facebook influencing naming conventions?

[flea]

Many married women I know have themselves listed on Facebook as Firstname Maidenname Lastname. In many cases that I know of, they use just Firstname Lastname in real life - including both socially and professionally - but use both last names on Facebook presumably to make it easier to connect with old friends from high school, etc.

Where do you stand? Do you think this Facebook naming practice will influence the way women change (or don't) their names upon marriage in the real world, too?

(Note, I didn't change my name on marrying, and never considered it. The kids have mr. flea's last name, and I didn't argue for mine or give them mine as a middle. Just the way it turned out for us. Myname MrFlea'sLastName would be pretty hilarious, based on sound, even if I had considered changing.)

Comments

[ste-noni.livejournal.com]

Like you said above, I use my maiden name on FB so that old friends can find me. For a while, after I graduated from law school, I used both last names (I think that's what it says on my law school diploma), but it just got too long and complicated. I got tired of always writing both and truthfully, I haven't felt like Stephanie Smith (maiden name) in years. Plus, while I respect other people's decisions, it was important to me that we have a "family" last name.

Living in PR opened my eyes quite a bit. Women there do not change their names when they get married. I didn't meet a single woman who had changed her name, unless she and her husband had lived in the States for a while. However, very few women made a point of correcting people when someone assumed that they and their children had the same last name.

[burrell.livejournal.com]

All I know is me and my DH are the freakish outliers on the name front. We both took both names.

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

I know one other couple that did this. They didn't hyphenate, which confuses the heck out of people, and led to my former coworker receiving mail addressed to Firstname Sanbojackson.

[vwbug.livejournal.com]

I think this is so cool. I had a prof who did that with his wife.

[haphazardmethod.livejournal.com]

Sorry, no help here -- I'm another unreliable outlier. We each kept our own names and Sci is Sci Mylastname Hislastname and Sys is Sys Hislastname Mylastname. No hyphens.

[vwbug.livejournal.com]

I see that a lot as well. I like it, as it jogs my memory when I see their names pop up. But, yeah, it's an interesting sociological question. You should do a study!

[fatoudust.livejournal.com]

Heh. My big deal was that I kept my middle name as well as my maiden when I got married. I actually intended to go Firstname Middlename Husbandsname, but my parents got upset (elopement) because it felt to them like I was trying to cut them out entirely by losing my maiden name. I wasn't; my middle name was my grandmother's name, and I loved it very much and didn't want to lose it. So I took all four names and haven't regretted it.

However on Facebook I don't even use my proper last name, because I am a paranoid freak like that.