December 9, 2011 at 1:44 pm
filed under liz, Marriage, names
if you know me, you know that, after much debate, i chose to keep my last name when i got married. i recognize that the decision about what to do with your last name after marriage, for both men and women, is very personal, and everyone needs to figure out what’s best for them. this is what was best for me and robert, and i’m very happy with the choice i made.
since getting married, i’ve been mildly surprised by the ways in which some people have responded to it. even though it’s the 21st century and this practice isn’t new or revolutionary by any means, i expected the decision to be more of a surprise in some circles (e.g., christian ones) than others, given that it’s less common in some contexts for wives to keep their last names. but sometimes the way that people respond, while well-intended, is irritating at least and offensive at most. they tell me why it makes sense that i kept my name, implying that this is the reason why it’s okay that i did. because were it not for my special circumstances, i should have changed it, because that’s the way things should be.
this pisses me off to no end. allow me to illustrate with some (real-life) examples:
“oh, it makes sense for you to keep your name — you’re a professional. you have publications and degrees and stuff. changing it would make things so complicated for you. but for women who don’t have all that, there’s no reason for them not to change their names.”
i’m sorry, i graduated about a minute ago. i have virtually no publications or licenses to my name, and even if i did, i got married while i was in school, so i easily could have made it so that robert’s last name showed up on my diploma. the reason i kept my name has nothing to do with the fact that i have degrees, and there’s no reason why women without degrees shouldn’t be able to keep theirs too.
“it makes sense why you would keep your last name — it means something to you because you’re asian.”
this is a true statement. however, even if my last name had no evidence of my ethnicity, i still would have kept it.
“oh, many people of chinese descent keep their last names.”
this is also true — in the motherland, chinese women keep their last names after marriage. however, i’m american, and my chinese heritage is not the reason why i kept mine.
what i sense from comments like these — and please feel free to argue with me if you think i’m wrong — is that in more conservative circles, people are uncomfortable with the fact that i kept my last name. it threatens the established order of things, the way that things have always been done. so they need to create excuses for why it’s okay for me to deviate from this norm — because i’m asian, because i’m professional, what have you — so that their understanding of the world doesn’t get threatened, and things for “normal” people can go on as they have for centuries.
but the reality of the matter is this: i ultimately kept my last name not for reasons of race or education but of equality. robert and i are equal partners in this marriage, so why should only one of us have to change their name? either both of us should (which i was also open to) or neither of us should (which is what i ultimately chose).
back in the day, women had to change their names because when they got married, they lost everything. their identities, their possessions — everything became their husband’s. this idea was certainly reinforced in conservative christian cultures, where women were/are instructed that the man is the head of the house and a wife needs to submit to his authority.
i know that that’s not why all women change their last names now, but i didn’t want any part of that patriarchal history in my marriage. so i kept my name. it’s not because of my 2 publications. it’s not because of my ethnicity, though that’s certainly important to me. it’s because of equality, and it’s because i didn’t want to perpetuate that legacy of patriarchy and oppression in any way.
so please, world — don’t make excuses for my last name. if you think it’s weird, it’s not — it’s really quite common. and if it makes you uncomfortable, maybe that’s something you should think about.
Chris
The logical next question is: What about kids? If you do end up producing offspring, do you intend for them to have hyphenated names? Will you make up a new name for them? Will you name all daughters for you and all sons for your husband? Or vice versa?
How about this: How do you intend to respond when you are called Mrs. [Husband Last Name]? Will you accept the socially accepted moniker? Or will you fervently insist that that is NOT your name and refuse to respond?
I’m interested to see how you would answer those questions. Will you make these choices also based on equality alone? Or are there other factors that would come into your decision?
liz
all good questions, chris. regarding kids: we’ll hyphenate the last names of our hypothetical future offspring. that makes the most sense to us, given that they’ll be half me and half him, with the added bonus that their half-asian-ness will be reflected in their names. the only thing that gave us pause is the fact that robert is robert the fourth, and he wants to have a robert the fifth… but we’ll just call him robert lin-hislastname the fifth. (technically not accurate, but screw that — we make the rules.)
then you run into the question of what our kids will do when they get married and have three, potentially four last names to contend with — but i’m hoping that by that point, enough little hyphenates will have grown up and figured things out that our kids will have some good options. or they can do whatever they want.
interestingly, i haven’t run into much “mrs. hislastname,” save for in his hometown. i don’t bother correcting people if i don’t really know them and i won’t see them again, and no one i see on a regular basis has made that mistake. so, surprisingly, that hasn’t been much of an issue. the issue i’ve encountered more is people i’ve met since being married who assume that robert is robert lin. i correct those people, b/c they’re mostly coworkers and i don’t want them to be shocked and awkward when they meet robert and he isn’t asian. and because i think it’s good for them to be aware that not all women change their last names.
innoculating them with just a little bit of feminism…
all that to say that i’m not going to be militant or obnoxious to any random person who calls me mrs. hislastname, but if it’s someone i’m going to have ongoing contact with, then yeah, it would be nice to get that straight.