Changing your name after marriage

Photo: A politically incorrect roadwork sign in Perth that was amusing to me when I saw it.



I was reading Natalie's blog "The Adventures of Girl Clumsy" and in her latest post here she talks about a woman changing her surname when she marries a man. In the article, Nat argues that a woman is making a big sacrifice in terms of her identity when she changes her name to her husband's surname but asks - what does a man do in return in a similar way?


The post was prompted by an article in the Terrorgraph by "social commentator" Rita Panahi. In her article, Rita talks about about the wife of new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd who does not share his surname. I don't know how one qualifies to be a social commentator in the newspaper these days. While I can't read every small newspaper, I wonder how many people in the media go the old route of working their way up from small newspaper (or radio station, TV station, etc) in the country or the suburbs before coming to the big city, so to speak. With media networking, it is no longer a requirement to be in the place you are broadcasting any more.



Indeed in the "new media", could *I* be classified as a "social commentator" because I am a blogger and a podcaster? Hmmmm. Anyhoo, I commented on Nat's article and by the time I finished commenting, my comment turned into what I thought could be a blog article on it's own.




I know how much crap I've had to go through when I lost my wallet once and I had to cancel my cards and get new ones. That was bad enough and I wasn't doing something like changing my name but merely replacing cards.



So I can only imagine the process involved for someone who changes their name (for whatever reason) would be much worse. I can understand for professional reasons how some women would like to keep their maiden name.



I wonder about the hyphenated name that some people like to do when they get married. Eventually, someone called Jones-Smith is going to marry someone called Brown-White. So does that mean that someone would be Jones-Smith-Brown-White or something as stupid??



Of course, this assumes that the marriage that you change your name for works in the first place and the woman has her maiden name and then might change 2 or 3 times if she re-marries. I know of a person who did this and after each divorce, she went back to her maiden name until she got re-married. Personally *IF* I got married, I would leave it up to Mrs Erk if she decided to change her name. Who knows, I might even change to her name!



Apart from people who change names or use hyphenated names, there are people who combine parts of each surname to make a totally new name. So Mr Brown might marry Ms Mead so would their name become Mr & Mrs Ownme? The mind boggles and the possibilities are endless.



This of course assumes that one gets married at all which is a totally different subject! Then there are the people who decide to give their child a normal first name spelt in a totally different way just to look different. That is another post in itself as well!