It really irks me!

I think I'm very old fashioned. I like being a Mrs and in formal situations I like being Mrs DH intial DH Surname.

That said, each to his/her own. Just use whatever title you prefer.

As for Catherine Windsor. I think the Palace encourage it as Kate Middleton makes her sound more normal and they need us to think they're just like we are or we wouldn't tolerate them.

I have been married for 51 years. I still use my own surname if I book anything, restaurants etc. I think of myself as still being that person, that name. To please convention at the time and my husband, I took his surname but I'm still me. Just because I'm a female, why should I have to give up my name. We discussed it in 1970, he was upset so I told him I'd change but not to forget, my surname is my dads. I don't like Mrs either call me by my Christian name, I'll answer.

fluttERBY123

Someone I knew married a foreigner with whose name was difficult to pronounce. He changed his name by deed poll to hers, children known by her name. I felt terribly sorry for him. Reminds me of Prince Philip.

Why would you feel sorry for him? It was the choice he made which, I would guess, he didn't have to make.

I retained my maiden name on marriage as I am relatively well known in professional circles and it made things simpler.

My husband always books restaurants and hotels using my surname, much to the amusement of my parents and siblings, because it's easier to spell and he doesn't have to repeat himself every time.

My married daughter incorporated her maiden name into her married name so is double barrelled. She is a doctor so doesn’t need the Mrs. Miss Ms thing as it annoys her that women need to announce their marital status. My other daughter uses my mum’s maiden name as her profession name as a book illustrator.

Ali08

Ms. is the shortened version of Mizz which notifies the woman is divorced!
Or, at least it did originally!!
So many things have been changed to suit new generations.

No it isn’t, and never was. It was a feminist response to the inherent sexism of men being called Mr. whether married or not, whereas women were identified by their marital status.

Meghan is her middle name, so hardly a “stage name” Many non-actors choose or prefer their middle names

When we married (50 years ago) because my maiden name is rare we agreed for our names to be double surnames, however it was not until we signed the register that the vicar said they had made a mistake and only put my husband name down.
He said “mind you call yourself what you like”

Ms is a term, not for divorced women, but for those of us who do not wish to disclose our marital status ! Men are Mr irrespective of their marital status !

I'm not fussed really. I considered keeping my birth name when I got married as it's a common or garden, easy to spell one. My married name is anything but, but DD1 has chosen to keep it, with a Ms, through her marriage and after. DD2 prefers Mrs, and uses both names, depending on the circumstances. DDIL has gone full on Mrs and married name.

What irks me is when people are up in arms when someone gets it wrong. I used to have to send out a list of names annually and one divorced woman would always claim that what I'd called her was wrong. If I'd put Mrs she rang in a fury to remind me that she was no longer married to that bastard, the next year when I went for Ms she stomped into my office to remind me that she'd earned the title Mrs through the years she'd spent with said bastard. In the end I rang her every year to check what she wanted. I'd still get a telling off for not knowing.

When I got married first time around, 50 years ago, I intended to keep my unusual surname at work but when I got back from honeymoon all my name labels had been replaced with my husbands very common surname. I still regret not kicking up a fuss. I don’t really see why women should lose their identity, we are not chattels anymore.

Why not, instead, ask why men aren't expected to change their names when they marry? That way, there's a bit of perspective on the question as to why women are expected to. It's dated, a bit sexist and really a matter of personal choice.

I cringe at the tabloid press use of Kate Middleton, in the same way I used to cringe at their usage of terms such as 'Lady Di' or the 'Queen Mum'. As for the use of Ms, it was never invented to indicate a divorced woman, what nonsense! It came about because many women, myself included, consider our marital status irrelevant when we are, for example, requesting a gardening catalogue from an online supplier. As for letters to 'The Editor', that is just how they should be addressed, their gender is of no import to their position.

Why any titles at all. I never use them.
Well done Izabella...no title for me just my name

I kept my name when I got married and my husband kept his... we've been together the better part of 30 years....
I answer to Miss, Mrs or Ms as they are all derived from the same word, 'mistress' ... If I am required to put a title on something I put my earned title but otherwise avoid it as it's usually of nobody's concern if I'm married or not, male or not...

I changed to my husband's name on marriage and wore a wedding ring and was proud to.
When I taught we all used our married names if we were but I noticed in my husband's profession women were known by their maiden names, I did ask him why and got the answer to stop confusion when husband and wife are working in the same job in the same place.
My children use their own names professionally and their husbands socially I think this is confusing for their children.
It's a personal thing isn't it,
My mum always called her married friends whom she had known for a long time by their maiden names and when I think about it so do I.
What does irk me are letters addressed to Mrs. then my husbands initial and name.
Our names would have sounded silly double-barred like a lot of friends did. Too much of one letter.
An old saying that an aunt reminded me,
Change the name and not the letter, change for worse and not for better. I did and am happy she did and regretted it all her life.

well yes but your birth name is another man's name too....

I never kept mine, I often wish I had now. But when I got married in the 70s that was what you did it wasn’t even discussed.
I would now encourage any young woman to keep her birth name.

Why should you take your husbands name at all. You are and always will be your own person not a chattel of your husband.

Extremely unnecessary and outdated.

Mistress definitely has a certain charm! :-)

I have never heard of Ms being associated with divorce.

Prior to the middle of the 18th century, women were usually addressed as Mrs, regardless of marital status, and girls were Miss. (Like boys used to be called Master - something that you rarely hear these days.) Gradually, Miss came to denote a single woman. Around 1900, it was suggested that there should be a term for women that was neutral about their marital status, but Ms wasn't popularised until the rise of feminism in the 1960s. It is another derivation of Mistress, obviously. Maybe we should go back to the original terms of address. I would rather like to be known as Mistress.

I was never a chattel of my husband. I kept my maiden name. Damn ridiculous to change name to husbands... old fashioned and outdated.

My goodness, these discussions always throw up a lot of old fashioned stuffiness and 'in my day' answers that only serve to perpetuate some very patriarchal ideas.

It may well be incorrect to call her The Duchess of Cambridge by her maiden name, but the fact remains that she is easily identifiable by that name and it has a certain familiarity to it that rings with the media. I suspect this is a name more widely used in the tabloid press and by American news outlets anyway.

As for 'Ms' it has absolutely no connection to marital status and as many above have pointed out is derived from Mistress. I think the confusion has arisen over this term, because it was adopted as a feminist banner in the 1970s, when women did not want to be defined by their marital status. The idea that a woman would suddenly be required to change her title to Ms when divorced is absurd.

Call yourself whatever you want... no one really cares about such things these days, and it has very little bearing on who you are as a person.

I love my maiden name and dislike my married name. I wish we gone double barrelled but it wasn't the norm in the seventies. It irks me when trying to trace old friends its nearly impossible as the women have married and changed their names. Surely this is an outdated concept nowadays.

Ali08

Ms. is the shortened version of Mizz which notifies the woman is divorced!
Or, at least it did originally!!
So many things have been changed to suit new generations.

No. In the UK, Ms was originally used for written correspondence only, and where it was not known if someone was Miss or Mrs.

media rudeness is not new. This was written in 1935

"She heard no news of Shrewsbury College in the interval, except that one day in the Michaelmas Term there was a paragraph in one of the more foolish London dailies about an ‘Undergraduettes’ Rag,’ informing the world that somebody had made a bonfire of gowns in Shrewsbury Quad and that the ‘Lady Head’ was said to be taking disciplinary measures. Women, of course, were always news. Harriet wrote a tart letter to the paper, pointing out that either ‘undergraduate’ or ‘woman student’ would be seemlier English than ‘undergraduette,’ and that the correct method of describing Dr. Baring was ‘the Warden.’ The only result of this was to provoke a correspondence headed ‘Lady Undergrads,’ and a reference to ‘sweet girl-graduates.’ She informed Wimsey – who happened to be the nearest male person handy for scarifying – that this kind of vulgarity was typical of the average man’s attitude to women’s intellectual interests. He replied that bad manners always made him sick; but was it any worse than headlining foreign monarchs by their Christian names, untitled?"

Sayers, Dorothy L.. Gaudy Night: Lord Peter Wimsey Book 12 (Lord Peter Wimsey Series) (pp. 83-84). Hodder & Stoughton. Kindle Edition.

I have always been 'Ms' as I don't like being referred to as Mistress (Mrs). Neither of my D-in-Ls have taken their husbands surnames. Neither would I if I had my time over again.