Example, Mr. and Mrs. John Smith
I hate this for the obvious reasons but it’s especially annoying to me because my wife didn’t take my surname!
annoying to me because my wife didn’t take my surname!
You think that’s annoying? My wife and I aren’t even married.
I mean we call each other husband and wife but we don’t believe is shackling ourselves to one another, even for tax purposes, and we find the ease of permanent separation keeps our relationship fresh, and has for 35 years.
We used to get mail addressed to our house as Mr. and Mrs. <my name> or <her name> and we quickly realized why: it’s just advertisers collecting my name or her name, gender and the fact that we’re married (not legally but we say we are). Absent the name of the spouse, they assume a man would bear his own name and a woman the name of her husband.
Obviously it can’t be anything other than fucking advertisers since we’re not legally married: city or state agencies wanting to send us mail know exactly what both our names and marital status are and use them correctly.
The easy solution is to not provide real data to data brokers whenever possible. We now use fake names, and we also track which names we provide to whom because it’s interesting to see how they bounce back at us.
For example, is she uses the name Elizabeth Corona-Smith to, say, book an appointment at the hairdresser, and I get mail addressed to Mr. Corona-Smith with advertisement inside for arthritis products, I know the online service her hairdresser uses to book appointments sold her data, and the hairdresser filled in her approximate age to add to the data they sold.
With that knowledge, next next time she goes to town, she can give an earful to the hairdresser and tell them she’ll never patronize them ever again.
It’s happened several times. It’s really interesting to see how your information gets sold when you use fake information.
Wouldn’t you be common-law after 35 years?
We make sure it’s very difficult to prove, especially wrt cohabitation.
Seems strange to me, but you do you!
Probably, in the US the laws vary by state though
Fair enough, my Canadian bias snuck in there.
Even if there is no one, they assume you’re married.
I remember having one sent to me in high school. It was weird. It’s just name scrappers getting every name they can.
I’ve had this a lot. I’m almost 40, live alone, and never married, but I often get stuff addressed to “Mr and Mrs solarmonkey”… as a bonus, since my dad’s generation there have been zero new men with that last name (only girls from my dad and his brothers).
I love getting junk mail addressed to my mortgage co-signer, though. He has never lived here. Sometimes they address me with his last name, which is pretty funny (it’s my step-dad, and my mom died years ago, so we really don’t have much of a relationship at this point, and definitely don’t share a last name).
I like throwing that stuff directly in the recycling. If you don’t even know who I am that makes my job really easy.
I can’t view the image for some reason, but I’ve been single my whole life, I am middle aged, and sometimes get mail for Mr and Mrs rhythmisaprancer. I don’t care so much about that, but I am more worried about the mail I get at my elderly parent’s house that I have never lived at.
Yep I get mad about this as well. Esp since my title isn’t Mrs. it’s Dr.
We always joke they should have addressed it Dr and Mr [my first name last name] but of course the real answer is they should just call people by their actual names and titles and not guess.
“Mrs. [Husbands firstname lastname]” is a pretty dated form of address. I feel like I don’t see that a lot anymore. Except in very formal situations and from people who don’t realize it’s out of style. It’s also seems to have become more acceptable to refer to all women as “Miss/Ms.” Regardless of her martial status. I sincerely doubt the address mistake was meant to be offensive.
One thing I do find infuriating is the fact that it in numerous states in the US, it is much harder for a man to take his wife’s last name when getting married than the other way around. A woman can mail a form and a copy of her marriage license to the Social Security Administration and get the DMV to reissue her driver’s license. That’s all it takes.
A man often has to get a court order which I think is very discriminatory.
Don’t fight tradition
- Social security administration
I personally think there is something to be said for sticking to the old ways but its your call.
I agree with you.
Traditions take time to evolve; and also to dissolve.
Does the court order only need to be aquired if a man wants to take his wife’s surname? What if a man just decides to change his surname to something else? What if that just so happens to be his wife’s surname?
That depends on the state but at least in my state it requires a court order for both situations.
Damn that is silly. Where I live you just go to the local municipality or similar and request it done.
Name changing upon getting married was made illegal in 1981 around here, my girlfriend gets pissed when people make the mistake and use my family name to refer to her!
Illegal, or do you just have to go through the same process as any other name change?
Personally I ditched my problematic last name gladly, but my MIL kept hers
Illegal to do as part of the wedding process but if you want to do it just like anyone else can then no problem
What a weird way to take away people’s freedoms.
I didn’t even really want my wife to take my last name, but she insisted because she’s estranged from her parents.
I can’t imagine a bureaucrat telling her she can’t change her name because they know better than she does.
Yeah I don’t think women see it as a freedom issue as much as feeling obligated to change their name does.
I told her I didn’t think she should change her name. She told me she really wanted to.
You should have the right to tell her no?
She could have done it through the regular name changing process like anyone else (which involves fees and a lot of paperwork to make sure all records are updated everywhere).
It’s just not legal to do it as part of the wedding process like it’s done in other provinces.
Oh, so it’s one of those cases of the Quebecois trying to make life shitty for Anglophone culture.
Eh… What? You realize French Canadians outside Quebec still do it and French Quebecois did it before the law changed?
Keep your racism to yourself, thanks.
Where is that?
Quebec, makes things much simpler from a record keeping perspective
Until you have kids, of course, when the parents must decide which name/combination of their names to give the child, and that combination is limited to only one hyphenation by law.
At least the mother can give her name
They do that so that legally your wife can open the advertisement. They don’t and you wanted to be a loser, you could report her for tampering with your mail. I’m not sure what the postal investigator would do. “Knock it off and call a divorce lawyer” might feature somewhere in the possibilities.
In any case they’re just pulling names off a list some where. They assume you’re married and in a typical cis relationship.
Same reason they add “or current residents” as well.
They want it read, they don’t care if it’s you or your wife or the luchador that’s randomly moved in with you.
or the luchador that’s randomly moved in with you
I knew something was different!
Those luchadors are a crafty bunch
They’re fun at parties, too. Both kids parties and adult parties.
My grandma (decades ago) always went the other way, she wrote “Mr. Sarah Smith” for my grandpa’s name. Feminist icon.
It’s especially irritating when it’s something like a wedding invitation, they should know you well enough to get it right! Often that comes down to some old fuddy-duddy’s misogyny.
Even if she had taken your surname, she still has her own first name, not John!
Yeah…. I didn’t know my friend had a different last name. I thought she put something obscure as her last name so she wouldn’t be tracked
In Norway we write “name with family” on post cards or invitations etc.
Sorry, I don’t follow. Can you share an example?
to: Dr. Jækel Hydensen with Family.
Probably not proper English but point is you refer to the “other” as the named recipient’s family
to: Dr. Jækel Hydensen and Family would be better in English.
We sometimes send things to “The Hydensen Family” but that does seem to assume that the heads of the family have the same last name.
I think it’s great! If we’re Mr and Mrs MyLastName we know they know me and assumed she was the same. If it’s Mr and Mrs HerLastName it means they know us through her, and assumed she must have gotten the name from me! It’s like putting the name of the company in the email you’re giving the email to, it tracks the source. At least that’s the game we play, because it mostly doesn’t matter to us.
It is the most correct way. Even if she didn’t take your name, and even if your not married, she is your Mrs. Not sure why this would be infuriating, it’s the language.
That’s a little sexist, don’t you think?
Absolutely not, it applies in either direction, universally. I am Mr (wife) (wife’s maiden name), this is how the language works. Why is this offensive to YOU?
That’s not how language works, that’s how culture works. Mrs and mr are referred to you, not relatively to your spouse. I am Mr John Smith, even if I’m married to Mrs Amy White. Amy is not Mrs Smith and John is not Mrs White. They are Mr Smith and Mrs White. In the usa for some reason it’s custom that the woman changes surname to that of his husband, in many other places it was like that in the past but ia not anymore
Per Debretts, it has been this way since at least the 1700s, not an “American” thing as you suggest. I’m starting to think this is just another social issue used to divide America, ie propaganda used to control people. And if it is purely preference in etiquette, what are you complaining about? The person sending the letter are allowed to exercise their etiquette preferences as well, right? Or do you also want to control people? Is this all just the fascists on the right vs the facisists on the left? This is how people like Trump rise to populisim, and how freedom and democracy die.
My wife isn’t my property
Well she did marry you so did something right
This is a question of culture, not language.
Then it should be just as ok to use the woman’s name as the man’s, right?
monicle pops out
