Jay Mohr

It made headlines last week when TV star Jay Mohr filed a petition to legally add his wife’s surname to his own.  According to reports, his new full name will be Jon (Jay) Ferguson Cox Mohr.

We’ll all chuckle about some of the comments being made:

E! Online says: Jay is unwittingly looking to add Mohr laughs to his life.

TMZ’s post titled No Mohr Cox for Jay filed under Wacky & Weird says: In mildly emasculating yet quite hysterical court papers, Jay Mohr is asking to have his wife’s last name legally added to his own. Jay Mohr will now forever be known as Jon Ferguson Cox Mohr.  Usually people add the new name to the end, but then he would have been Mohr Cox — and, well … that would just be wrong.

But seriously, it’s a great thing to do! Countless real guys are modifying their surnames after marriage these days– and my husband is one of them.  When we got married in 1998, I knew that I didn’t want to take just his last name, but wasn’t sure what else to do.  I loved the idea of combining names– like Long and Smith become Longsmith– but with Utt and Grubb we weren’t left with many options.  Grutt was NOT going to cut it!  To make a long story short, I initially took his name but later hyphenated to become Utt-Grubb after our first little boy was born.  I had come to the conclusion that– good, bad or ugly– Utt-Grubb is who we are.  My husband and I agreed that we should hyphenate our little boy’s last name too, and by the time our second little boy was born my husband had decided to take the hyphenated name himself.  He said that when he talked to our boys about equality and marriage being a partnership, he wanted those values reflected in his actions.  I was impressed.

Some close friends of ours both decided to use the woman’s maiden name as a middle name– just like Jay Cox Mohr– except they gave up their old middle names in the process.

I’ve talked to many more nontraditional men throughout the course of research for my Name Survey and my family naming consulting, including some who drop their “maiden names” altogether.  Just last summer, Mike Buday made national headlines after suing the State of California for the right to take his wife’s last name.  He won the case with the help of the ACLU, and California even changed the format of their marriage license application forms to allow other men to follow suit.

Thoughts?