In northern USA (Massachusetts, anyway) the custom, if you intend to take your husband's surname, seems almost universally to drop your maiden name and keep your middle name, and then add the husband's surname.
Coming from Virginia, I insisted on doing as the Virginians do -- even in Massachusetts. When I divorced, my then-husband indicated he thought it would be nice if I relinquished his family name and resumed my own. I thought, s*&^w him, and never liked his surname much, anyway, so did. Then when I remarried, it was too much trouble to go through a name change a *third* time, so kept the maiden name (I do like that one a lot). I think it gave my husband, who worked at a large university with many high-powered women, a bit of cachet as a "liberated" male. ;-) When I married the second husband, the clerk asked me if I wanted to change my name to his. "No thanks" was my reply. Then she asked him if he would like to change his surname to mine. "I beg your pardon?" was his reply three times in a row. Took a sharp dig in the ribs to get a straight answer from him. And we've lived happily ever after for twenty five years this year. Now all these years have passed, I'm wondering about changing my name to his. Wouldn't it look better on the tombstone if the names matched? Carolyn Carolyn Hastings Stow, MA USA > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf > Of Tamara P Duvall > Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2006 1:17 AM > To: chat Arachne > Subject: [lace-chat] Re: Surnames > > On Aug 23, 2006, at 17:52, Alice Howell wrote: > > > Here in the USA, I'm more familiar with a woman adding > > a married name to the end of the maiden name. > > You don't know the half :) > > When I got married (1973), my husband told me that "the custom" (which > I took to mean "the Southern custom") was for the woman to take on her > husband's surname, but to retain remnants of her maiden name via an > *added initial*. Thus, my original name -- Tamara Irena Przybyl -- > became Tamara I.P. Duvall. I've long since dropped the I, because I > wasn't emotionally attached to it (my father thought it looked better > for a child to have two first names rather than one, and knew that my > chances of acquiring the second "first name" through confirmation were > nil. So. when he went to register me, he picked Irena, because she's > the saint for Oct 20, my birth date), so I'm now Tamara P. Duvall. > > When my oldest stepson got married, he and his wife decided to combine > their names as well as their lives. But. She's Wong-Duvall and he's > Duvall-Wong, each of them adding the married name to the "maiden" one > :) > > Back in Poland, the hyphenated names I encountered were of two kinds. > The first was the aristocracy (the few who survived the communist > rule). They combined the husbands surname (first) and the wife's maiden > name (second) but only if the cachet of the second name was worth the > effort (ie the second name added a second coat of arms to the > ensemble). So a name might have got hyphenated in 1600 and stayed that > way till 1968. Or, the name after the hyphen might have changed over > time. *Or*, in rare cases, the name *before the hyphen* changed :) > > The second category of hyphenated names was a thoroughly modern > invention, necessitated by modern life. If a woman had established a > *professional* name for herself, taking on her husband's name meant > trying to re-climb the same "recognition ladder" all over again. So > they didn't. > > The most vivid case was that of Irena Kirszenstein, a superb Olympic > runner and a winner of several gold medals. When she got married, the > press tried using "Szewinska" (her husband's name) first -- it had no > Jewish undertones to it and, as such, was more "acceptable". Everyone > reacted with "WHO???", and Kirszenstein came back. But it came back > with no consistency; when I googled it (Polish Google), I got: > Kirszenstein, Szewinska, Kirszenstein-Szewinska and > Szewinska-Kirszenstein. You pays your money, you takes your pick :) > > Whatever the traditional rules might have been (if any <g>), they seem > to have gone by the board. > > -- > Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/ > Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland) > > To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: > unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to > [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
