Salaam all,

When you got married or were preparing to get married, did you decide to change or hyphenate your name even though traditionally Arab women do not take their husbands' last names? What was your husband's opinion, if any, regarding the matter?

Just wondering...

Hope all is well,
hz

My husband and I talked about this at some great length... he wanted me to take his name and it is common in the U.S. to do so... I did and am proud and he is happy.. I do have a friend who was very upset with me for having done this... but when it's all said and done this is between your husband and you.

I read one women didn't take her husband's name and wish she had and he was hurt she didn't. You should talk to him about it though. Good luck

I've been married since last May and I'm still working on changing my name.

Perhaps you can search for "name change" under the MENA forum and see what comes up. I'm sure you'll find many opinions because this (as well as hijab) has been discussed at great legnths on more than one occassion over the years in this section

I Hyphenate mine because I love my Maiden last name , but I love my new last name more... They sound perfect together!!! my hubby didn't mind at all. Must Admit though the Hyphenate part drives people crazy... Including Work and legal paperwork.... But oh well....we latinos have zillions of names anyway

Nita

I kept my own name and Wael has no problems with me doing so.

I changed my name immediatly although I still have some credit cards in my maiden name!

Changed.

I tried to change my name, but the SS Office messed up and I ended up with no middle name, and my last name as: Maiden Married - no hyphen or anything

My card looks like they just put my maiden name as my middle name, so it worked and I changed all of my cards, bills, DL, ect to just my husbands name easily - I didn't even find out about the error until my tax return was rejected bc the name didn't match my SSN

I'm waiting on my taxes to be fixed and everything to be settled before I go back to the SS Office - I don't want the same problem again

I did not change nor hyphenate my name

Everytime i actually let myself think about fun married-life stuff (instead of dreadful USCIS stuff), i think i might like to keep all my names: Given Middle Family Hubbie's. No hyphen, just a bunch of names... is that too much?

neither did i.

Proudly changed it! However, I still do business under my maiden name. I figured my clients didn't need to endure a name change for me. I love my married name, but I will always have my family name too, as I will always be my father's daughter.

Changed.

Changed it and he is proud by it!

I moved my maiden name to my middle name. Then took my husband's last name as my last name. This way I could keep both. It took awhile to change credit cards and things over so it helped to gave an ID still showing my maiden name somewhere so they didn't get confused or refuse my credit card.

I changed mine...however I have not started using it officially yet...I am waiting for him to get here. We have some issues with the way it is spelled vs. the way it should be spelled. If we spell it the way it was translated in his passport, it will be pronounced incorrectly here in the US. Eventually, we will be changing the spelling a little. Also, he has Al in front of his name....in Jordan they do not pronounce the "Al" part of the name out loud.....it is silent....but when it is translated from arabic into english, the Al comes along and you know how that gets botched up in the US. In the end, we will keep the Al, I do think....despite anti-middle eastern sentiment...which is only shown by ignorant people that do not fully understand the people, culture and religion of the middle east. I am ready for them if I get any rude reactions on my new arabic last name...which I am very proud of.

Long story short...yes, I changed my name...my husband is extremely proud as I am very proud to have the honor of being a part of his family and using his name. You know, a lot of women already have the same last (family) name of their husbands...usually marrying within the same family.....so they don't have to change it. In my husband's family the women that married into the family that were not already in the family did change their last names.

Eventually we have plans to move back to Jordan (in quite a few years) and I will then hold dual citizenship...for fun we already picked out my arabic last name. Yasmin. It means the same thing as Jasmine...the flower. Since I love Jasmine so much my husband picked this name for me. It was that or Farah...which means Joy.

Hope this helps....
Deb

I hyphenated the "Al" part of my husband's last name. Mostly I just get questions about where the name comes from. Then when I tell them they say "oh, okay". One guy then asked if I was from Iraq! I simply said no so he asked how I got my name. As a joke I said I bought it at a market there. That if he goes to Iraq he could buy anything, lol. I swear he was going to believe me, but my co-workers were laughing so hard that he caught on.

I changed mine to my husband's...although he said I should keep mine and add his like they do in Argentina, but I just switched because I would have had 5 names. I have to say though it is very difficult at times, because my maiden name was an easy one like "Johnson". Now it is a double last name...because he had two from his parents...one is a Spanish surname and the other is Italian...it is real fun here in Tallahassee, where people are very Southern and their pronunciation is very off all the time. I do feel proud of it, knowing that nowhere else is there another girl out there with my name.

changed. he still laughs when he hears me say my name wiht his last name. I'm very proud of holding this mans last name although i wish I would have hyphenated my maiden name or put my maiden name as a middle name. The main reason I changed it is coz I was still under my ex's last name and was ready to get rid of it.

enjoy making this decision.

Had to change mine cuz I wanted to ditch the ex's last name. I swear..I want to be like Cher and Madonna and truly be just 'Jackie' that's it. just me.

We kept the Al and used a space not a dash. The dash/space issue was messing things up. So it is Al Haji on my drivers license and Alhaji on my business cards.

Jackie

Mohamed and I talked about this and I was so happy he wanted me to take his last name. Its very long !!lol! I also use my ex name in the middle because i have children by that name!!

I didn't change my name. It wasn't a big deal or difficult decision, I don't really care either way (although I do like my last name and after growing up feeling it was too "ethnic" I'm proud of it now!). As it was not part of his culture or family tradition, he didn't see any reason why I should have to change it.

Who cares if it is to many names as long as you are happy? I didn't like my middle name so I moved my family name to my middle and took my husband's last name. I use all three names on everything - Name Maiden Name and Husband's Name all in a row no hyphens or anything. And I request that other people use all three.

First of all, not all of us on the MENA boards are married to Arabs (some are married to Persians,North Africans and even some South Asians).

To answer your question though, no. My husband has a bizaare, eleven syllable last name. Wouldn't dream of changing my family name.

I do the same, I request that people use my whole name too, some say it's too long... Oh well, that's my name and I LOVE IT!!!




Then if that's the case I am married to a Lebanese, not an Arab!

My fiance will actually take my last name when we get married. He didn't seem opposed when I suggested this.

did not change my name. maybe in the future...

charles, you rebel!

No. I like my name. I'm not interested in another name.



He said "both are good" and didn't care what I did either way.

The rules may have changed, but last time I checked you can only legally possess (without a hyphen which would count as a compound name) 3 names in the USA. That's why forms, SS, etc all make you pick 3.

ETA: you can have up to 1 legal alias though, so you can continue to call yourself whatever you feel like-- which is especially easy if you're using his name or your maiden or a combo as your alias.

I plan to keep my maiden name, but also take his name too (as an alias). Easier for everyone (professionally and personally), plus I like how my name is.

Have discussed this with my honey. He feels honored that I want to take it

I doubt I'd hyphenate the names -- it just doesn't flow together. My last name is a "first name" kinda name, so sometime others think my last name is my first name... eh, does that make sense?



By the way, his last name also has the 'Al' in it. Instead of a dash, it's a dot. I noticed that this was unrecognizable when filing out forms online. *grr*
This may be a stupid question -- Say if someone's name is First Middle Al.Last would his initials be FML or FMA or FMAL? I get a lil confused on that.

If it's legally part of his name, then it's FMA.

My last name is also now a first name-- used to be a boys' name, now it's a girls' name. It's very annoying to hear people say, "Oh! You have 3 first names!" My surname has been a surname for almost 1000 years, idiots, and just because some other person decided to make it a first name 60-70 years ago doesn't change the fact that it is still a surname.

I took his last name.

i changed mine also. my husband loved the idea. even his friends in saudi arabia wished their wives could have taken their last names. so it seams they all like it.

I won't be changing my name, mainly because I am establishing myself as a writer and filmmaker under my current name. Hubby has no problems with it and jokes about changing his last name to mine

That's a cool idea henna, him taking your name.

Actually, my social security card has my first, middle, and husband's double last name. They never made me change anything - and that was the feds...so I assume that the rules have changed.

I have four legal names (none of which belong to my husband or his family) and all four are on my SS card and DL.

Are you sure we're not related? Its the exact same thing for me! Surname used as boy's name and now girl's name!

interesting... i'm always interested in hearing what decisions others have taken and how they arrived at their decisions. thanks for sharing!

hmmmmmmmm... i will have to read up on it because i don't like the idea of a hyphen, but i didn't know there was a legal limit to how many names you had... i just remember having professors in college with four or five names, and they used all of them in formal instances... hmmmm...

hey, does anyone remember the 'Friends' episode, where Phoebe changes here name to Princess Guadalupe Something Something... and her husband changes his name to Sh*tbag, or something like that?

I have not changed my name. My husband was saying how much different it is here that changing names is so common.

Good! it used to just be 3 legal names-- I never understood why you couldn't have unlimited legal names, but then maybe just limit what you put on a form, you know? But I think your birth certificate should be able to have whatever you want on it. A lot of cultures want more than 3 names.

We may be! techincally, everyone who has this name by blood is related. Could this name story involve an example from Fleetwood Mac?

still have my maiden name but the plan is to add his last name as one of my middle names and for him to add my last name as one of his middle names... that way if we have kids they can have his last name and I would kind of have it too.

We combined our last names with no hyphen. We both use my last name followed by his.

I like that idea.

I'm keeping my maiden name professionally, but legally changing to his last name.