MARRIAGE
“Ladies, why do you want to take your husband’s last name?”
Most of my non-Tica friends and clients are usually split. If a woman is the last of her line, for example, or if she’s the first lawyer or doctor in the family, I can understand why she’d want to keep her family name.
But those who want to take their husband’s last name usually do it for convenience, especially if it’s the only legal recourse, or as a sign of commitment. It doesn’t mean she’s subservient to her husband or giving up her family heritage.
In Costa Rica, women don’t change their last names to match their husbands’.
In fact, our naming conventions are different in that we get two family names when we’re born: our father’s surname becomes our first, and our mother’s surname becomes our second.
So before you try to figure out how you feel about things like this, you need to do a little research first on the naming conventions that your partner follows, especially if they came from a country with different culture and traditions.
