Transcript | Ep. 70: How to Marry Off Maiden Names

[Stinger]

Cristen: Maiden names. Can we just get rid of that term?

Esther: It's a crazy term. Don't you just imagine, like, that like kind of pointy hat with the streamers that, you know, when you're young.

Cristen: Yes. Like was a maiden?

Esther: Who was a maiden, right. Who was a maiden. There's a dowry, right? If there's a maiden, there's a dowry.

Caroline: I bring my cow to the wedding.

Esther: Right. Right. Like you live in your father's castle, and then you go to your husband's village. Like, who are we kidding?

[Theme music]

Caroline: Hey y’all, and welcome to Unladylike, where we find out what happens when women — and maidens — break the rules. I’m Caroline.

Cristen: I’m Cristen. And if you couldn’t tell from that clip you just heard, it blows my mind that quote unquote “maiden names” still exist.

Caroline: It’s very, like I am woman, hear me … curtsey?

Cristen: Exactly. It’s even baked into our digital landscape, Caroline, you know like with the security question, “What is your mother’s maiden name?”

Caroline: None of your business, Wells Fargo!

Cristen: Caroline, I also think it’s really easy to assume that the whole to-change-or-not-to-change your married last name should be a simple, binary choice. But it’s sneaky. I mean, like speaking for myself, like, when I got married a few years ago, there was no name changing involved, didn’t think twice about it. However. Did I lie to an in-law when she asked me about whether I was gonna change my name? Yeah. Yeah I did.

Caroline: Why?

Cristen: I was scared that if I said I was keeping my name that she would maybe think I wasn’t as committed as I could be to my future husband!

Caroline: Damn that’s a lot of pressure!

Cristen: Yeah I mean self-inflicted, but sure

Caroline: Yeah, but is there really a way to win though? Because it seems like the conversation around maiden names falls into the choice feminism trap of judging married women by their last name or just proclaiming any last name choice feminist just because you chose it.

Cristen: Yeah, and for me at least, I don’t consider my last name more feminist as is than if I’d taken my husband’s last name. Because the truth of the matter is, my maiden name is simply my dad’s last name, aka a patronym, and my husband's last name is HIS family's patronym, so like, which is the more empowered patronym?! I don't know Caroline!

Caroline: Yeah, and I think feminists especially can get really caught up debating that “right” choice that we sort of dismiss all the totally valid feelings attached to the last name that we do choose.

Cristen: Of course, we had to ask Unladylike listeners for their thoughts on maiden names. And I was really blown away by all the last-name nuances that came up. Like for instance, with our first guest Esther

Esther: What are my feelings about my name? Why do I feel this way? Like, where do these feelings come from in my history, in my family? All those sorts of questions. Like I was forced to really answer them

Cristen: We heard from listeners who were grappling with all this in real-time, too. Like listener Holly, who was surprised to learn that her fiance fully expects her to take his name. Or listener Mallory, who wondered: We could all hyphenate our last names, but then what do I expect my children to do when they potentially get married, have four last names? Then where does it stop?!

Caroline: With help from Esther and three other guests today, we're exploring what it's really like to choose your maiden name choice and how family, race and sexual orientation factor in. Plus, is it any easier to decide when you're a woman marrying another woman?

Caroline: All to find out: How do we solve a patriarchal problem like maiden names?

[Stinger]

Esther: So my - my name is Esther Werdiger. That's it. And Esther Werdiger, I think of as like my street name because I use it for, you know, social media. Everyone. That's just how I introduce myself. That's what I use as - as my byline, if I write something, that's my name at work. And legally, my name is Esther Silverman. So if you know, that's my credit card, that's my taxes, that's, you know, my hospital bills, you whatever it is like, it's the bank. It's just like legal purposes.

Caroline: This is writer and artist, maiden name Esther Werdiger. She’s an art director at Tablet Magazine, and like 70% of American women married to men, she took her husband’s last name — Silverman.

Esther: I feel like Esther Silverman is an alias. Like if I ever wanted to be anonymous for some reason, like that's there waiting for me. It's a name that I don't connect to at all. But it's so funny to think of this person is like it's sort of for legal purposes. Like she's the one who pays taxes. She's the one who pays bills.

Caroline: Esther Silverman is so responsible.

Esther: But so boring, you know.

Cristen: So first, how did you and your husband first broach the name change conversation?

Esther: So we didn't, is the truth. And then when we were filling out paperwork online before our civil wedding. And right. So I was at my desk at work and he was at his and we would g-chatting about it. And I think he was filling it in and he was like getting information for me as needed. And then he was like, Oh, this is where you say if you're going to change your name. Are going to change your name? And I was like, What? Like, I just it totally caught me off guard. And I was just like - sort of froze. I was just like um uh ... I felt so ambivalent. And I mean, I've had my whole life to think about what I would do and but I still never had really thought about it.

Caroline: Why not?

Esther: I just think I was like avoiding it maybe or waiting for this moment in which I just assumed I would have an idea or I just, you know, I would have like I would know what I wanted to do. But when it came down to it, I didn't.

Cristen: Yeah, statistically speaking, women who marry men are likelier to take their husband’s last names if they are younger, more religious, less educated and/or less career-advanced. They also tend to cite factors like spousal devotion and family unity as their reasons for making that switch.

Caroline: But for Esther, going from Werdiger to Silverman just felt like the most practical choice at the time.

Esther: And they give you all these options, like this is how your name can be. You can hyphenate. You can just have the two names together. You can have your name first and then his name or other way around, like they gave you all these options. And I remember thinking that if I was to keep both names, it would just be like Esther Werdiger-Silverman sounded like so much. So like I was like, let's just go with Silverman. That's his last name. And that was that. And right away I have you know, this is after city hall right away, needed to change my passport. I got all that stuff rolling ASAP. But as I was going through with all those subsequent changes, then it was just like, why did I do that? Like, I gave myself all this extra work. I don't like any of this. You know, it was like immediate, but I had all this stuff that I needed to then do, you know.

Caroline: OK. So, Esther is from Australia, and her now-husband is American. So on top of all the usual name considerations, they had a green card to think about. They both hoped that Esther taking his last name would help grease the wheels for Esther becoming a permanent US resident.

Cristen: Now, we should note that Esther’s fiance was not pushing her to change her name. Like, he was totally fine with whatever she wanted to do. But he wasn’t interested in changing his name, either.

Caroline: In fact, y’all, just THREE percent of men who marry women take their spouse's last names.

Esther: It just felt like unfair. It's not something that men are ever asked to even consider. It almost makes no sense that, you know — and how old was I at the time? I guess I was like 30 — that like a person in the world with a job established in whatever way then is expected to change their name - like to trade in their name or - like it just felt irrelevant and almost offensive and so archaic

Cristen: Caroline, that archaic tradition also results in a lot of frankly archaic paperwork. Because yes, you can legally change your name on your marriage certificate. But since there’s no central repository for legal names in the United States, that marriage certificate doesn’t change anything on: driver’s licenses, vehicle titles, voter registrations, passports, bank records, credit cards, medical records, insurance forms, wills, contracts, social security and IRS docs

Caroline: You can purchase ‘name change kits’ to help expedite the process, but based on what we heard from a lot of y’all, sometimes it can still be a major time suck.

Cristen: One Unladylike listener named Coco told us she had to use two vacation days to go back and forth to the Social Security Administration office to officially change her last name. TWO days!

Caroline: No, no thank you. Another listener told us she now has three different versions of her legal married name because every time she went to update her IDs, they kept having to shorten her new name to fit it on the forms!

Cristen: But even after Esther crossed all the t’s and dotted all the i’s to legally become Mrs. Esther Silverman, she still found herself thinking a LOT about Esther Werdiger.

Esther: I came from a really big family with a lot of really interesting personalities and stories, and I had really kind of become attached to my name and the identity that I saw as having come along with it. I felt like proud to be kind of connected to other people in my family. I have six siblings, three of my grandparents were all refugees in different ways. I have a grandfather who's a Holocaust survivor. He's a grandfather I have the name from. And so much of his family was killed during the Holocaust. And I really saw him as an amazing, I mean, literally as a survivor. And I felt like I wanted. I cherish that connection

Cristen: What role did feminism play in your last-name decision making and just feelings around that?

Esther: I think a big role. I think I felt like what - what felt like a really classic like feminist rage where it was like for generations. And I remember like just thinking in the shower like how for every generation, women are just erased from these stories. And how like, literally, the names are erased from family histories. Like, I know my mother's maiden name. I know my grandmothers’ maiden names. I don't know any of them before then. And that suddenly felt like so fucking sad to me. And I think of just like the role of women in history and how just unpaid labor and how they toil at home and during wartime all that. Just like all these crazy, crazy stories and how we don't even know their names. And again, imagining again and again if men were faced with that scenario and how like absurd and laughable that was, that only made me angrier. And I went through. I mean, I had similar things also around having a baby and all that stuff where it was like, oh, my God. Like the stuff that women do, the stuff that's expected of them. You know, every woman you see walking in the street like these things that they're faced with and it's just like no one knows or no one talks about it or it's invisible. You know, it felt like kind of one of those things too this idea that like your identity is what's the word your identity is? It's so easily dismissed. You know, it's subservient. It can be swallowed by whatever is the more - the larger presence in the room, you know. It felt like chronic. Yeah.

Cristen: Yes, Esther was pissed off at patriarchy, but she was also frustrated with herself for not anticipating those feelings before checking the box to change her last name.

Esther: Right, I was really angry about it. But I feel like through that, you know, I learned something about myself, which was like, I need to be better at making decisions. I need to know what I think about something. I can't just be kind of ambivalent because I realized I acted in a very ambivalent way, but my convictions like inside were much stronger than that, you know?

Cristen: What Esther does know right now? She’s not interested in going through another round of paperwork to change her legal name back to Werdiger. So for now, she’s keeping it Esther Werdiger in the streets and Esther Silverman on the sheets … of legal documents

Caroline: We should quickly mention though Cristen, that maiden name erasure is common but not a universal standard.

Cristen: Yes! An Unladylike listener from Iceland shared that over there “in recent years, a lot of people have changed their last names” to include both maternal and paternal sides. Another listener from Portugal wrote us that she didn’t swap out her maiden name because you have to pay extra there for the name change.

Caroline: When we come back, we find out how maiden names became a thing and when brides first started giving them the middle finger.

Cristen: Plus, our second guest shares why, growing up, she couldn’t wait to get rid of hers

Caroline: Stick around

[Midroll ad 1]

Caroline: We’re back. And we did hear from unladylike listeners who happily changed their last names when they got married for a variety of reasons.

Cristen: Yeah, one listener Jessica wrote: “My ‘maiden name’ is also a man's first name, and I knew if/when I ever get my PhD everyone would assume Dr. Peter is a dude - even more than I already had gotten mis-gendered previously.” And another listener named Kati wrote that her maiden name was constantly misspelled and mispronounced. So, when she got engaged she says she “happily decided to take my husband's last name, which is Parker. Nice and simple.”

Caroline: We also heard from listeners who took their spouses’ last names because of their own complicated family histories. For instance, Maddie wrote: “I am not in contact with my Dad or his side of the family, so I didn't feel a strong connection to my maiden name.”

Cristen: Meanwhile, about 20 percent of American women who’ve married men in recent years have kept their own last names.

Caroline: That includes you, Conger. So why’d you decide to keep it?

Cristen: I feel like I should say for feminist reasons, but honestly it’s for aesthetics and professional reasons. Like I have always loved my initials — CKC, it is symmetrical, Caroline — also my middle namesake is the one known feminist in my family tree, so I couldn’t leave her behind!

Caroline: No, keep that name going!

Cristen: Plus by the time I got married, I’d made a professional name for myself. So I mean I guess what I’m trying to say Caroline is that changing my last name just would’ve ruined my SEO and my monogram

Caroline: So romantic!

Cristen: But, what about you Caroline?

Caroline: I grew up just taking it for granted that I’d change my name whenever I got married. Like, I’d imagine how MY monogram would look once I married this one particular boy I was in love with. It wasn’t until WAY later — like, I’m talking after college — that it even occurred to me: Wait, I don’t WANT to change my name! So what I’m interested in, Cristen, is how this whole “maiden name” business got started in the first place!

Cristen: With a whole lotta claptrap, that’s what!

Caroline: Unpack the claptrap is the part of the show where we rifle through patriarchy’s paperwork to find out why things are the way they are.

Cristen: OK, Caroline, thanks to an academic paper titled “In the Name of the Mother: Feminist Opposition to the Patronym,” I learned that women in Western European cultures have rarely exercised any autonomy over our last names.

Caroline: Oh, great great!

Cristen: Right?! And I say rarely because in medieval times, class decided who took whomever's last name. Historian Stephanie Coontz notes that men would take women's last names if they came from wealthier or higher class families.

Caroline: But by the time the term “maiden name” is coined around 1680, nobility had taken a nosedive, and coverture laws basically said a husband and wife were one person — him. The wife ceased to exist as her own legal entity. And taking the husband’s name reflected the fact that she was essentially his property.

Cristen: But in the 19th century, some first-wave feminists started calling bullshit on maiden-name changing and only passing along patronyms to children. In France for instance, utopian socialist feminists called for the adoption of matronyms to recognize the “primacy of the maternal.”

Caroline: Hell yeah! In 1855, American feminist and abolitionist Lucy Stone really shook things up when she became the first American woman to legally keep her maiden name.

Cristen: Yes, Lucy, yes!

Caroline: And Cristen, she inspired an entire league!

Cristen: A League of her own??

Caroline: Yes! The Lucy Stone League was founded in 1921 to fight for women to be allowed to keep their last names, and supporters became known as Lucy Stoners

Cristen: But Stoners were few and far between and stayed that way for the next 50 years. In the early 1970s, less than 5 percent of married, college-educated women kept their last names. Part of the reason was because it was legally unclear whether married women even had the right to choose their own last name and use it for official purposes, like banking or on government documents.

Caroline: Yeah, then in 1975 Cristen the Supreme Court struck down a Tennessee law requiring married women to register to vote with their husbands’ surnames. That paved the legal way for women to start making up their own minds about what they wanted to be called after marriage.

Cristen: Culturally though, maintaining your maiden name was a radical notion. Case in point: Hillary Rodham. In 1975, the same year as that SCOTUS decision, Hillary Rodham married Bill Clinton and didn’t change her name. She figured she was building her own legal career independent of her husband, so it made sense to stick with Rodham.

Caroline: But the stakes changed dramatically three years later when Hillary became the First Lady of Arkansas. In her memoir, Living History, Hillary wrote: “I learned the hard way that some voters in Arkansas were seriously offended by the fact that I kept my maiden name.”

[Clip from interview]

Interviewer: You’re less than 40. You don’t have any children. You don’t use your husband’s name. You practice law. Does it concern you have maybe other feel that you don’t fit the image that we’ve created for the governor’s wife in Arkansas?

Hillary Rodham: No, because each person should be assessed and judged on that person’s own merits.

Cristen: But ultimately, the maiden name side-eye Rodham attracted did concern Hillary enough that by the time Bill ran for re-election in 1982, the once and future First Lady had started going by Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Caroline: Popular opinion about maiden names today remains kinda suspect. Get this y’all: A 2017 study found that more than 70 precent of American adults think women should change their names after they get married. The main reason cited was “the belief that women should prioritize their marriage and family ahead of themselves.”

Cristen: Well, that is BANANAS. Also bananas is how difficult it can be to reclaim your maiden name after you get married or divorced. Besides all the paperwork, some courts require spousal consent to make the switch.

Caroline: So, Cristen, let's turn now to our next guest, Christina Yuan — spelled Y-U-A-N — an Unladylike listener from Toronto. Growing up, Christina couldn’t wait to get married to somebody with what she calls “a regular name.”

Christina: I guess I sort of latched onto this idea like wait a minute you can change your name when you get married. Woah! And for me that was basically like the ultimate sign of assimilation.

Caroline: But fate had different plans for Christina. Here she is reading from the email she sent us.

Christina: Fast forward 20 years and I met and married a wonderful man and his name is Pasta. Now, Picture if you will what Christina Pasta looks like. And I assure you it's not me.

Cristen: First off, what a twist! A rigatoni twist!

Caroline: This letter stuck with us. Not just because of the Pasta of it all — which we’ll get into later — but also because so often in the discussion about maiden names, racism and the anglicizing of a racially different name is left out of the conversation.

Cristen: Exactly. And Christina has thought a lot about this. Back in 1971, her parents had immigrated to Canada from China via Taiwan. She grew up in a predominantly white suburb outside Toronto.

Christina: And we were sort of one of the few Chinese people in this - or people of color in this very white sort of society. And it was - we were like definitely a curiosity, you know what I mean?

Caroline: Christina's last name in particular felt like a constant reminder of that

Christina: It was just such a marker of standing out, you know, like being an other when at the period in your life when you just really don't want to be someone else you know you want to be part of the pack

Cristen: As a girl, though, Christina noticed someone on TV who got her thinking that maybe there was a way around all that racism, and that someone was a CBC broadcaster named Adrienne Clarkson.

Christina: She was like a Chinese lady with a white name. And then she became the Governor General of Canada. And to me it was like - like even as a little kid when I saw her I was like, wait a minute that lady has a white name. But she is 100 percent Chinese. Like I was like you're not fooling me, Adrienne Clarkson. And it's like having a white person stamp like an approved stamp on you. You know what I mean like the - the - the white - maybe like a little bit of white privilege can even wash over you with that name change. And it was just this idea that - of like acceptance. And I remember like I worked with a man who - we - who was South African. And he was talking about like some of the terrible things about living in South Africa and the racism and like and I remember he told me, like he's like, Yeah they even had this term of honorary whites like isn't that disgusting. And I was like Yeah. That's disgusting. But also like, Wow you can be an honorary white? That sounds better than what I am now. Which is terrible. Like not a good joke, but. But like feeling that that, this could be my way out. I - that's - I know that's like totally irrational but definitely something I thought about a lot.

Caroline: So, growing up, what kind of last name were you hoping your future husband would have?

Christina: I'll take something you can pronounce and like or just spell easily and and you know bonus if it's like culturally ambiguous, you know what I mean? So it's something that people aren't going to know right away what I am or what I look like, then that would be super. And - and I sort of operated with that idea for like an embarrassing long time. Like probably into my university years. But and it's so funny like it's so funny that I'm talking to you guys about this because it's like honestly it's not something I've ever said out loud. Like have never ever in my life admitted out loud that the big reason why I wanted my name was because I didn't want to be Chinese. And you know it's not that I don't want to be Chinese now it's just that you know those teenage feelings are pretty strong.

Cristen: How does it feel saying it out loud for the first time?

Christina: Really weird. And like it's I think now I'm removed enough like that I that I don't have a problem with it, but I really like it for me like that it's so much more complicated because like the idea of changing your name from like Jones to Smith is not is the same as changing your name from like Chang to Smith. So it is weird to like say it out loud because I - I honestly have never ever spoken about this. My husband doesn't know about this. I told him that I wrote a letter to you guys and he was like really.

Cristen: Now, speaking of Christina’s husband, we have to talk about HIS last name, Caroline

Caroline: Like, of all the chill, forgettable last names out there, Christina goes and falls in love with Mr. Pasta.

Christina: My husband has a pretty boss name. But it was - like it had too much heat for me. I couldn’t take it. You get asked three questions when your name is pasta. The first question you get is, “Is that your real name?” The second question is, “Are you Italian?” And the third question is, “Do you like pasta?”

Caroline: Oh God.

Christina: So it's funny because in - so when I was deciding if I was gonna change my name I was like, How am I going to answer those questions, you know? It's like is that my real name? Like dude. I don't know. Like is it? What's a name? Who am I? And then the second one is like, Are you Italian? It was like Wow I - like that is - like that - it just extends the “where are you really from” conversation. You know what I mean.

Caroline: Totally. I was just thinking that.

Christina: It's just like not like I don't have time for this conversation you know. And then do you like pasta? Like of course I love pasta. Everybody loves pasta. Even people say they don't. They just haven't had the right one or they're lying. It always invites comments. Right. So it really made me think about what I was like if I did that what would be happening to me. Like I started realizing that like all of this. You know stuff about being Chinese is a huge part of who I am and like that I would say is maybe more of the reason. Like I certainly believe in all of the feminist reasons, but I think. I just felt like I would be misrepresenting myself. Like showing up as Christina Pasta and then being a Chinese lady. Not that, and I know that that's weird because it's not true, but it just didn't feel like something that I wanted to do. And so like I guess after that I was just like I guess I'm Christina Yuan forever. Like I guess this is it.

Caroline: Christina Yuan Forever is a rom-com I would like to see, Cristen.

Cristen: Same. And after the break, what happens to last names when there is no gendered custom to follow? We find out from a queer couple who decided to play the maiden name game their own way

Caroline: Stay with us

[Midroll ad 2]

Caroline: We’re back, and so far Cristen, we’ve been exploring how women grapple with identity and maiden name traditions when they’re marrying men. But enough of this heteronormativity!

Cristen: Yes! According to 2017 Gallup polling, just over 10 percent of LGBT adults in the US are married to same-sex partners. So for this episode, we also wanted to find out how the so-called “maiden name” stakes change when there isn’t a patriarchal tradition to fall back on.

Caroline: So how does it shake out?

Cristen: Well, research on their married-last-name patterns is still emerging, but existing studies suggests that women who marry women are likelier to keep their so-called “maiden names,” and hyphenate for kids.

Caroline: And when it comes to choosing that last name choice, some queer couples are rewriting the rules entirely.

Tanya: Like the idea Game for the Name just popped into my head. It rhymed. It sounded really good. And I think I don't want to take credit for something that I didn't do. But I came up with the idea, well, let's play a soccer game and have the winner of the game be able to decide what our family's last name is going to be.

Caroline: They met in an amateur soccer league in Brooklyn — Martha says 8 years ago, Tanya says 10 — and they eventually started dating.

Cristen: When they got engaged, suddenly Martha and Tanya faced the same barrage of questions that women in opposite-gender couples get - about who was going to change their name. Note, their pre-wedding names were Martha West and Tanya Kalivas. Here’s Martha now.

Martha: I feel like maybe I didn't realize how attached to my name I was until this subject came up, until we, you know, people started to ask us, as we think once we got engaged and people would broach the topic with us. And we - we didn't really know and we hadn't thought about it to that point.

Tanya: Well, the first thing that I did was just play around with the name Tanya West and that it just doesn't really roll off the tongue very well. I Googled it and I saw it like what Tanya Wests are out there in the world. And I just couldn't - it just didn't feel right. I mean, for me, my - my family, neither of my parents were born in the United States. My mom's Serbian. My dad is Greek. The last name, West, while I think it's a great last name. It didn't. For me, it felt very not quite aligned with how my - what my identity was at that point.

Caroline: They were already planning a pre-wedding soccer match for their friends and family. So they decided to turn it into … the Game for the Name. The winner of the match would determine the couple’s last name. No biggie.

Cristen: To be honest Caroline, this sounds like my personal nightmare. My family cannot even get through a game of Monopoly

Caroline: Um. yeah. And from what it sounds like, the Game for the Name — which took place the day before their wedding — was incredibly competitive

Tanya: There was a woman who had won four national championships with USC, there was a Mexican national team player. There were like really, really intense, experienced players on the field. And then there were some more recreational friends who were also part of it. And it was just like very, very intense battle.

Martha: We had T-shirts made up. Obviously on my side it was a very easy team chant, “West is Best.” We had uniforms, basically that our friends helped us make and design. And it really - it almost took on a life of its own.

Tanya: There was just a really like. Oh, right. This is. These are really high stakes. Like you could lose your name. Oh, my goodness. I can't believe I'm part of this. Like, I have to really do well, and I have to, like, perform. And there was like this seriousness to it. But yet, everyone was, you know, not in shape anymore or at their athletic peak. So there was a like disorder to it as well, like people trying really hard, but like banging heads and being carried off the field injured. It was like that intense.

Cristen: The Game for the Name was not fucking around, y’all! Alright, so picture it:

Caroline: The second half had just started. Team West was up 1 to nothing. It seemed like they had it in the bag … and then … A FOUL!

Cristen: The Kalivas team got a penalty kick. The fate of the name rested on Tanya’s boot

Tanya: I scored the penalty kick to tie it 1 - 1 on Martha's father, who had played a heroic game and goal the entire time.

Caroline: The Game for the Name was tied

Martha: People did not want to quit. We didn't want to quit. You know, honestly, things were heated

Caroline: And then —

Tanya: Our wedding planner person at that point sort of shuffled on the field and pulled us away. She was like, you guys have to get your hair done now. And for two people who like really we're pretty are pretty tomboyish and like the idea that we were going to be stopping a competitive soccer game to get our hair done was sort of laughable.

Caroline: Listen, I’m just glad they stopped before either one of them got hurt!

Cristen: Right? So the next morning, the day of the wedding, Martha and Tanya wake up and are like, oh YEAH. The Game for the Name tied!!

Martha: And we're like, oh, right. What what does this mean? And what did we say to people about this, and what are we going to do? And that's just kind of how. And then the wedding happened ,and we launched into this whole other thing and so

Tanya: I think I think in our mind it was what are we who's going to like officially, legally change their name through the state of New York. And that was something that we felt like could be kicked down the line.

Caroline: So the ball has now been kicked down the line. So we had to know: Who ultimately won the Game for the Name?

Tanya: We are Martha West and Tanya Kalivas. Neither of us have changed our last names. However, we do have a son who I gave birth to in 2017, and his name is Simon West. So read into that what you may. But he - he is - he is a West officially.

Martha: I like to say that there was a suspect call at the end of the game. And still my team, the West won, and Simon is proof of that. But that's another debate that will probably will continue on.

Tanya: And I think - I think I like to think we all won because we have Simon.

Caroline: So, tell us your maiden thoughts, y’all: Would you — or have you — changed your last name? Or, did you come up with some patriarchy-smashing way to settle the maiden name score? Let us know! You can email us at hello@unladylike.co, hit us up on social @unladylikemedia or find the thread for this episode in our private facebook group.

Cristen: And if you’re looking for some Unladylike gear, head on over to our shop because we’ve got some brand new TIE DYE sweatshirts and key chains. I know we’re biased, but they’re cute y’all!

Caroline: Plus, you can sign up for our newsletter to get actually good news about women in the world delivered to your inbox every Wednesday.

Cristen: Unladylike is produced by Nora Ritchie and Sam Lee. Abigail Keel is our senior producer. Gianna Palmer is our story editor. Shruti Marathe transcribes our tape. Our music is by Flamingo Shadow, Amit May Cohen and Sarah Tudzin. Mixing, sound design, and additional music is by Casey Holford. Our executive producers are Chris Bannon and Daisy Rosario.

Caroline: Special thanks to Andi Kristinsdottir, Jared O’Connell, Tracy Samuelson, and Bill Walker at MCS Recording in Toronto.

Cristen: We are your hosts, Cristen Conger

Caroline: And Caroline Ervin. Next week:

Jessica: I actually see like I still feel a lot of pressure of like don't wear something more than once. Like OOTD, like you still have to keep up with what's trendy. And right now that is like X, Y and Z. And then in six months, it could be something totally different. But you still have to keep up. Like, I almost feel like the pressure is to pretend it's not a problem and think about, like how you stay current and ignore that it's like just building up in a landfill somewhere.

Caroline: We’re talking fast fashion, because fashion is not frivolous y'all. In fact, our fashion choices- might even save the planet!!

Cristen: Make sure you’re subscribed to Unladylike so you don’t miss this episode. Find us in stitcher, spotify, apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Caroline: And remember, got a problem?

Cristen: Get unladylike.