That the wife officially takes her husband's last name here in Italy is seen as very retrograde or traditionalist. This has not been the case since the 1960s, and now almost exclusively very elderly ladies are known by their husband's surname. But even for them in official things like voter lists or graves there are both surnames. For example, my mother kept her maiden name, as did one of my grandmothers, while the other had her husband's surname.
I was quite shocked when I found out that in European countries that I considered (and are in many ways) more progressive than Italy a woman is expected to give up her maiden name and is looked upon as an extravagance if she does not. To me, it seems like giving up a piece of one's identity and I would never ask my wife to do that–as well as giving me an aftertaste of…. Habsburgs in sleeping with someone with the same last name as me.
How does that work in your country? Do women take their husband's last name? How do you judge a woman who wants to keep her own maiden name?
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Typically yes. Not for “the man owns the woman now” as it used to be long ago, it’s just something people do because that’s always how they’ve done it. Like baptizing your children, most people don’t really care for the church but they do it to make grandma happy.
At least the tradition of calling a women by her husbands title is pretty much dead by now. A woman married to a Doctor, but not having a doctor title herself would be called “Mrs. Doctor Smith” for some reason.
It’s largely gone in Norway. That is, some take both names when they marry.
Many do yes, but there are also a couple of men taking the wife’s name or they do Name1-name2
Yes, traditionally women always take their husband’s name, and most still do. It’s because when you get married and possibly have children, the whole family has the same name. I took my husband’s name – it was just the normal thing to do and I didn’t have a problem with it at all.
Absolutely volunteeraly, but it’s become rare as times goes by.
My opinion – not worth it, too much pain in the ass after marriage and in case of break up.
Nope. Children usually take the father’s surname (it’s the default choice but there are many exceptions to the rule) but I’ve never heard of the wives taking their husbands’ surnames in Italy
Most do, but it’s not a legal requirement. I chose not to change my surname. However, in Scotland, legally-speaking, a woman always retains her maiden name. So if Jane Smith marries John MacDonald and prefers to be known as Mrs Jane MacDonald, in legal documents she would be ‘Jane Smith or MacDonald’. If her husband died or they got divorced then she remarried to James Eliot, becoming Mrs Jane Eliot, in legal documents she would be ‘Jane Smith or Eliot formerly MacDonald’.
I think it was even before the 60s. My grandmothers got married in the 50s and I’ve never heard anyone address them using anything but their surname.
On an interesting note, when I was really young remember watching TV series from abroad and wondering why on earth people wouldn’t know a woman name before her marriage…
It is customary that they do, but it’s quite often just a practical reason to be recognized as a family – however quite often women who were known in some field before getting married have two-parts surname or keep their own. But also quite often situation is that a man takes woman’s surname when his own is derogatory or silly. 50-70 years ago it was quite common to have surname that you can translate as “Dumb”, “Hunchback”, “Poor”, “Blind”, “Cripple”, “Beggar” etc.
There’s all kinds of variations in Denmark. Some people keep their name, some choose one or other and some combine the last names after what sounds best.
It’s not expected that a bride takes the grooms name, but I don’t know what is actually most common. Among my own friends, most keep their own surnames but might change it when they have children so everyone in the family has the same last name. But how the last names are combined or chosen is mostly an aesthetic choice.
Traditionally the bride would take the grooms name, but I would think that it hasn’t been seen as a rule for most families for the last 30 years or so.
In Belgium married women keep their name. It is actually not legal in Belgium to change your last name with a few specific exceptions. So even if some women would want, they cannot.
It has become less and less common over the decades. Many women exclusively keep their maiden name, but many also combine it with their husband’s (either as a middle name + surname or a hyphenated surname). It is also becoming more common for the husband to take the same combined name. Their kids often get the combined name as well, so it’s therefore very common today that kids grow up with two surnames in their name (some famous names are, for example, Erling Braut Haaland, Johannes Thingnes Bø, Aksel Lund Svindal, Kyrre Gørvell-Dahll (Kygo) etc.).
Found an news article from 2020 which states:
60% takes the husband’s last name.
25% will keep their own last names.
Hyphenated last name 5% of females.
Source:
https://yle.fi/a/3-11858343
Not in Spain.
Everyone has two separate surnames: one comes from the father and another from the mother (middle names aren’t a thing here). Traditionally, the kids would get the father’s first surname as their first surname, and the mother’s first surname as their second surname, but parents have been allowed to decide the order for about 20 years.
I think it’ll be easier to explain with an example:
Juan Díaz Pérez marries María López Jiménez. Both keep their names the same after the wedding. They have their first kid and they name him Diego. They must decide if his full name will be Diego Díaz López or Diego López Díaz. If they have more kids they have to follow the same order for their surnames.
In the UK it is the norm to take your spouse’s surname when you get married (assuming a marriage between a man and woman where the woman takes the man’s name).
In 2016 a survey said it was around 90% but currently other surveys say it is around 60%. It is difficult to know because there is no official data (partly difficult to do so in the UK because we don’t have a legal official name – you can call yourself whatever you want and as a long as you are using it it is your name)
It is definitely getting more common not to take your spouses name so I’d say my experiences fit with the percentages above.
30 odd years ago I was the odd child in school because my parents were married but had different surnames, now I’d say within my social group and other peer settings I’m within the 30 or 40% who kept their names. Double barrelling or merging names or picking a new one has also got way more popular
As with lots of things it does depend on the groups you interact with, that 40% won’t be even across society. Within my social groups and family both equally normal, within my partners family you would have thought I suggested a human sacrifice at the wedding for not changing my name
My feeling was that yes, most women still change to their husband’s surname when getting married. And that has been the case for almost all recent weddings in my sphere.
But I decided to look up some statistics!
For heterosexual couples getting married the most common option is that they both keep their own surname, which in the source I found represented 44% of cases.
In 33% of cases the woman took the man’s surname.
In 6% of cases the man took the woman’s surname. (This is what me and my fiancé are planning.)
In 6% of cases the woman kept her own surname, but added the man’s surname as well, then going by a double name.
In 4% of cases the couple chose a new joint surname.
In 3% of cases both parties added the other’s surname to their own, going by a shared double name.
And in 0.6% of cases, according to this source which I have not verified, the man added the woman’s surname to his own, going by a double name.
So, the woman taking the man’s name is still quite common, but is becoming less so, and there are a few other options that are used.
Less and less with each new generation. For people under 40 it’s become a weird thing to do particularly because of all the burocracie it takes to add a name in all your papers and documents. Older women didn’t really changed surname but added one or more surnames to their own, leaving some people with something between 4 to 8 family names. As for the family name, I’ve noticed my daughter is known in school by both parents surnames to the point it merges into one even without the hyphen but a lot of us don’t usually go by our family name even in formal settings, preferring our personal name instead.
In Spain it is not changed. In fact, a friend of mine married a British guy, they were living there. She received a letter from the consulate shortly after congratulating her and reminding her that, as a Spanish citizen, she couldn’t change her surname.
Traditionally it was the norm for women to take their husbands surname when they marry. However, its no longer universal here. In my personal experience its probably 50:50 between women who keep their own surnames and women who take their husbands surname.
Also, even among the women who take their husbands surname, quite a few of them don’t actually change their name legally, but just use their husbands surname in practice in certain situations, and may still be known by their maiden surname in other contexts (work etc.).
In both Portugal and Spain, you legally can’t lose your maiden surnames except for very specific circumstances (such as one of your parents attempting to murder the other, etc).
In Spain, your name will stay the same your whole life, no matter whether you get married or not. You can’t add your spouse’s surname to yours.
In Portugal you can add your spouse’s surnames, but you can never lose the ones you already have. That said, this is not as common as it used to be.
Since 1986 it has not been mandatory for wife to take husband’s surname. It’s still most popular option for marrying couples, but keeping own surnames isn’t uncommon either. It’s somewhat rare for husband to take wife’s surname, but one of my friends did so.
They keep the maiden and add the husband’s last name in my country too. I’d take my husband’s last name if it sounds cooler than my last name
We taught about what to do when we had children that wouldn’t unfairly favor either of us and found a wonderful old Celtic tradition that some tribes followed in Iberia that fit us. Should we have a daughter first she would bear the matrilineage and if we had a son he would carry on the patrilineage. Second children and forth would alternate.
In Belgium, married women keep their last name, there is no provision for taking their husband’s name. The exception is if the bride or groom is a national from a country that allows it.
Officially, there is no such thing as a “maiden name”: a woman’s last name will be her last name whatever is her situation in terms of marriage. The only way to take her husband’s name would be to go via the complicated procedure for changing one’s legal name – which is the same for everyone, men or women, married or not.
In everyday life, some married women choose to be known under their husband’s last name, possibly only in some informal circumstances (for the sake of simplicity), but that has no legal value.
It’s a personal choice, nobody associates it with any political ideas, it’s more a practicality or preference (e.g. if one surname the couple has is rare or they’re last in their family with it they may choose that one). There were stats on this published earlier this year that 19% of women don’t change surname after marrige, this corelates with being older, richer and not an ethnic minority.
I didn’t. So much hassle with the ID thing, especially the older you are because then you need to change it at the government and then the banks and ughhh who has time for that anymore.
I know a lot of women who don’t do that. It really isn’t a problem because we tend to use the married surname for unofficial purposes and our maiden name officially when our ID is needed. No one gets angry about it.
Nope, not Icelandic women at least. It would be silly in most cases. I have quite a few times seen foreign women that have changed their last names to their Icelandic husbands “surname”.
Nope, it’s seen retrograde too. Also we have two surnames instead of one (one from our father and the other from our mother), traditionally the father’s one was first but these days parents can choose the order of the surnames, the only condition is that all siblings need to have the same order. .
I’d say it is quite common to change. But I also know a lot of ladies who have not changed it (I am one of them).
No, they keep their surnames. Their first surname is inherited as the second surname of their children. This order now can be changed though to fit the parents’ preferences.
It depends here. Many do. Older generations generally did. Some do. Some don’t.
I know one couple that decided to go double barrel and took each other’s names. There’s also a branch of my family where the guy took his wife’s name, somewhat by just how it happened, as her family was far better known, so he just start to be known by her surname, as people knew her family more, and then given how common law works, it just became his name through use.
My grandmother was known as both her married name and her maiden name and often by translations of both into Irish, and her first name or a nickname, depending on the context. Different people just seemed to know her as different names.
The use of names in English and Irish interchangeably can be a bit of a surprise if you’re not used to it.
You’ll also get quite a few people who use names they’re known by that they just adopted. I’ve two aunts whose names don’t appear on any birth certificate. There isn’t necessarily any rhyme or reason to them and Irish Common Law just works on the basis of your name is what you’re known as. The paperwork is less relevant.
In Finland, yes most of the time women change their surnames when they get married to men, but not always and it’s not required. It’s definitely rare to keep one’s maiden name. My mother never changed her surname, and when I was younger some of my friends thought that was odd. I think it’s starting to be more common nowadays.
The few times I’ve seen a man take his wife’s surname was because the man’s own surname was somehow funny sounding and the wife’s surname was cooler.
Here, it’s kinda complicated. When getting married, people basically have four (or five) options:
1) accept the husband’s name with the female form. So Miss Dvořáková would marry Mr Novák and become Mrs Nováková.
2) accept the husbands name in the male form. Miss Dvořáková would become Mrs Novák
3) Use both names with the husband’s name either in male or female form so either Mrs Novák Dvořáková or Mrs Novaková Dvořáková (new name has to come first)
4) Keep her maiden name
5) The couple can create a completely new last name for both of them
Another option would be the husband accepting the wife’s name. He cannot use the female form though, so either Mr Dvořák could become Mr Novák or Mr Novák Dvořák.
Although there’s been a huge debate going on about this, the vast majority of couples still choose option one – wife changes her name to the female form of her husband’s name.
The “-ová” suffix signifies association and is very close to (but not the same as!) the “ova” suffix which signifies possession so therefore many women feel like it’s sexist and they don’t want it to sound like they belong to their husband or that their identity is derived from him. More and more women have been choosing to use the male form of the name but it’s still pretty unusual.
However, using the female form sounds much more natural since Czech is a highly inflected language and if a woman has the male form of a name, it cannot be inflected and sounds a little weird. It definitely isn’t an insurmountable obstacle, for example Polish grammar is almost identical and from what I’ve seen, most Polish women use the male forms of their names. But it is something to consider.
Most of my friends are married and the vast majority of them have chosen option one. I only know of one couple that have created a new name for themselves and one where the wife has two names.
Two generations ago it was common for the woman to **add** the husband’s surname to her pre-existing surnames. It’s worth noting that historically and before the XX century it never happened, so it is not a tradition. The practice has since fallen out of favour and is rarely done nowadays, as it was essentially an imported fad that was only popular from around the 1930s to the 1980s. Switching your maiden name for your husband’s surname as is the case in some other countries has never happened.
In Croatia yes, most women still take their husband’s last name. Last 20 years it became more usual that a woman keeps her and adds husband’s last name, but I would say majority still only takes husband’s last name.
Most 50+ people in Croatia are very traditional and patriarchal and look down upon women who don’t want to take husband’s last name. It will take few more decades to change this.
In Germany, you have several choices:
– Both take partner1’s name
– Both take partner2’s name
– Both keep their name
– One keeps the name and the other appends the others name like in Müller-Schmidt or Schmidt-Müller (you can choose the order)
Not in Spain. In fact, we have two surnames, it’s used the father’s 1st surname as first and mother’s 1st one second but the new born can be registered with the mother’s 1st surname as first (changed by law, before was obligated the father’s 1st surname first). The use here was to say wife’s name and her 1st surname followed by “señora de <1st surname of the husband>” (wife of), but I think this is a lost use nowadays and simply we call the wife with her name and surnames (usually, only the first surname is said) and we do not referencing the husband’s surnames
Lol, we can chain our surnames until the ancestors we know. The chain is:
1st: father’s 1st surname.
2nd: mother’s 1st surname.
3rd: father’s 2nd surname.
4th: mother’s 2nd surname.
5th: father’s 3rd surname.
6th: mother’s 3rd surname.
.
.
.
I’d say they’re still expected to take their husbands name when they marry but it’s not that unusual for a woman (and sometimes children) to have two surnames.
In the case of a woman keeping her name alone it might be seen as slightly odd. My mum did that for example, and I occasionally get asked if my parents are not married because her surname’s different from mine and my dad’s. It’s a bit of a shame since I would’ve quite liked her surname.
In Germany I think there’s a disproportionate number of people who take their female partners’ names. Two members in my family did, though one because of abuse. Many people don’t change their names or just don’t get married, but it’s still very common.
In Turkey, we can keep our maiden name as well, since a very long ago. And since 5-6 years, a married woman may also only use their maiden name while married.
Due to that latest law, as a married woman for 15 years, I’d file for the removal of my husband’s name and only use mine, instead of 2 surnames, without a divorce.
But you have to change every id documents from passports to driving licences and i’m too lazy for that.
Edit:For the “judgement” part; honestly I forgot to fill out the application form for keeping my maiden name while we were applying for marital process in the municipality. My husband reminded me that I have not asked for the surname keeping process, and I went back to fill out the form. So, no, -at least the secular Turks- do not judge, or even mind at all.
Yes! And in multiple ways.
Suppose the husband is **Kovács Ádám**, and the spouse is **Szepesi Anna**. First things first, Hungarian language uses Eastern order for names, so Kovács and Szepesi are the family names, and Ádám and Anna are the given ones.
Now, depending on how oldschool you are, these are what Anna’s name can become.
1. **Kovácsné Szepesi Anna**. This is the most common. The *-né* suffix translates to “wife of this person”.
2. **Kovács Ádámné**. This is old traditions. A more “severe” case of the previous one. It’s quite misogynistic as the woman completely loses her own name, including the given one, and becomes identified solely by the husband’s name. It’s very uncommon today (for this reason), but 3-4 generations ago this used to be the default, especially in more traditional communities. Many elderly women still bear such names, leading to slightly weird – to the modern ear – scenarios of referring to someone as “miss Adam” or similar.
3. **Kovács-Szepesi Anna**. This is a more modern alternative that got popular in the last decade or so – pherhaps even more popular than #1. It treats the two surnames equal, so probably the least misogynistic one. (The -né suffix, though traditionally being a marker of relation, started to be seen as possessive by some with the increase of societal sensitivity recently.)
4. **Szepesi Anna**. That is, not changing the name at all. It happens more and more – on one hand, it lets the girl stay who she is, and it saves all the hassle and expenses related to changing the name (new documents, notifying banks/companies/whatelse, etc.). It’s criticised by some, accusing the women for not being proud of being married, not being confident in the marriage (no name change upon divorce = no hassle and no giveaway), or not respecting traditions, but tbh I don’t see any problem with it.
It is the norm in the U.K. but less common as times change. I do not plan on taking my partner’s surname when we marry and our children will have both of our names.
My mother (German) took my father’s (English) surname when they married and she says she regrets not double barrelling it for herself and for their children (adding his name to hers instead of replacing her surname entirely). It was seen as a little pretentious having two surnames, which is why they didn’t. I would have preferred having both and am considering changing it and adding it back in.
In France it’s still very common, although it’s also common nowadays to either have both names or keep your name. It’s completely voluntary. Less common but starting to emerge is for the man to take both names too or even take his wife’s name.
According to this [source](https://www.ifop.com/publication/les-francais-et-la-possibilite-de-changer-de-nom-de-famille/), in 2022, among the 18 – 34 yo, 60% changed their name, 26% kept their maiden name and 13% had both.
It’s also very common for children to have both the names of their parents, when they marry, then can decide what to do about it, I don’t know if there is an amount of names you’re allowed to have or not.
Also we don’t really change our names, legally speaking we keep whichever names we were born with but in practical we can be called something else (we call it “nom d’usage” = preferred name or usual name). Meaning if you vote, they’ll check your real name but for most purposes in daily life, you have your preferred name.
up until 1983, it was obligatory for the wife to take the husband’s name, but currently, the default is to keep her maiden name now. older generations and/or people in the countryside might judge a women who kept her maiden name, but other than that, it’s not much of an issue, as far as I know
That is the norm, yes. However, more and more women are choosing to keep their own surname or hyphenate it. I kept my name, and although some people are still surprised and my mother-in-law wasn’t happy at first, they quickly got over it.
There are some men who see this as an affront to their masculinity, but I’m not sure how widespread those views are
Yes. But I won’t be doing so. My partner and I would both change our last names so that we have matching, hyphenated last names. We agreed that it would be strange if I have a hyphenated last name, our kids do, and he’s an outlier …
Here in Romania, you sometimes even go by your father’s first name … so for example in my university application my name is First Name-Middle Name, Dad’s First Name, Dad’s Last Name. I know this is a big problem for those with divorced parents and abusive fathers.
Also, I wanna comment how everyone in this thread has an issue with the children’s name if the parents have 2 surname, or other situations like that, as if there’s no other option than to give the child 4 names, as if we’re governed by robotic rules.
I’d wish people would just calm down about others’ business and realize that 1) no one is that insanely rigid and 2) people can deal with their own problems by themselves.
In Sweden about 60% of women still takes their husbands name. Mostly out of tradition. But probably half of those or more is just women adding the husbands name and still keeping their old name. However because you can not have 2 surnames in Sweden a lot of those women just add their husbands name to theirs giving them a new surname and their old surname is turned to a middle name. It’s only the husbands that counts (in those cases) as a surname hence inflating the statistics in the paperwork but in most people eyes they have two surnames.
If you ask them about their surname they will probably say both their original and the spouse name. But again technically in the paperwork and statistics only one of them is counted as a surname.
Many more men take their wifes name than before as well or they create a new name together when marrying.
A person can be named f ex Anna Hedvig Andersson Bergström. Anna will be the spoken name, Hedvig and Andersson will be counted as middle names and Bergström as the surname even though Andersson is clearly a surname. More or less no one outside maybe americans (wich commonly use european surnames as spoken names) use “son” or “dotter” names as anything but surnames, because the original meaning was “the son/daughter of”.
Sometimes, if they don’t mind the long surname when signing stuff they join the surnames and turn it in to one surname so it would be Anna Hedvig Andersson-Bergström. In this case Andersson-Bergström is counted as the surname.
Today it’s not as much about if it is the wife or husbands name but more if you have a boring common name or not or if there is a personal or historic significance to the name.
If your surname is Johansson and your wife to bes’ name is Cronqvist you might opt for hers because it is less common and boring. We tend to not really think about it in terms of “I’m the man so it must be my name”.
Unless there is some historical or personal importance to your name you want to insist on keeping.
I took my wifes name because not only is it unique, it also had a lot of history to it in her family. It was very important for her to keep it. So she told me she will either add ours to each other so we had both our names or go with hers. I choose to go with hers and loose mine because mine was boring and had bad history and I didn’t want a longer name than necessary.
In Poland: my own mother kept her surname. Most of the women I’m friends with either kept theirs or took the husbands because they didn’t want to be associated with their OG surnames (for reasons of deadbeat fathers or just shitty surnames).
I also know a couple of guys who took their wives’ names also because their own OG surnames were extremely shitty (sometimes literally as one of them was named the Polish equivalent of “little poop”).