My daughter has the same surname as her father. I have kept my maiden name – my father's surname. She was born in 1982 and we never had any problems with school or anywhere else about who was who in our family. Her father and I are divorced, although we are close friends and live close by each other, having both emigrated to New Zealand within a year of each other.
Meanwhile, I had remarried – 20 years later and in the same Register Office – and still retain my maiden name. Sometimes Mr absent is addressed as Mr My Name because I generally pay all the bills and people assume that I am Mrs, rather than Ms My Name. I chose to keep my maiden name, after a brief spell of being both Mrs First Husband and Ms My Name, partly because I found mucking around adapting to a new name disconcerting and partly because I already had a good reputation in my profession and as a freelancer, keeping the recognition was important. However, I am never offended if a member of his family addresses letters or cards to me as Mrs His Name.
Meanwhile, absentdaughter married when, still a teenager, she first came to New Zealand and took her husband's surname. She then changed her first name because she absolutely hated the name her father and I had chosen when she was born. A couple of years later she gave birth to a son who is registered in his father's name. Not very long afterwards, she and her husband were divorced and some considerable time after that she remarried, having already had four children beforehand – all registered in their father's name – and has had two more since – also registered in their father's name.
Are you keeping up at the back?
Anyway, neither she nor her husband have had any difficulties about the various names. The only problem was when Mr absent and I were applying for residency in New Zealand on the basis of family sponsorship. Providing legal certificates to prove our family connection and explaining the variations in names was quite a mission.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
