I live in Italy and a long time ago women used their husbands surname, but now they don't do it anymore, since the 60s I think.
So in Italy everybody keeps its own surname. What about your country?
Thank you

In Canada, at least, that is the custom but not the rule. My sister adopted her husband's surname; my wife kept her family name with a hypenated addition of my surname i.e. HER SURNAME-Yikes!
Interesting question! I know it's quite different in Iceland where most names end in son (masculine) or dottir (feminine).

No. That’s more or less gone. My mother ended up changing back to her «maiden name» after my parents had been married for 10 years, to keep with the times. They have been married 53 years now. Actually, my wife’s ex-husband took her name and kept it after the divorce, so my daughter shares surname not with me but her mother’s ex, which freaks me out a bit.

My wife kept her surname when we got married. I got her to marry me and move from LAX to DTW so I didn't want to push my luck!

Is is more common that not here in the USA and though it is evolving, something like over 70% still take the husbands name.

My wife honored me greatly by taking my family name, with the admonition "Don't make me regret it." She did not have to and in turn I honored her by not making her regret the change.

Tugg

In Australia it was the custom, but there was quite a strong move away from it in the 1990s. My wife and many of her friends didn’t change their names.

I’ve noticed a strong swing back to taking the husbands name in the last 10-15 years.

In Chinese-speaking world most woman does not change surnames. Traditionally women append their husband's surname, but most people don't do that nowaday.

Korean does similar thing AFAIK...but then, when 1/5 of your population has surname "Kim" and 50% is either "Kim", "Park", "Lee", or "Jung/Jeong"...

Out of the dozen people I know that have gotten married in the last 20 years or so, seems to be an even spilt where some take the husband's surname and the others add the husband's surname and keep theirs.

Spain - no

Here it’s done by using you sernames from your father and mother

Joe smith brown has a kid with Mary jones white the kid is named Kid smith jones

The farther’s sername first and mothers second

So if the mother has kids with different fathers you’ll know it by the names but you can’t tell if they are married or not

Our younger daughter did neither - she and her husband both changed their surnames to one that combined letters from both their names.

Yikes! wrote:

In Canada, at least, that is the custom but not the rule. My sister adopted her husband's surname; my wife kept her family name with a hypenated addition of my surname i.e. HER SURNAME-Yikes!
Interesting question! I know it's quite different in Iceland where most names end in son (masculine) or dottir (feminine).

My wife took mine

We have a friend who hyphenated, each time, she's on her 3rd marriage so she now has 4 last names.... Yeah she is a little... Different.

In the USA, women who are in certain professions like law or medicine will either retain their pre-marriage family name or hyphenate both their pre-marriage and marriage partner's family name. Almost all others take their spouse's family name.

In my country you keep your own name when married.
Changing name is a big deal and can only be done going through a court and then only for good reasons.

So how exactly does this thing work when you change name due to marriage then?
You got to have all your documents changed? Passport, ID, drivers licences, all your bank cards etc?
What's the purpose of such an administrative hassle in the first place?
And when you divorce? Change it all back then?
Ridiculous in the 21st century.

My cousins wife took his surname, and then took all his money and house when they divorced.

scbriml wrote:

Our younger daughter did neither - she and her husband both changed their surnames to one that combined letters from both their names.

I like this approach the best. A marriage creates a new family, best to give it its own unique name. Shows a strong degree of commitment from both parties.

readytotaxi wrote:

My cousins wife took his surname, and then took all his money and house when they divorced.

So after divorce, she still kept his surname?

This idea of adding a surname to your own surname on marriage could get very complicated a couple of generations along.

Eg (using surnames common in England)

Master John Smith marries Mistress Joan Jones. She chooses to change her surname to Smith-Jones.They produce a daughter,named Mary Smith-Jones.

Master John Baker marries Mistress Joan Brewer. She chooses to change her surname to Baker-Brewer.. They produce a son named Mark Baker-Brewer..

20 years later dashing beau Mark Baker-Brewer.meets irresistible Mary,Smith-Jones. They decide to marry and produce a son named Paul. Is he to be cursed with the name Paul Smith-Jones-Baker-Brewer? And that's in just 3 generations...

What's the problem with people keeping their surname when they marry? The surname of offspring? Toss a coin to decide which parent's name all offspring will have.

avier wrote:

readytotaxi wrote:

My cousins wife took his surname, and then took all his money and house when they divorced.

So after divorce, she still kept his surname?

As far as I know.

avier wrote:

readytotaxi wrote:

My cousins wife took his surname, and then took all his money and house when they divorced.

So after divorce, she still kept his surname?

It's just one more thing of his she can choose to keep.

Actually I'm surprised how many women who initiate divorce end up keeping their married name.

After all, if the marriage is so bad you want out, why keep a daily reminder of that terrible part of your past?

Most women I've asked say it's because of the hassle of changing names on all the accounts, IDs, etc.

Others who have kids say it'd be odd to change their names but for the kids to keep their dad's names.

At one level I think it's just another way to rub salt in his wounds.

All in all, another indicator that I'll never understand the female thought process...

ltbewr wrote:

In the USA, women who are in certain professions like law or medicine will either retain their pre-marriage family name or hyphenate both their pre-marriage and marriage partner's family name. Almost all others take their spouse's family name.

In the U K ,I think that taking the husband's name is the norm, although women who are well-enough known by their maiden name usually keep using it. Probably the most interesting is Cherie Blair - wife of former Prime Minister Tont Blair - also known as Cherie Booth QC (for most of the time, now KC) - respected barrister specializing in employment law.

I am not sure how he got there, but a local Member of Parliament is Richard Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax.

What is becoming more common, I think, is the naming of children of unmarried couples having the hyphenated surnames of both parents, as in football player Ian Wright has a football playing son, Sean Wright-Phillips.

VolvoBus wrote:

I am not sure how he got there, but a local Member of Parliament is Richard Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax.

At some point, one might as well just use their numerical encoded DNA sequence as their last name...

In France it used to be the law. I don't know when that changed, but more recently it was overhauled again, and it just has been changed again. So now the husband can take the wife's name, they can hyphenate both names, or take the husband's name. Of course there can be 2 husbands or 2 wifes...

Two rules that make a lot of sense is that if either one has already an hyphenated name (or both), and the couple wants to combine with the other's name, you can only keep one name of each, you can't have name-name-name or name-name-name-name. That answers the concerns of some in this thread.

The other is that all the kids of the couple have to have the same name, also with the same rule. A sister of mine kind of wanted to drop her own name after some time and some kids instead of the hyphenated thing, and she does informally, but on paper she can't do it easily, and couldn't do it for her last kid as he had to have the same name as the others.

The latest rule is that it's possible for someone to change ones name to take the name of the his/her other parent, or hyphenate. Changing ones name is otherwise quite complicated in France. I plan to take advantage and hyphenate the last name of my mother to the one I currently have which is my father's name. To honor my mother and also her heritage (Italian). So once an adult, if you don't like the choice your parents made, or feel strongly for or against one parent or one name, you can do the change easily (a form to fill). I'm not sure how it will go for my passport, my national ID card is expired so I need a new one anyway, my driving license (that lasts for life) is of the old paper style that will get renewed in credit card form in the next few years... Since I will only add another name to the one I already have I expect it won't be an issue. For the usual case of a woman changing names, the ID/passport mentions the name of birth.

I used to manage the phone system of a large company (where I work) and we often had to change the names of women who got married...or divorced. Can't remember once having to change the name of a man, so I would be the first one.

My brother has a family but isn't married, only in a "civil pact", however his kids have his name, the mother doesn't really like her name.

My sister is also in a civil pact that might become a marriage at some point, the question of the name will be interesting, her partner already has an hyphenated name, and dual citizenship. The citizenship is a bigger issue though, as he has US citizenship but has visited once and is not in good standing regarding the IRS...

Personally, no marriage on the horizon, but I would keep my name for sure, and would let the wife do what she wants. I used to think I would hyphenate my and her name, but now that wouldn't be possible or I would have to drop one name. We would have to do it for the kids, though.

Revelation : social security number, or the chinese variant where you have a citizen score...

More seriously, a last name has several purposes, the most basic one being to know who you're talking to/about, and for that purpose, the ability/habit of changing names midlife is quite disruptive. The old way of doing it was because the woman became the property of the man, basically, and her only purpose was to assist him and pop kids out... Now the woman is often working, has relationships with all kinds of people outside family, and changing names complicates things, at least for a while.

It's not practiced here in Malaysia, simply because our names do not use the forename, surname convention.

Here in Aotearoa/New Zealand it's still surprisingly common for a woman to change her surname on marriage. It's never made any sense to me, but I would say that more change it than keep it.

I like the idea SCBRIML's daughter came up with of creating a completely new surname for both parties.

In the unlikely event that I ever get married that's definitely something I would be interested in doing ( assuming that the other party wants to go along that )

Revelation wrote:

avier wrote:

readytotaxi wrote:

My cousins wife took his surname, and then took all his money and house when they divorced.

So after divorce, she still kept his surname?

It's just one more thing of his she can choose to keep.

Actually I'm surprised how many women who initiate divorce end up keeping their married name.

After all, if the marriage is so bad you want out, why keep a daily reminder of that terrible part of your past?

Most women I've asked say it's because of the hassle of changing names on all the accounts, IDs, etc.

Others who have kids say it'd be odd to change their names but for the kids to keep their dad's names.

At one level I think it's just another way to rub salt in his wounds.

All in all, another indicator that I'll never understand the female thought process...

In some cases, a married woman has built a successful professional career and reputation with their married name (not because of their husband). It can make perfect sense to keep the name for career reasons.

Revelation wrote:

scbriml wrote:

Our younger daughter did neither - she and her husband both changed their surnames to one that combined letters from both their names.

I like this approach the best. A marriage creates a new family, best to give it its own unique name. Shows a strong degree of commitment from both parties.

It also involves considerable effort to overcome all the bureaucracy (certainly in the UK).

My wife took my surname, this was common in NZ 20 years ago when most of my friends married, although one of my friends took his wife’s surname, not unheard of but not the norm.

In Norway most people don’t get married, if they do all sorts of things happen with the surname. If they don’t marry and have children the surnames are mashed together or just the one of the surnames is used.

During USSR times, in Ukraine it was allowed for the parties to:
1) keep their names
2) choose surname of any of the parties
(theoretically 3) another surname entirely. I haven't witnessed any of those, but heard of such cases. (Don't know if it was a one-go: come with your existing documents, leave with a marriage certificate stating your new names; or whether there were additional steps required).

Ukraine retained this tradition. For a while, there was a talk of introducing option 4:
hyphenated surname1-surname2.
I know there were several high-profile cases, but whether this involved additional steps, or was done at the point of marriage, I don't know.

Customs: I can give an example of my family.
On paternal side, my grandparents married in interwar period. They kept their names
On maternal side, my grandparents married in 1945, when grandpa demobilized. She took his name.
My parents kept their names.
My wife took mine.

On equality of the parties, sometimes, things get ironic.
An acquaintance is thrice divorced, and has a daughter. All husbands took her last name ("surname F", for the purposes of this discussion). Funnily, at least in two cases, wives took "surname F", and their children too. Her daughter's husband and children all have "surname F" too.

On earlier question: "change ID, driving license, and all that?"
Kinda.
My wife's ID, past the ceremony, was stamped with "name change, limited validity" or some such. She had a month to request a new ID.
For rest of the documents, it's less urgent. In theory, existing driving license + marriage certificate + ID are OK together to drive. (Very handy, as if she'd apply for a reissued driving license, she'd have a new one, with an expiry date. Her current one doesn't expire).

Property and education documents are fine -- you just keep a photocopy of marriage certificate, with a date later, than deed (or education certificate) is, and you're OK.

In Lithuania, I most women (like 70+ percent) adopt the husband's surname, about 20 percent keep their original surname, and the remainder have two surnames hyphenated.
It is crazily inconvenient not to change the name as the suffixes differ for a married (-ienė) and an unmarried (-aitė/-utė/-ytė) woman.
A new fashion came like 20 year ago to have the universal suffix -ė, which is getting quite common for married women, and there are (rare cases - like one out of several hundred, probably) when girl babies at birth are given this neutral suffix. The problem is that many surnames with -ė sound just stupid in Lithuanian, and these women simply get stuck in no man's land in search for alternative solutions, such as using - a instead of -ė (-a is a rarish male suffix in surnames, and thus a couple has two different male surnames). In short, it will still take two generations until this surname mess gets resolved.
I don't think that any European nation is in a worse mess than us in terms of female surnames.

ZKCIF wrote:

In Lithuania, I most women (like 70+ percent) adopt the husband's surname, about 20 percent keep their original surname, and the remainder have two surnames hyphenated.
It is crazily inconvenient not to change the name as the suffixes differ for a married (-ienė) and an unmarried (-aitė/-utė/-ytė) woman.
A new fashion came like 20 year ago to have the universal suffix -ė, which is getting quite common for married women, and there are (rare cases - like one out of several hundred, probably) when girl babies at birth are given this neutral suffix. The problem is that many surnames with -ė sound just stupid in Lithuanian, and these women simply get stuck in no man's land in search for alternative solutions, such as using - a instead of -ė (-a is a rarish male suffix in surnames, and thus a couple has two different male surnames). In short, it will still take two generations until this surname mess gets resolved.
I don't think that any European nation is in a worse mess than us in terms of female surnames.

Yeah, I feel for you guys (and gals). One of those incredible situations, when a sigmatic nominativ (actually, a proud heritage from Proto-Indo-European language evolution; besides Latvian and Lithuanian and Greek, is there even a living language that still has it?) while a must on male side, similarly needs inverse on female side, with suffix transition from single to married...
Do you have any idea, if this convention continues in Lithuanian diaspora?

Phosphorus wrote:

ZKCIF wrote:

In Lithuania, I most women (like 70+ percent) adopt the husband's surname, about 20 percent keep their original surname, and the remainder have two surnames hyphenated.
It is crazily inconvenient not to change the name as the suffixes differ for a married (-ienė) and an unmarried (-aitė/-utė/-ytė) woman.
A new fashion came like 20 year ago to have the universal suffix -ė, which is getting quite common for married women, and there are (rare cases - like one out of several hundred, probably) when girl babies at birth are given this neutral suffix. The problem is that many surnames with -ė sound just stupid in Lithuanian, and these women simply get stuck in no man's land in search for alternative solutions, such as using - a instead of -ė (-a is a rarish male suffix in surnames, and thus a couple has two different male surnames). In short, it will still take two generations until this surname mess gets resolved.
I don't think that any European nation is in a worse mess than us in terms of female surnames.

Yeah, I feel for you guys (and gals). One of those incredible situations, when a sigmatic nominativ (actually, a proud heritage from Proto-Indo-European language evolution; besides Latvian and Lithuanian and Greek, is there even a living language that still has it?) while a must on male side, similarly needs inverse on female side, with suffix transition from single to married...
Do you have any idea, if this convention continues in Lithuanian diaspora?

Wow, not only do I know what you guys are talking about, I can even contribute a bit, from the Lithuanian-American point of view.

Both my parents were born in LT in the late 30s (Dad) and early 40s (Mom) and married in the late 50s in the US. Mom took Dad's name, and given their age, it would have been unheard of to do anything else. I can ask her what the current generation does, since she's still plugged in to the LT community. Also, the females do not use the suffices in any legal documents, they follow the US customs, but do use the suffices in social situations such as wedding invitations and funeral cards written in Lithuanian.

As a bit of a digression, I'm in cultural no-man's land myself. My parents were teenagers when they got to the US and got a lot of what we'd now call bullying since they at first spoke no English then spoke it with an accent, and this was like 10 years after the end of WWII so there definitely were raw nerves one could hit. When me and my brother came along in the 60s part of them wanted us to learn Lithuanian, but part of them wanted us to be as American as possible and not be bullied like they were. They did not make us speak LT at home and we did not go out of our way to try to learn LT, we felt we had enough learning to do with normal schoolwork. I knew many other kids in the LT-US community where it went the other way, they spoke LT at home and were made to go to school on Saturdays to keep learning LT all the way through high school. I've been in situations all my life where conversations were being had in LT and all I can do is nod my head. Overall, though, I don't really regret that. It's not like the people my age who know both languages have some superpower. I ended up learning several other languages, the ones you use to program computers, and that has been rewarding in many ways.

Revelation wrote:

Phosphorus wrote:

ZKCIF wrote:

In Lithuania, I most women (like 70+ percent) adopt the husband's surname, about 20 percent keep their original surname, and the remainder have two surnames hyphenated.
It is crazily inconvenient not to change the name as the suffixes differ for a married (-ienė) and an unmarried (-aitė/-utė/-ytė) woman.
A new fashion came like 20 year ago to have the universal suffix -ė, which is getting quite common for married women, and there are (rare cases - like one out of several hundred, probably) when girl babies at birth are given this neutral suffix. The problem is that many surnames with -ė sound just stupid in Lithuanian, and these women simply get stuck in no man's land in search for alternative solutions, such as using - a instead of -ė (-a is a rarish male suffix in surnames, and thus a couple has two different male surnames). In short, it will still take two generations until this surname mess gets resolved.
I don't think that any European nation is in a worse mess than us in terms of female surnames.

Yeah, I feel for you guys (and gals). One of those incredible situations, when a sigmatic nominativ (actually, a proud heritage from Proto-Indo-European language evolution; besides Latvian and Lithuanian and Greek, is there even a living language that still has it?) while a must on male side, similarly needs inverse on female side, with suffix transition from single to married...
Do you have any idea, if this convention continues in Lithuanian diaspora?

Wow, not only do I know what you guys are talking about, I can even contribute a bit, from the Lithuanian-American point of view.

Both my parents were born in LT in the late 30s (Dad) and early 40s (Mom) and married in the late 50s in the US. Mom took Dad's name, and given their age, it would have been unheard of to do anything else. I can ask her what the current generation does, since she's still plugged in to the LT community. Also, the females do not use the suffices in any legal documents, they follow the US customs, but do use the suffices in social situations such as wedding invitations and funeral cards written in Lithuanian.

As a bit of a digression, I'm in cultural no-man's land myself. My parents were teenagers when they got to the US and got a lot of what we'd now call bullying since they at first spoke no English then spoke it with an accent, and this was like 10 years after the end of WWII so there definitely were raw nerves one could hit. When me and my brother came along in the 60s part of them wanted us to learn Lithuanian, but part of them wanted us to be as American as possible and not be bullied like they were. They did not make us speak LT at home and we did not go out of our way to try to learn LT, we felt we had enough learning to do with normal schoolwork. I knew many other kids in the LT-US community where it went the other way, they spoke LT at home and were made to go to school on Saturdays to keep learning LT all the way through high school. I've been in situations all my life where conversations were being had in LT and all I can do is nod my head. Overall, though, I don't really regret that. It's not like the people my age who know both languages have some superpower. I ended up learning several other languages, the ones you use to program computers, and that has been rewarding in many ways.

Yes, that would be a curious thing to figure out.
Because if they did keep masculine full names intact, and didn't continue with the convention on feminine, it would be mighty confusing for a native Lithuanian ear, right?

I mean, take Mr. Galvanauskas, one of former PMs of Lithuania.
His wife would be Galvaniene, correct?
And daughter, Galvanaite, I'd gather.
Now, hearing Ms. Galvanauskas and Mrs. Galvanauskas must be very foreign and incorrect to Lithuanians.

Getting outside of the Baltic language group, and switching to Slavic languages.

A bit of Central European Slavic trivia. By convention, in Slovak and Czech, a married woman's name has -ova added. No exceptions. So, Czech newspapers, for example, would know UK Prime Ministers:
Margart Thatcherova
Theresa Mayova
Liz Trussova

Further down the rabbit hole of naming conventions.

Slavic name (both surnames and first names alike) Bohdan/Bogdan is spread among many Slavic peoples.
Boh/Bog is God in most Slavic languages, and the name itself is "God-given".

A family from (at that time) Czechoslovakia has a baby, while they are in a Muslim country. Their last name is Bogdan. Unfortunately for them, hospital staff and/or local official, responsible for civil records, know Slavic languages, and knows what the name means. Because the country has Muslim laws, and "there's no God but Allah" in Islam, the birth certificate says "AlahDal".(Dal in many Slavic languages is a past/perfect tense of "Give"). By the time they get in touch with their embassy, to register birth according to the Czechoslovak laws, changing things back to Bogdan becomes either impossible or inconvenient.

Years pass, fella marries a girl, back home in Slovakia. Now, there is a lady, with last name AlAhdalova (remember the obligatory -ova?). I wonder what their kids' names are. Of course, all of them are of Slovak (or Ukrainian, as happens a lot in East Slovakia) stock, with no Middle East connection, beyond his being born there, while his parents were in those parts.

In the Lithuanian diaspora, it is common for everyone to use the male version of the surname. thus we have
Birutė Galdikas (the researcher of apes in Inodonesia)
or Ugnė Karvelis (the life friend of Julio Cortazar).
Of course, there are exclusions, such as the amazing Professor Milda Danyte.
In my professional area, I occasionally happen to work with kids who were born in some diaspora and then came back to Lithuania. In most cases (the sample is too small statistically), girls have male surnames (e.g. Pakerys).
-----
The wife of Galvanauskas would be Galvanauskienė, and a daughter would be Galvanauskaitė.
Similarly to my surname Rumšas; my wife is Rumšienė, and my daughter is Rumšaitė
-----
Revelation> it hardly makes sense to learn some Lithuanian. That's a crazily difficult language to learn, and its only benefit (apart from getting used to failures) is that whenever you are away, NO ONE will understand what you are speaking. even Latvians can only have a very limited idea; anyone else has no chance of understanding a single ford. kinda fun, yeah
Phosphorus> no, there would be nothing confusing. a male surname for a female would sound kinda strange, but there is nothing unacceptable. we will simply get used to that. We can say that Merkel yra patyrusi politikė. the same way we can say that Birutė Galdikas yra garsi mokslininkė. This clash between the foreign 'Merkel' or the masculine 'Galdikas' is no problem.

Phosphorus wrote:

Years pass, fella marries a girl, back home in Slovakia. Now, there is a lady, with last name AlAhdalova (remember the obligatory -ova?).

The -ova is not obligatory anymore for non Slavic names in Slovakia. AlAhdal would be definitely considered non Slavic. So, they wouldn't have to use it.
Heck, even Mrs. Wildcat would not have to use the -ova as my last name is Hungarian with Turkish origin (yeah, the history of the region is fun, isn't it?). But we got married long before this got into effect.

Phosphorus wrote:

I wonder what their kids' names are. Of course, all of them are of Slovak (or Ukrainian, as happens a lot in East Slovakia) stock

[/quote]

With the last name Bogdan they could be Rusins as well. There are more Rusins than Ukrainians in eastern Slovakia. However, the line was blurred during the communist rule as the commies considered Rusins to be Ukrainians. The Rusins started to be considered separate ethnicity only during and after the 1991 census. So now my nephew is a proud Rusin despite my co-brother in law considering himself to be Ukrainian and my sister in law being a Slovak - Hungarian mix. There you have it, the typical family from the east of the Austro-Hungarian Empire...

In the US and Canada, it's not customary anymore. Of my friends who have been married, very, very few of their wives changed their last names. I got married about a year ago and my wife didn't change her last name. My sister got married over the summer and she and her husband changed their last names to be a hyphenated combination of the two. But I think that's more an exception than the rule.

Talking of changing of names, I know of 2 men who took their wife's last name after their got married. One was my childhood friend who hated his father. So he used the first opportunity to change his name without a lot of bureaucracy involved. The other was the husband of one of my high school friends. He took her las name because his own meant rat in eastern Slovakian dialect.

mad99 wrote:

Spain - no

Here it’s done by using you sernames from your father and mother

Joe smith brown has a kid with Mary jones white the kid is named Kid smith jones

The farther’s sername first and mothers second

So if the mother has kids with different fathers you’ll know it by the names but you can’t tell if they are married or not

Exactly, it's never been done around here except for very old fashioned "señora de XXXX" which sometimes got added after the wife's own name in nobility circles.

Curiously enough when you get Spanish nationality you need to submit proof of your mother's maiden name so that it gets added to yours as the 2nd surname, which means a lot of people have their mom's name in their official documents which the mother never uses officially anymore.

Hyphenated surnames used to be the way to keep certain names from disappearing (common names marrying into old money was the usual case until the 70s) but now more people just choose to reverse the order rather than hyphenating.

My ex wife did not take my last name. She often gets asked, as is supposed to be required, to show a birth certificate when signing certain documents. I never get asked as my kids have my last name, but also obviously inherited my hair color. It might also be the teenage sarcasm, the always address me as "Father."

There are advantages to one last name with kids. If no kids, it doesn't matter so much.

Lightsaber

Yikes! wrote:

In Canada, at least, that is the custom but not the rule. My sister adopted her husband's surname; my wife kept her family name with a hypenated addition of my surname i.e. HER SURNAME-Yikes!
Interesting question! I know it's quite different in Iceland where most names end in son (masculine) or dottir (feminine).

All the people I know did take there husbands last name.
But in Quebec its against the law for a woman to take her husbands last name, my nephew just got married in October to a young woman in Quebec and that's when I learned of it. It seems some woman that want to adopt there husbands last name pop over to Ontario and get married to get around it somehow. He was born in Ontario but since moved to Quebec with her as that's where she was born.

Classa64 wrote:

All the people I know did take there husbands last name.
But in Quebec its against the law for a woman to take her husbands last name, my nephew just got married in October to a young woman in Quebec and that's when I learned of it. It seems some woman that want to adopt there husbands last name pop over to Ontario and get married to get around it somehow. He was born in Ontario but since moved to Quebec with her as that's where she was born.

Quebec doesn't allow for people to use their spouse's name to exercise their civil rights. They can use it at their will in any other non-official circumstances however, like day to day social life.
Marrying in Ontario won't help much if they reside in Quebec since the law says that anyone must use their maiden name for said official purposes while in Quebec, regardless of where they married.

https://www.justice.gouv.qc.ca/en/coupl ... ried-name/

Also: *their.

A few years back I had dealings with a young property saleswoman near Paris. I think she had the title 'Madame' on her business card. While chatting it transpired that Madame X was not married. She berated the fact that it was customary to term women 'Madame', whether married or not (I gather that's more PC) - since people tended to assume she was married when she was not. Can anyone French (and I mean France French) tell me if I understood correctly and if so, the logic in identifying unmarried women as married? PS I am aware that ladies d'un certain age are addressed as 'Madame' even if they are unmarried.

It will never cease to amaze me how easily Americans change their names -- even voluntarily. I've never changed the adress in my ID even after moving twice just to avoid the hassle of bureaucracy.

AtomicGarden wrote:

It will never cease to amaze me how easily Americans change their names -- even voluntarily. I've never changed the adress in my ID even after moving twice just to avoid the hassle of bureaucracy.

lack of permanence in these things -- results in shelf life/due date for others.
Like in many European countries, until relatively recently, the idea that a driving license has to have an expiry date -- was very strange and outright repugnant.

But if people move a lot between jurisdictions (and each US state typically is very happy to have things in ways, incongruent with multiple other states), and change their names on a whim, it makes sense that some of the critical identification paperwork is freshened up from time to time, via expiry terms.