Ms.

Relating

 
Ms.
Why becoming a missus is not always part of becoming a wife.
By Lindsay Stewart Glor 

Mrs. Fields makes fantastic chocolate chip cookies. They are soft, but not too soft, with just the right mix of vanilla and milk chocolate. The faceless woman behind the batter is Debbi Sivyer, who, in 1977 at the age of 20, opened herfirst cookie shop in California. And while she long ago divorced Mr. Fields, and became a successful entrepreneur and author in her own right, it is his surname that will forever be part of her identity.

A generation later, in a culture where women are no longer referred to as Mrs. Randall Fields (except for the odd Christmas card from an ageing aunt), it is not automatically assumed that a woman will change her name after marriage. Of course many still do, and the why or why not is a topic of much debate among young women.

If new brides are putting more thought into the issue, it could be because they are, on average, about six years older than their mothers were when they got married. According to Statistics Canada, the average first-time bride was 22.8 years old in 1973. In 2003, she was 28.5, having, in many cases, already finished university, established a career and set up a home.

“It’s not like I got married at 21,” offers newlywed Michelle Simick. “I’ve had my name for 35 years.” And after 35 years, making a big change can take some convincing.

“I probably would have changed my name if I had married younger,” says Kara Wiebe. But when she did get hitched at age 29, she decided not to. “Many other women whom I respected and identified with kept their names, “ explains the mother of one. And despite some family disapproval, she remains confident in her decision.

For Michelle Faubert, keeping her name was a no-brainer. “My name is part of my identity and I didn’t want to give that up,” she says. As with many people, that sense of identity has familial ties. “I like my own last name because it’s a link with my dad, who died before I got married.”

For others their surname is a link to their culture and language. “My Franco-Manitoban heritage is important to my identity,” says Chantal Alary. To pass on that heritage, Alary added her last name as a middle name for her son, which is common practice in many cultures.

This issue of what to name the children is one considered by many brides-to-be, even if they’re years away from becoming parents.

“I’ve always liked the idea of everyone in a family having the same last name, so I guess no matter what the new name was, I would have changed it,” says Angela Wolynec. “Unless there was something really awkward about my spouse’s last name, then I would have asked him to change his to mine.”

Aileen Hunt didn’t change her name when she got married five years ago, and knows that because her infant sons don’t share her name, there’s bound to be a bit of confusion. “Now that I am a parent, I wonder if it will become inconvenient or awkward to have a different name as the kids, so I will play it by ear,” she says. “I don’t mind being referred to as Mrs. Lamont socially or at the kids’ school.”

That’s fine for the schoolyard perhaps, but what about in the boardroom? Many women who have established careers prior to getting married wrestle with the decision to change their name professionally.

Dawn Knight is a teacher and chose not to change her surname when she got married at age 28. “I have been a teacher for nine years, so I am referred to as “Ms. Knight” on a daily basis,” she explains. “I feel like my identity and my name have become more and more connected since I’ve been teaching.” 

Fellow teacher Mary Ferguson Thomas added her husband’s name and passed the double moniker on to her children, but remains “Ms. Ferguson” in the classroom. “I felt I had networked with other teachers and didn’t want there to be communication breakdowns when trying to contact me,” she explains.

Others took changing their professional name in stride: “I’m still a successful professional no matter what name I use,” says Wolynec, a pharmacist. Account executive Catharine Beattie agrees. “I always knew I would change my name and the majority of my clients took to my new name with ease.”

And while tradition, career and children are all factors, sometimes it all comes down to the name itself. Audrey Plew says she was eager to make the change from Gollub, while Marie McGregor chose to stick with her family name rather than take on Gaylord.

“Being married isn’t about having the same last name,” says McGregor. “I think the tradition of  women changing their names is old fashioned. I’m not property being passed to my husband from my dad.”

Of course, no matter what the decision, women are bound to come up against some resistance. Whether you are the one friend who decided to change her name, or the one granddaughter who decided to keep hers, there are always people who think you’ve made the wrong decision. And then there are those who are just oblivious. “My grandmother continues to address letters to me as Jessica Yoskovitz,” says journalist Jessica Howard. “I did remind her that I didn’t change my name, but it didn’t seem to register.”

As a Quebec resident, Howard, unlike women in the West, didn’t have the choice to change her surname, as it’s illegal in that province. In Manitoba, however, a married person can retain their surname, assume the surname of their spouse, combine their names with or without a hyphen, or assume their spouse’s name and retain theirs as a given middle name.

So just where are the husbands in all of this? Many choose to stay silent on the sidelines. Some support their wife’s  decision not to change names, some wish they had made the switch, and some remain indifferent. Only a small number have gone on to make the change themselves.

Ben MacPhee-Sigurdson took the more unusual step of taking on his wife’s name. “I think she was always going to hyphenate her name, but then I asked myself why she should have to go through all the work of doing so,” he explains.

As many married women know, there is a lot of paperwork involved in making the switch, and for MacPhee-Sigurdson, the process didn’t always go smoothly. “Many government offices I visited assumed I was there to do a name change for my wife. Then I explained it and typically got a that’s different-and-nice reaction or a that’s-differentand-stupid reaction, not always drawn along gender lines either.”

Just months away from the birth of their second child, MacPhee-Sigurdson says that if they had it to do over, he’s not sure either he or his wife would have bothered with the hyphenated name. “There is the whole “retention of identity” thing that I guess you can argue, but in reality it doesn’t matter if your name is Ben Cabana-Coldwell-MacPhee-Sigurdson (mom’s maiden name, mom’s married name, my wife’s family name, my previous last name) or Ben Sig–you just are who you are.”

— Lindsay Stewart Glor is “Stewart Glor, G-L-O-R, no hyphen.”