Why You Shouldn’t Take Your Husband’s Last Name

According to a long tradition, a woman is expected to take her husband’s last name at marriage. Let’s break down the disadvantages.

A vestige of patriarchy

Fortunately, in the 21st century, the rules are no longer as strict in terms of weddings. Now a woman may not take her husband’s surname, but only a smaller proportion of brides do so (but in less developed regions, for example, in the villages, a bride may be considered disgraced if she does not take her husband’s surname). According to many sociologists, this is an old and sexist tradition – in this way, the man becomes “leader” in the family in advance, when for a healthy relationship the roles must be distributed equally. By the way, many women now, for example, give their children their maiden name in divorce, or by mutual agreement with their husbands.

Losing touch with your roots

In every family, if you do a good search – and maybe even go to the archives – you can find a huge genealogical tree. When a girl takes her fiancé’s surname, she ceases to be documented as part of her genealogical tree (it will even be harder for descendants to find information if anything happens), as she already belongs to another surname. In addition, if there are no more children in the family in which the girl was born, this family formally stops – so, by the way, the brides in such families leave their surname more often than those who have many brothers and sisters. On top of that, now there is even a certain fashion to support the “connection” with their ancestors, people specifically apply to various organizations to learn more about their past. Now this is very difficult – and, if you think about it logically, the process is unlikely to get much easier, so making it harder for your descendants is not a good idea.

Problems with documents

The first thing that comes to mind, of course, is a perfectly simple and already commonplace thing – divorce. No one would want her family to fall apart, but unfortunately, if you also have a husband’s last name, you will have to change the documents, which is quite a long process – because you hardly want to wear the name of the person with whom you have not worked out life. Problems may also arise when, for example, claiming an inheritance – you will have to prove your identity, bring a lot of documents at once to prove that you are you.