From: utzoo!decvax!duke!unc!bch Newsgroups: net.women Title: Re: Keeping the maiden name Article-I.D.: unc.4704 Posted: Thu Feb 24 09:37:28 1983 Received: Fri Feb 25 03:40:43 1983 References: csu-cs.2051 My wife and I kept our given names when we were married and have had no (well, almost no) problems in doing so. Our respective mothers do insist on sending mail to us as 'Mr. and Mrs. Byron Howes' and somebody's mailing list has created a new individual named Ivins Howes by using her last name as a first name. Friends of ours have not had such good fortune, however. Their neighbors became mortally offended upon learning that despite different last names they were not just living together but were, in fact, married. The idea that some people find cohabitation more acceptable than marrieds keeping their given names intrigues me. I expect that business and formal organizations should not have trouble with people living together having different names. Cohabitation has become enough of a fact of life in this society that business procedures have adapted to take account of it. Different names, however, do confuse people in less formal, social, situations. It is less easy to drop couples into neat categories on first meeting them if you are unsure of their marital status.