I Love Him, But I'm Keeping My Last Name: Why I Won't Be Taking My Groom's Surname

In July, after two years of being engaged, and nine years with my fiancé, I am getting married. I truly cannot explain how excited I am. Not just for the wedding, but to be this man’s wife. 

In regards to the day, I’ve got it all planned. I know when the photographer turns up, where the button-holes need to be sent to, and the colour of the napkins. There’s just one thing left undecided, and suddenly burning a hole in my brain, and that’s this: do I take his last name?

For thirteen-old Jess, this would have been a simple question. More than that, it wouldn’t have been a question - I’m sure her answer would have gone something like this: “Um, yes.” (Then she would have pulled her sleeves over her hands and ran away.)

Maybe I’ve just grown up pugnaciously, but, in truth, I blame my work over this sudden area of contention in my life. I work in Boudoir - a genre of sensual photography which aims to empower the person in the photo itself. In this line of work, which I have been doing for coming up to nine years, I have had conversations with, dare I say, thousands of women, about countless topics - age, body confidence, sexuality, and, mostly, identity. The latter is what I want to focus on. 

Time and time again, I hear this line crop up - “I have lost myself to being a Mum and wife.” I have pondered this sentence many-a-time. Mum, I get. There is a very practical point here; as a new Mum you so often have to subordinate your own desires in the face of a screaming baby. The tectonic plates of your life shift. But, losing yourself to being a ‘wife’? What does this mean? Why are these women feeling their own internal voice, their own sense of who they are, being suppressed by marrying their partner? Why do they describe feeling lost behind ‘labels’? Is the husband the screaming baby? (Sidenote: I am talking almost exclusively about straight relationships - it’s a topic for a different time, but I am yet to hear the same sentences from people in queer relationships).

But, how, may you ask, does this relate to taking someone’s last name? Well, let me slam down my glasses on the desk and tell you. I do not think this trouble with identity is to blame on men, or the patriarchy. I believe it is death by a thousand cuts. It is society’s views on relationships, on romance; on the idea of being “one half of a whole”, rather than two individuals standing in their own light. And I think, women may feel this to a greater degree, because the very first thing they do at the formalisation of their commitment is surrender their last name. They quite literally give up part of their name. For what? For romance? For the concept of family? My question is this, can a person not choose to keep her own name - and be every bit the wife and Mother? 

I’ve talked to friends about this at length, over Instagram and over wine. Results vary from one friend who is actively excited over the concept, another who said “it’s just what you do”, another who chose to change her last name but shared that she “shed many tears - and still does” over the decision and another who point-blank refuses to change her last name, seeing it as a significant connection to her late Dad.

And of course, I talked to my fiancé, Dan. In fact, on a lovely autumnal walk, mulling over the issue, I asked him if - instead - he would change his last name? To which he replied it was a mute-point; an arbitrary question. His suggestion being that there was no reason to ask, as he didn’t need to answer the question. I pushed, of course. And, he replied, without hesitation - no. He likes his own name. I have no anger over this answer because, to put it simply, I feel the same. But it did seal the case in my head. 

I have had people near beg me to consider differently. Imagine pained cries of “think of the childrennnnn”; because if I don’t change my name and we have children, how can we be a family?! I’ve also had people propose it suggests a lack of commitment to my soon-to-be husband, or his family. Or, most bizarrely and yet the one that sticks in my head the most, say I may have airport security think I am trying to kidnap our children if we don’t have the same last name.

All of this bogged me down, painting me in a greasy feeling of guilt, but in that conversation with Dan, I saw it so clearly. He has none of this put on him. No fever dreams of airport staff tearing your children from you, no suggestion that he doesn’t love me. It’s his name - as simple as that. It gave me permission to see the question more practically, which led me onto the research.

As this very useful paper from Cambridge University taught me, the origin of this custom is absolutely devoid of romance. In fact, “surnames were first used in elite noble families, and then eventually applied to more ordinary people in England in the late 14th-century poll taxes.” At this point, lawyers starting rubbing their hands together and laughing maniacally. They were hard at work developing the rule of ‘coverture’, whereby all of a woman’s assets (with certain limited exceptions) were acquired by her husband upon marriage.

This was NOT the pre-existing tradition, and was distinct from the Roman law of marital property which gave a husband “the management but not the ownership of his wife’s property.” And, so “for 500 years, England was the only European country in which husbands gained (almost) complete control of their wives’ assets, and where women exchanged their birth surnames for their husbands’ surnames when they married.” Well done England.

It’s worth me saying, it was never mandatory for a woman to take her husband’s surname and there were historic cases of married women keeping their birth name as a professional name - much as many women do now. For example, Ann Fisher (1719-78), the daughter of a Northumberland yeoman, who wrote books on education. She continued to publish as A. or Ann Fisher after her marriage to the printer Thomas Slack.

And interestingly, there were examples of men taking their wives names if the wife had serious money before her. For example, in the Sussex baronet Webster family, the fourth baronet who was in dire straights money-wise, adopted heiress Elizabeth Vassall’s name in order to receive her wealth.

I know what you’re thinking. So romantic, right?

I understand that you cannot judge a modern tradition on 14th century customs; that something can ameliorate over time and what was about a disrespect for a women’s autonomy and emotionless legality can, apparently, evolve to be received as romantic years down the line. (Sigh). 

The reality is, most people don’t think about all that crap above. They do see it as a sign of commitment, and as a token of their love, and they are within their right to do that. Marriage is personal.

But, to return to my original point, that is not how I see love. Nor is it how I want my marriage to begin. I see the damage of this feeling of a loss of identity every day - on both parties. I believe that, in a relationship, you are not a unit, or one person. You are two people who choose to be there, who see the other person for who they are - their interests, their desires, and choose to uplift them in life. To be loved is to be known, after-all. 

I want to keep my name. I have worked hard to feel proud of ‘Jess Blackwell’. When I think of Blackwells, I think of my family; of the way the Blackwell’s will crack on with any job, but can never say no to a party. Of the way that my Blackwell cousins will sleep on any flat surface and call it a bed; down to earth and accepting. I keep my last name not to just honour myself, but my relatives too.

And more than that, when you choose to nurture your own sense of identity, you have so much more to give the world around you. A happy person who knows HERSELF, is someone who can give so much more to her relationship and loved ones.

As Kahlil Gibran said ‘On Marriage’|”

You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness…”

Love one another, but make not a bond of love:

Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup…

And stand together yet not too near together:

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”

And, indeed, as Kahlil may be glad to hear, times are changing.  In the most elegant form of research possible, my Instagram poll of 45 people shared that over 50% of women are thinking of keeping their own name.

And whilst many, many women do choose to keep with tradition, there are signs that many are not. The number of men taking their wife’s name is increasing. A survey last year by Opinium of 2,000 UK adults for the London Mint suggested that one in 10 millennial men (18 to 34 years old) fell into this category.

Plus, although previously associated with the toff’s of the world, double-barrelled surnames are rising in popularity as an alternative. Approximately, 1 in 4 (25%) couples in the UK consider or choose to join their names upon marriage, particularly among younger generations.

And, maybe beyond all of this, beyond 14th century lawyers, and concepts of love, and what it is to be loved, of my relationship, and how my heart feels, how my family feels, and how his family feels, of the centuries old traditions of marriage, there is this solitary fact: I literally just renewed my passport. And who can truly be bothered to go through that again?

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Written by Everyday Magazine founder, Jess Blackwell