New Conservativism

When Highflyer and I got married, he took on my surname. This is still rather unusual in Austria, where the norm is for women to either take on their husband's name or to use both hers and his, hyphenated, while the man typically just keeps his name. Elder couples in particular sometimes decide to keep their individual names ("Italian style") when they get married and this is what I had assumed we would do as well as I never intended to give up my maiden name and the double-barrelled version would not have sounded great. My better half, however, decided to go through the hassle of changing all his documents (and in his case, this involved a lot more documents that had to be changed immediately after the wedding, like his pilot's licence, for example) and I really appreciated this gesture, as did my parents. It also kind of placated my Mum, who was upset that we didn't have a church wedding.

Recently, I found out that two ex-colleagues in their 30s are getting married and when asked what they would be called afterwards one said that she would take on her husband's name even though she thought hers sounded better and the other said she would use both. I didn't comment on that, but both asked me "what did you end up doing?" and when I told them that I kept mine and that Highflyer changed his, they both said they had actually not thought of or ever discussed this version, with one of them adding "well, I might have given in too easily, that would have been great, actually." I had a similar discussion with a colleague who got married a month after me when I congratulated her on her marriage and remarked that it was a funny coincidence that her new surname was so similar to her old one and thus easy to remember for people at work. She returned the congratulations and asked me what she should call me now. When I told her it was even easier because I had kept my surname, she added "Oh, but we wanted to have the same name, so I took on his." When I replied "well, so did we, my husband took my name" she also said that this idea had not even occurred to her.

I was surprised that they all found this concept so "wild" and even though they are almost 20 years younger than me, these young women seemed much more conservative and traditional in their views. Upbringing? A millennial thing? Interesting, in any case.