Hi there, I am getting married tomorrow. My wife has a long japanese surname (10 roman latters) and I have a long surname (9 letters). I told her that she can keep her surname if she wants but she was very uncertain, so we decided to handle it with rock paper sciccors game. I won and she is going to get my surname and will throw away the old one. We do not have a plan for having kids soon but once we do she will get her old surname back so we can protect the child from bullying in school.
Has anyone of you married to a japanese who throw away her maiden name and got your surname? Did she experience anything uncomfortable? Thanks in advance.
14 comments
How kind of you to allow your wife to keep her name. 🙄
Maybe. And this is crazy talk. Maybe just keep your names?? And don’t change them unless someone is absolutely set on it? Because it’s a huge hassle. And once she’s changed her name, I don’t think you will have this simple “We’ll just change her name back when we have a kid lolz”.
Having a shared last name doesn’t make one more or less of a family. And in Japan and many other countries the burden is on the woman to change, rather than a more even split.
What an odd post. I don’t think I have ever heard of your expression “throwing away” a name, be it the husband or wife. And deciding by paper rock scissors. Wow. And asking on Reddit the night before the big day.
Are you sure you are really ready for marriage?
However, I do agree with the another post – swapping names back and forth is unlikely to be a sensible plan.
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Why would she take your name if she plans on taking her old name back anyway? Also bullying? What is this, the 60s?
Damn… two stupid people found each other again… playing janken to „throw away“ names and take them back later.
But okay, congrats and…
I will still help somewhat… as she is Japanese and you are not, she can‘t take your name. She needs to change hers and it has basically nothing to do with you. You will be a foot note in her Koseki with your own name, mist likely below the family dog if she has one 😉
Kids will always have the Japanese nationals name as they end up in their koseki as real person (not foot note).
Your wife can only change her name back by going to the family court and needs to file a case with some reasoning. She can change during marriage registration easily though. Otherwise at family court divorce might be a good reason too. But it might be not possible to change back later because your children are being hated against. But might also be approved. Don‘t know.
Better leave everything as it is for now and research more.
>so we decided to handle it with rock paper sciccors game.
Dumb.
>will throw away the old one.
Yup, just chuck that old name into the trash can. Dump it all in there.
>We do not have a plan for having kids soon but once we do she will get her old surname back
Dumber. Why go through the hassle of changing her name in the first place if you’re just going to change it back? Don’t answer because that was a rhetorical question and there’s no answer you can give that wouldn’t be dumb.
>so we can protect the child from bullying in school.
Oh yeah that’ll do it, for sure.
My wife changed her last name to mine. She still uses her Japanese name for work though.
It isn’t necessary, buy you could always register one name or the other as a legal alias.
Both of your lives will be easier if you just take her Japanese name.
My wife (Japanese) adopted my English surname when we got married. I didn’t mind either way. Our kids use it. Everything is fine.
Who cares about the length of her name in Roman letters? In Japanese she has nice compact kanji, unlike your probably longer katakana.
Kids are not going to be protected from hypothetical bullying by having Japanese names. They will most likely look different. Also, it’s not like half/foreign kids are automatically bullied and Japanese are not. Kids of all types get bullied all over the world because they are tall, short, fat, wear glasses, too smart, shy, have weird parents 😉 etc.
Don’t think that having a Japanese surname would protect anyone, is more about how the kids will look and behave that actually says if they will be target of bullying
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My Japanese wife first kept her surname when we got married and I kept mine. Prior to our child’s birth however, she changed her Japanese surname to my foreign name (family count) so that our son would have the same name in Japan and my home country. She has never experienced any problems carrying my surname and sometimes uses her old surname for convenience (for example when making a phone reservation at a restaurant and such). Also, my son has never been bullied or anything like that because of his name. Don’t overthink this issue.
My wife took my family name and she’s so proud to carry it. Makes me so happy.
My son has it and it’s definitely crossed my mind that he might be bullied for it one day.
Even for Japan that seems pretty wild though. Even the most racist dick heads back in my school in the UK didn’t give a shit about names.