a hyphenated person married another do they somehow come up with a four barrel name? Do they go by one name?” they questioned. “I’m not suggesting that you just change to his last name but there is allllll of the admin to consider.”
Yet another person suggested that the couple could compromise and “choose a brand new last name together.”
