Does anyone specify their pronouns in email?

@sunriselover To be fair I can see some sense in this.

Sara Jones has a professional reputation built up over years.

She then marries John Smith

They agree she will take his name on marriage. Reasonable if she wants to and/or he wants her to.

But why should she lose the professional reputation she built up as Sara Jones?

Simple answer would be keep her own name all the time.

@JonUK31 Surely that is up to the individual woman to decide, though???

Obviously, Mrs F still hadn't quite settled on which felt most comfortable to her when she returned to work after her marriage.

As for Ms Jones, she has the choice to keep her name (at least professionally), switch to her husband's name or both she and her husband change their name to Smith-Jones or Jones-Smith.

It just means that you talk things through ahead of the ceremony and decide how you will deal with changing names. That way you can deal with changing names on passports, ID and whatever before jetting off on your honeymoon.

@HootyTheNightOwl It was simpler at meetings because we used first names!

@sunriselover Yeah, most companies do that unless you have a really common name where you can get 50 Daniel's working in the same company.

@HootyTheNightOwl Exactly! If a woman wants to adopt her husband's surname on marriage, that's fine. Just as a man is free to addopt his wife's surname on marriage instead. What I object to is the idea that a woman automatically takes, or is obligated to take, her husband's surname.

@Sharon It makes me wonder... if it's like this for heterosexual marriages, how do we cope with gay marriages???

I mean, these men and women also have to decide what to do with their last names, too...

These days, I do see a lot of heterosexual couples choosing to hyphenate their names so that they can use both their maiden name and their married name together. Or they choose to use their maiden name professionally and their married name in their private lives.

I like that those options exist - especially given that some of them were options that I didn't know about or think of myself.

@HootyTheNightOwl Some people seem to think that a woman is obligated to take her spouses name. Presumably, if Jane Doe married Josephine Bloggs, jane would become Jane Bloggs and Josephine would become Josephine Doe. But then, as Jane's spouse's surname was now Doe, she would have to become Jane Doe again and, for the same reason, Josephine would have to become Josephine Bloggs. Then... :)

Just pick a name, any name.

@HootyTheNightOwl I was on a team of 18 people once. We had 6 Daniels, 5 Jasons, a Sean and a Shawn.

My name is fortunately much more rare. There's like one other person at this office location of about 800 people, and even that surprised me.