Last time I wrote about the decision to keep or change one’s name upon marriage, I received a slew of fascinating comments, such as this one:
In Spain, people officially have two surnames, the first one being the father's and the second the mother's. So children never have exactly the same name as their parents. Thus, the daughter of Pedro Suárez Irureta and Ana Garmendia Rodríguez would be Isabel Suárez Garmendia.
Mother-in-Chief, another blogging mother has recently wrote about what prompted her to keep her name when she got married. She also directs us to The Barely Attentive Mother who decided to change her name all because her husband’s last name was available as a domain name, while her’s was not!
Some of you may have noticed that ever since I moved (in early August), I have been posting under the name Karen Miller Jackson, as opposed to Karen Miller. As I described in Part I, I have discovered that I don’t actually like having a different name from my kids. Yet, I did not want to burden them with a hyphenated last name (for the record my husband would have agreed to hyphenate). My sister-in-law and brother-in-law solved this problem by giving their three boys the father’s last name, and their daughter the mother’s last name.
When we moved to a new community, it seemed the most natural time to try out something different and see how it felt. I am making this decision after going by my “maiden” name for seven years, so it goes to show that you can always change your mind about these things. Some of my friends and family may feel that I have deserted them, but remember I am not dropping my name, just adding my husband’s.
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