Woman doesn’t change last name after marriage—the passport office forces her to use it anyway: ‘Report them’

In most Western cultures, if you're a woman marrying a man, most people would likely assume by default that you'd take his last name.

The tradition dates back centuries in England, during a time when this practice was demanded by patriarchal coverture laws.

Nowadays, however, women have the choice of either replacing their last name with their husband's, hyphenating it with his, or just keeping the last name they were born with.

Many choose the latter for different reasons. Either to keep their identity, because they don't want to deal with the legal process of changing it, or they just don't see it as necessary or important.

According to one woman on TikTok, however, the assumption that a woman would take her husband's last name after marriage is deeply ingrained in government agencies as well.

In a recent video that got over 141,300 views, TikTok creator CapnCrunchLuvr (@thisizmyfinsta) recounts what recently happened to her at a passport office.

What went wrong at the passport office?

The TikToker says she went to apply for a new passport and filled out the required paperwork.

Then an employee told her something was wrong.

“They were like, ‘Your paperwork is wrong,'” she says. “And I was like, ‘What? Like, how is it wrong? Just point out the part that I did wrong and I'll fix it.'”

The employee allegedly pointed to the section asking applicants to list every name they had previously gone by.

“They were like, ‘This section right here, you were supposed to write down every name you've ever gone by before, and you missed one,'” she says. “And I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh. Like, let me look at it again.'”

She couldn't figure out what she had missed.

“I have written down every name I've ever used, gone by, like, legally or otherwise,” she says. “And they were like, ‘No, you're missing one.'

Then she realized what the employee meant.

“I was like, ‘Are you talking about my husband's last name?'” she says. “And they were. And I gave them the name, and they were like, ‘Yep, that's it. You need to write that down.'”

The problem, according to the TikToker, was that she had never used her husband's last name.

“That's not my last name,” she says. “I have never gone by that legally. I don't plan on changing my last name ever.”

She says she hadn't used it informally either.

“I've never even typed that last name with my first name on a Marshall's website or anything,” she says.

The employee allegedly gave her a legal explanation.

“They were like, ‘Well, you guys are married, so technically it's a name you go by,'” she says.

She says she had to write down a name she's never used

That response stunned her.

“I'm sorry, I didn't realize the government dictated whether a woman had to change their last name or not,” she says. “Like, that's actually crazy, right?”

The TikToker says she deliberately chose not to change her name after getting married.

“If you don't go and change your last name in the court system and make it legal and put it on your ID and your Social Security and your passport, to me, you're not going by that name,” she says.

She didn't understand why her husband's surname should count as one of her previous names.

“The government shouldn't be telling you that that is a last name that you should have,” she says. “That's just, like, blowing my mind.”

In the end, she says she put the surname on the application anyway.

“So I had to literally write down and lie, 'cause that's a lie,” she says. “I've never used that last name and I never will.”

She says she entered it as a previous name despite disagreeing with the employee's reasoning.

“I had to literally write down a lie because they saw it as truth and write my husband's last name as my own on my freaking passport application,” she says. “That's crazy.”

Viewers can't believe this happened

Commenters said the employee had gotten it wrong.

“If you never changed your last name through the act of marriage, there is nothing to write down,” one commenter wrote. “Many couples do not change their last name because of marriage. The person was wrong.- signed a passport agent.”

“This is some Handmaids Tale [expletive],” another said, referencing the popular dystopian television series.

One viewer said she would have escalated the situation.

“Oh no, the way I would request a supervisor. I don't usually pull that card, but that's just not okay,” she wrote.

Another commenter shared her own frustrating experience with changing a married name after divorce.

“After my divorce (from an abusive man, that took 2.5 years) I had to petition a judge to get my last name back,” they wrote. “Because it wasn't declared that I would drop his last name in the final divorce decree.”

Have other married women reported the same issue?

Yes. Stories like this have appeared in the media for decades.

In 1997, The Spokesman-Review described an almost identical incident that happened more than 20 years earlier inside a federal building in San Diego.

A woman who had kept her last name after marriage reported applying for a new passport, but the clerk insisted the information she filled out was incorrect because it didn't include her husband's last name.

According to the report, the woman eventually reached a compromise that allowed her to apply under her own name after signing a statement saying she would never present herself using her husband's surname.

Women are still reporting similar frustrations online. On Reddit, one user said that not taking her husband's last name shocked her family. She says institutions also keep getting it wrong.

“To this day institutions keep changing my legal name without my permission and I have to go in and remind them what my name is,” they wrote on r/WitchesVsPatriarchy.

@thisizmyfinsta

Subplot News has reached out to the TikToker via direct messages for comment.

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