Taking the Name

I remember the first woman I ever met who didn’t take her husband’s name upon marriage. I knew it happened, but I had never seen it before. Turns out she refused to take his name because he was an abusive piece of (expletive deleted) who I would have been happy to beat up for her. She said the only reason she married him was because she was afraid that if she left him he would kill her. For this I would have been more than happy to lie in wait for him with a shotgun so I could shoot him the instant he tried to harm her. This was a really good reason for her to keep her own name.

However, further life experience has shown me a few things.

With very rare exception, American women who refuse to take their husband’s name do so for the following reasons: 1- She expects to divorce him anyway. 2- She is more concerned with her unmarried identity than with generations of tradition. 3- She is a rabid, man-hating feminazi who actually got married for some incomprehensible reason. 4- She doesn’t like her husband’s last name for one reason or another. 5- She wears the pants in that household, and he will never be allowed to forget it.

Let’s address these reason one at a time, shall we?

1- If she expects to divorce him anyway then why on Earth would she marry the guy? This is a relative recent trend in America, no more than 25 years old, where people just seem to get married for the heck of it as a way to pass a few years before moving on to a new unmarried life, or into a life married to someone they would have preferred anyway. Maybe it’s just the way my mind works, but I will never be able to understand the idea of entering into a purposely temporary marriage.

2- Traditions have been challenged in America for a long time. Most remain dominant, some fade away. This is good when good traditions are kept, and even better when really bad traditions, like slavery and segregation, are removed entirely. But it’s also bad when good traditions, like prayer in public schools, are removed. To me the tradition of a woman taking her husband’s name when she gets married is one of love and respect. That means it should be kept.

3- What man would have such a woman anyway? What man would such a woman have in the first place?

4- There are some seriously funky last names out there and some unpronounceable ones as well. So while I understand the temptation for a woman to not take the name we are driven right back to the issue of love and respect.

5- Okay. If a man is such a submissive or weak character that he cannot be the leader of his household I can understand that there might be a certain lack of respect on the woman’s part that would motivate her to not take his name. (No I am not advocating male dominance, just the purpose of traditional roles in a family. I will blog about that some other time.)

There is one final reason that women don’t take their husband’s name that I have saved for just this moment. HE TAKES HER NAME!

I have only met one man who did such a thing, and it was purely because of his hatred for his birth name. He was born Michael Myers. That’s right, like the actor who played Austin Powers and the murderous psychopath from the Halloween movies. He had been made fun of so much for his name that he decided he would rather take his wife’s last name than have her take his.

This brings us to the final, male reason why some women don’t take their husband’s last name; he won’t let her.

In this situation is it usually the man who suffers from an utter lack of respect for his wife, and also a distinct lack of love for her. It is a symptom of an unhealthy relationship where he probably dominates his wife with an iron fist.

These guys suck.

Needless to say, I was very happy that my wife took my name when were married. We share a wonderful marriage that I greatly appreciate. She is a fantastic woman whom I deeply love. It makes me happy for us to be called “Mr. and Mrs. Levesque”.