Yep- that's a big pet pevee of mine too

So read this

Are you back?

I never married. I never will. I could have gotten married a couple of times, but I'm totally a candidate for runaway bride status.

So my name has always been my name. And it always will be (unless I meet a dashing Cary grant type whose last name happens to be Bennett. Then I *might* consider changing my name just so I could be Lizzie Bennett. Same is true if the dude's last name is Darcy.)

But the Kid has his dad's last name. 14 years and $40k in unpaid child support later, and I regret that decision. But wevs. It's the Kid's name now.

But I have never been Mrs. Kid'slastname. And i live in an urban, progressive, West Coast city. There are lots of unmarried people with kids or divorced/remarried people with kids. Enough that no one should automatically assume that kids and parents share the same name. I know only a couple of kids that have the same last names as their moms, and at least 2 of those kids have moms with hyphenated names.

So it pisses me off to nooooooo end when people call me Mrs. Kid'slastname. Especially school people, who are sitting there with my name right in front of them, either in an email or on a form. Kid had a counselor last year who flat out refused to get my name right, and was so pissed off when I got mad about it that he called me Ms. Notexactlyyourlastnamebutcloseenough after that.

It is disrespect to refuse to knowledge someone's proper name, whether it's a woman with a different name from her kids or a person with a hard to pronounce (foreign) name or a person transitioning from one gender to another. A name is important. Things don't exist to us until we name them and refusing to use someone's name is a way of wiping out their existence.