I recently added my husband's name to my Reader's Digest subscription. I sent in my renewal under Leah Christensen & Walker Bennett. Walker has requested that our names fall in that order, as he has been married enough times, that the whole "head of house" pecking order of names doesn't freaking matter.
Anyway, I filled in the forms as such, and we received our first magazine today.
The label read as follows.
L C & W Bennett.
What the bloody hell? I have a last name TOO!!!! I did not ask them to change "my name" just to ADD another name to the subscription. If they dind't ahve room for the names as I wrote them, they could have written L Christensen & W Bennett, or even Christensen & Bennett, as noted on the return address labels that Walker and I designed TOGETHER.
When I pay the bill, I plan on including a note inside requesting that both names be on the label.
This may seem trivial to some people, but we promised eachother when we got married that both of our names were going to be used (why do you think I turned my subscription to OUR subscription in the FIRST PLACE? Because that's how WE want it!), and that no one's name would be swallowed up by the other.
I'll let y'all know what happens.
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Comments: 46
Usually they put my husbands name first.
For example about 2 years ago I was shopping around for new auto insurance.
I did all the leg work and when I filled out everything it was my name first.
Got our new policy and low and behold it came to my husband with my name as kind of an after thought.
Mariana, that happened to Walker at Bank of America, when he went to deposit some money into my account.
"Thank you very much, Mr. Christensen!"
After all the thousands of years that women have had to be called Mrs. Hisname (the ones that choose not to be called that and were forced to be that BEFORE they had the choice to be called what they want) it felt kinda good to hear.
On the other hand, I would certainly never expect him to roll over and turn into me, so we just laughed it off, and made sure that the bank knew that Mr. Bennett would occasionally deposit money into Ms. (NOT Mrs. but Ms.) Christensen's account.
Hope you get it straitened out.
Mrs. R R.
A lot of people have two-word names (Billy Bob, Betty Sue, etc.) so if they are that worried they can put Leah Christensen under first name and Walker Bennett under last name.
If this company can only handle traditional North American names, they are olverlooking a really large part of the population who might be interested in reading their magazine.
I understand you like them, but they are less than together mentally at that place.
I LOVE READER'S DIGEST!!! RD has got to be my favourite magazine ever written, Canadian, American, or otherwise. This is the Canadian one I'm dealing with.
The bottom line here is that NO ONE has the right to change my name, or anyone else's. If I wanted to subscribe under L C & W Bennett, I would have, but I didn't.
Walker said he was rather pi$$ed when he found it in the mailbox, and read that.
Seems that people aren't "mentally together" in a lot of places. This is one of the reasons why I prefer to live on a low income, and make money independently. By doing it myself, I don't run the risk of having to deal with an inferior mind in a superior position. LOL
I assure you, it is NOT because of magazine copany employees not being "mentally together." I have 8 years of college and like to think I am "together"........I took pride in my work at the magazine company.....the people are only doing what the company has told them and to follow specific rules.
Nora. The nice thing about this issue, is that nothing is really on the line here, and it won't cost me money to make a point of this one. Maybe I can get a message across to the magazine companies in order to stop this unfair practice.
YOU were mentally together, I'm sure. It's the people who make these rules that have the problems.
Yeah Dorine, I'm going to keep at 'em. Maybe I can change the system. It won't be the first time I've changed a piece of someone's system for the sake of equality.
The subscription was up, and I had to renew it anyway, so I thought "why not?" It's not something i was just going to do "for the heck of it." They sent me something to fill in for renewals, and I filled it out.
Even if I had wanted to change my name in a more "traditional sense" as opposed to just "adding another name to the renewal form," it is still their duty to put on the label what I wrote clearly on the form.
I do have a question for you. I do calligraphy as part of my freelance artwork and when I am addressing an envelope for a wedding and the married people have two names it doesn't fit into any of the conventions that all the etiquette guidelines. So how would you like to see your names listed on a wedding invitation. Would this be acceptable:
Mr. Man's Name
Ms. Woman's Name
address
city, state zip
If your had different last names, but used the married Mrs., how would I address it to you?
(usually it is Mr. and Mrs. Man's first and last name) so would this work:
Mr. Man's Name
Mrs. Woman's Name
address
etc...
I have started running into this more and I don't want to be rude to anyone who chooses to keep their maiden name, so just wanted to ask. I guess the reason the two options above seem weird to me is that when you do the two names on separate lines it usually denotes that they are dating but not married. But, if I include both married last names there isn't enough room on the first line for all the lettering (unless the envelope is HUGE!) Anyway, thanks for letting me ask!
OH, I ran into another thing I wanted to ask when I was addressing my Christmas cards. I wanted to address each to the entire family so I was doing like:
The Cole Family
etc....
If you have kids and I wanted to address it to your family would this be acceptable:
The Bennet-Christensen Family
(of vice versa with the names swapped)
Which last name do the kids take? Do they hyphenate?
Yes, I am full of questions but mostly because I run into it alot when addressing invitations and such for people!
He actually offered to change his name to Christensen. I explained to him that I did not fall in love with Walker Christensen, that I fell in love with Walker Bennett.
I LOVE seeing our address labels that say Christensen & Bennett (just like that!). It's not the fact that we have the same name that shows that we are united, it's that little "&" in between them. There are millions of Christensens in the world, and millions of Bennetts, but how many "Christensen & Bennett's?" THAT'S pretty damned awsome!!!!!!!
You have it pretty well figured out.
Mr. Hisname
Mrs. Hername
Mrs. Hername
Mr. Hisname
(same with Ms. in place of Mrs. where it's prefered)
As for families, good question.
Were Walker and I to have children, we'd likely do something untraditional like hyphenate, or give them my name, since Walker has lots of children with his name already.
"Family" names can include
Leah Christensen & Walker Bennett
Children are Bennett
Children are Christensen
Children are Christensen-Bennett, or Bennett-Christensen
Girls are Christensens, boys are Bennetts....
Solutions are
The Christensen-Bennett Family
The Bennett-Christensen Family
(& in place of the hyphen if no one hyphenates)
I tried to publish an article, but Gather goofed it up on me and I disappeared, so I put it into the comment thread of this article, since I knew that wasn't going anywhere. I wanted to do a separate article on this, but the Gather Gremlin wouldn't let me.
You're lucky you even got to keep your maiden name. When I remarried here in AR 7 years ago, there was NO option to the last name. A couple of weeks later I stopped in at the courthouse and asked, "what the heck is my last name?" They looked at me like I was stupid, pulled the record and said, "Chaney", which of course, was my new hubby's name. It was just assumed. Arrrghhhh! I didn't argue about it, just left it, but in a way made me angry, as I did think about hyphenating it because I'd been married to my late hubby for 30 years.
Leah, Thanks for playing my 35 comments contest on 2/18/09 HERE IS COMMENT #17.