> > I took my husband's last name when I got
> > married. I wanted to, and what exactly is the
> > point of feminism if you don't get to make the
> > choices you wish? His last name is
> > interesting, and as a teacher, I knew that it
> > would be easier when we (hopefully) had
> > children for people to track me down.
>
> My mom kept her maiden name and stuck my dad's last name after it (no hyphen), so now her name is in this format: First Middle Maiden Married. They're divorced now, but she kept her name the way it is anyway because she'd had it that way longer than she hadn't.
>
> I didn't learn that adding the husband's last name to the end of your name, giving you four names, was not standard practice until I was in about fourth grade, and it still seems weird to me to do otherwise.
>
> -Eric "Selma Bouvier Terwilliger Hutz McClure" Sleator
> Mon 12 Nov A.D. 2001

Once upon a time, back in the old days, women would take their husband's last name and bump their own maiden name up to their middle name. My grandmother, for example, was Helen Ida Hyle before she got married, and Helen Hyle Helwig after. I thought that would be really cool to do- Amber Day Sumner would be a really neat name- but I like my middle name too much, and I didn't want to deal with four names. So Amber Rebekah it is.

~mina "besides, the way my family has been acting recently, I'm not too keen on keeping their name anyway" moon