Please explain why you did or did not. I always find this interesting...

I took DH's name for a few of reasons:

My maiden name was always misspelled and mispronounced and being anal about that sort of thing, it drove me nuts my whole life :hairpull:
DH had a short, easy to spell, easy to pronounce last name (that STILL gets butchered by inattentive people :angry7: ), but not like my maiden name
I'm a traditionalist and I would have taken my husband's name whatever it was ;-)

For the first 5 years of our marriage, I hypenated. I just did not get around to fulling changing over, mainly because I was known by my maiden name at work. The intent was always to switch over as I am traditional, too. Oddly, I now am wondering if I should have kept the hypen as my maiden name is French and would buy me much at times. lol **sneaks in a few hypenateds still...**

You might find it fascinating to know that in the province of Quebec, you are NOT allowed to take on your husband's name at all. You must maintain your maiden name. It has to do with preservation of French last names and is an absolute crock. People should have the option to do what they want to, but Quebec foams at the mouth constantly for things like this. Many of my friends who are Quebecer's through and through have actually come to Ontario to be married just because of this.

I'm just traditional and took on my husband's last name. My maiden name as well as my married name both get butchered..LOL

I took my husband's last name, also. I believe in tradition and would have used it regardless. Sometimes, though, I get kinda tired of being called "Old Mother Hubbard" and Norris doesn't seem so bad anymore (although I got hit with "Lori Nori" more times than I care to remember).

I took my husband's name mainly because it is easier to say and spell although people often say Taylor instead of Tyler!

Two of my best friends from college did not. One kept her own last name and the other had her husband change his last name to hers!

I took my husband's last name, also. I believe in tradition and would have used it regardless. Sometimes, though, I get kinda tired of being called "Old Mother Hubbard" and Norris doesn't seem so bad anymore (although I got hit with "Lori Nori" more times than I care to remember).

Lori Nori! LOL

I forgot about the "name play", too. (Actually, I think I blocked it out.) My maiden name started with GAS so you can just imagine the teasing during my school years. UGH.

Lori Nori! LOL

I forgot about the "name play", too. (Actually, I think I blocked it out.) My maiden name started with GAS so you can just imagine the teasing during my school years. UGH.


When dh and I started dating, it took my sister (a master of name play) a whopping 2.5 seconds to come up with "Old Mother Hubbard" after she learned his name and that he had kids. She thinks she's so funny!:evil4: I couldn't even think of hyphenating, just too much of a pain, especially given the number of times I have to sign my name and the alphabet soup that follows it for work.

You might find it fascinating to know that in the province of Quebec, you are NOT allowed to take on your husband's name at all. You must maintain your maiden name. It has to do with preservation of French last names and is an absolute crock. People should have the option to do what they want to, but Quebec foams at the mouth constantly for things like this. Many of my friends who are Quebecer's through and through have actually come to Ontario to be married just because of this.

I do find this fascinating, thanks for sharing Leigh! It's always interesting to hear about this kind of stuff. Right before visiting Switzerland with my DH and FIL I found out that Swiss woman were not granted the right to vote until 1971!!! I gave FIL a hard time when I read that b/c he and his relatives always make it sound like the Swiss are so open-minded and progressive thinkers in comparison to the U.S. and here they didn't let women vote until the 70's! I was shocked.

Anyway, I took DH's name, then a few months later asked him if he would mind me using my maiden name professionally as back then I was in social work and had to do a LOT of handwritten documentation and writing out my 15 letter last name was getting a bit tedious. Let's just say he was less than pleased about the idea so I didn't go back to my maiden name at work. I went from a nice 7 letter easy to pronounce last name to a 15 letter Swiss name that is actually easy to pronounce if you just sound it out like it's spelled but looks intimidating. A lot of people think it's a hyphenated name (I guess they think no one name could possibly be that long) but it's not. It's just long.

I am traditional too when it comes to this and b/c of the length of Dh's last name hyphenating was just not an option. As it is my last name is cut off on most of my credit cards, etc. and my name takes up two lines on my driver's license.

I used to work at a private school outside of Boston, and many of the mothers kept their last names or did the hyphenating thing. I deciced at that point that I wanted everyone in my family to have the same last name, so I took DH's name when we got married.

I was young and didn't know the difference ...but I still would have taken dh's name being tradtional....although dd Jen was born before we were married and again I didn't know any better and she has my maiden name forher last name I thought be cause we weren't married i could give her Robs name.....it used tomreally bother her but doesn't any more.

Sorry if I offend anyone, but I absolutely DETEST hypenated names, first or last. I mean come one...pick one and stick with it!!!:evil4:

And LOL, of course I couldn't find a Smith or a Johnson...My maiden name was Hocz (pronounced hoax), which was forever mispelled (Hoez was always my favorite, ROFL) and mispronounced (it was always hox and it drove me nuts). Dh's name is Knops (pronounce the K), which isn't much better, b/c now I'm correcting those who say Nops.

Oh well...like Becky said, I want us all to have the same name.

Oh yeah...forgot to add this:

Hocz-Knops...the most disgusting hyphenated name EVER! :sign11:

Yes I took dh's last name. I could have kept my maiden name b/c Brianna has it but I was raised to take the husbands lastname. My maiden name is Sissman and my married name is Horton(yes as in Horton Hears a Who) Could you imagine those two name Sissman-Horton yeah um no thanks.

well if i were to mary my kids dad we would all change our names to his we all have my last name because i wasn't married i chose my name because of school i didn't want them calling me another name... but if i marry someone else i will hyphen so that my kids and i will still share the smith and it'll be smith-whatever unless i found another smith to marry

***holding back the tears, since Lindsay offended me*** :rolling:

I hyphenated my name for a bit, for a couple of reasons but the most important was that before we got married I already had a house in my name, to make the changes at the bank etc... it still had to have my maiden name in it, which basically mean't I had to hyphenate it. Then when we went to get another joint loan together, because it was hyphenated it had to stay that way, so with the bank it is hyphenated and maybe next time we will be able to get it straightened out.

With everything else thouhg it is my husbands surname.

I must admit I did like it for a bit but once we had kids I had no desire for it to be hyphenated again, BUT both the kids have my surname as a middle name, so both have two middle names, which I like.

I took Jim's last name, but I changed my middle name to my maiden name. So when I write out my full name it is Katrina Gauthier Hirt, but I don't have to have the hyphen and worry about writing it all the time if I don't want to .

My sister did not change her name. She felt that there was no reason to. I think it would bug me to have a different last name then my kids, so I wanted us to all be the same.

Oh yeah...forgot to add this:

Hocz-Knops...the most disgusting hyphenated name EVER! :sign11:

LMAO, Lindsay!

This reminds me of that stupid game Gnip Gnop (pronounced GUH-nip GUH-nop). I thought that was the stupidest name EVAH until I realized it was Ping Pong backwards...then it was even stupider. :violent1: (Nice English, eh?)

I didn't take it because it was just too much trouble and I was too lazy. I'd have to change everything, including my paralegal license and notary seal. No thank you. However, in my salvadorean document I do appear as Rivera de Blanco because we're not allowed to own property unless we are married or under out father's rule so I had to to have all my bank accounts and property transferred to "the wife of Blanco or like my dh like to joke the property of Blanco (yeah, I don't think it's funny either)"

Peanut has both last names though (Norma Elena Rivera Blanco) It'll be up to her which she wants to keep and which she'd like to lose. I also like Rivera because it's easy to spell out to people "just spell river and add and A" Still I always get Riviera which just drive me nutty!!

Good question - makes for some interesting reading! I took dh's name because it was important to him and becuase I have no relationship with my father so it wasn't important to me to honor his name, kwim? However, now that I have dh's name (Enticknap), I want my old one back (Weeks), especially because I am a teacher and kids can't pronounce my married name, LOL! They call me Ms. E or Nap or my fave, Easy E, because I'm pretty laidback at school. :haha:

Honestly, it was never something I even took into consideration. Guess I'm traditional in that sense. However, I do use my maiden name as my middle name now...or at least as my middle initial. My maiden name is Powell and it's really not that difficult to say or spell, but I sometimes got Pile or Pal. LOL

My first married name was Dunn and I always liked it because it was easy and people wouldn't ask how to spell it. When Jesse left me, I kept the name so I could be the same as the kids. Then when I married Nick, I took on his name (Alexander). I don't think it would have been right to still have my ex's name. LOL Plus now I'm common and still easy to pronounce...just have a ton of syllables in my name.

Nick is actually his mother's maiden name, Nicholas. So when Noah was born we had planned to name him Noah William. After seeing that he looked just like his daddy, we threw in the Nicholas on the end. Guess we're keeping his grandma's family name alive that way.

I did not really even thing about it.

I do miss my maiden name. No one can ever say it - so I always knew who was calling to try and sell something. (now - caller ID). My maiden name was Montalbano, so we still use it when making reservations at Italian restaurants. LOL. My new name is Benson - boring but easy.

man, christine..I would've never give up that name..It sounds sooooo romantic. The the name of a damsel in distress in those mystery book I love as a kid. Montaaalbaanoo, Beautiful!!