SHE Asked Podcast
Welcome to The SHE Asked Podcast with Anna McBride—a space where the stories we tell ourselves are challenged, reimagined, and rewritten to unlock personal transformation.
Hosted by former therapist, storyteller, and lifelong seeker Anna McBride, this podcast dives deep into the power of narrative. Through personal stories and intimate conversations with guests, we explore how shifting our internal dialogue can change not just how we see our lives—but how we live them.
Each episode offers what Anna calls “practical hope”—real tools, lived experience, and emotional honesty for anyone feeling stuck, lost, or ready for change. Whether you’re navigating divorce, grief, reinvention, or simply trying to understand your past, The SHE Asked Podcast invites you to become the author of your own story—and the hero in it, too.
Follow along for weekly episodes filled with compassion, perspective, and the courage to ask yourself:
What story am I telling—and is it still serving me?
SHE Asked Podcast
What's In A Name: Reclaiming My Identity
This week on The SHE Asked Podcast, I’m opening up about something deeply personal and transformative: my journey to reclaim my maiden name after divorce.
After 36 years of carrying my married name, I’m making a return to my original identity. In this episode, I explore the emotional, legal, and spiritual layers of changing your name and what it means for your sense of self, your family, and your future.
Whether you're navigating identity shifts, big transitions, or reclaiming parts of yourself you’ve left behind, this episode is for you.
Interested in working with me 1-on-1?
Inquire at annamcbride.com
Hi everyone, it's Anna McBride. Welcome back to she Asked Podcast tools for practical hope. This show explores topics of growth, healing and recovery, offering tips and guidelines to help you along your personal journey. Today, I'll be sharing with you my journey that's very pressing and transformative at this time, as I am literally in transition back to my maiden name. What's in a name? How does your name shape your identity? Even numerology accounts for our name. What does your nickname mean? What does the family mean? What does your nickname mean? What does the family name mean? All of these are things that we'll be talking about today in this show about changing your name.
Speaker 1:I want to start with telling you about my family. I grew up one of seven girls, a family of 11, with an immigrant mother and father, and in our family, the family name was very important. I had four brothers, and they, of course, keep their name when they get married, but when it came to the girls and we were older, there was this thing about do you change your name to your husband's name or do you keep it. So I had two older sisters and they opted to change their name to their husband's name, taking his surname, and then they kept the family name as a part of it, almost either hyphenated in one case and the other case became middle name. And I was the third one married in my family and I thought about it and I thought about it and I struggled with it and I decided to keep my family name as a part of my changed name. First I thought about hyphenating it, which I did, and that got complicated because putting our two names together was a mouthful, and then I decided to take out the hyphen and make it my middle name. So from there on my married name was Anna McBride and then my married name, and for 36 years plus I've carried that name.
Speaker 1:And here's what happens when you get married you become your husband's last name. I don't know how you feel about that, but that's been my experience. I was known as being attached to my husband and everything that went along with that. We had three children. Of course they had his last name and I argued with him and got two of our children to take my maiden name as their middle name, and that was quite a struggle, but I fought for that. That being said, who was I? I was slowly, slowly and surely losing my identity as Anna McBride.
Speaker 1:Well, three years ago, I divorced, we divorced, and since then I have been working on myself to prepare, to get ready to change your name. Because here's the thing your name is attached to everything your social security, your license, your passport, your bank accounts, your tax filings and that's just five things. There's a lot of legal things that need to be attended to when you change your name and I began the process of figuring out how do you go about changing your name and in what order, because some things have to come ahead of other things, and this took me on a bit of a journey recently. As I mentioned, my mother was an immigrant and we had dual citizenship with her country and I had to go to the embassy of her country to get documentation of my birth and my citizenship and her citizenship and the passport in order to change my name. It was a process Took me to DC last week and why did I wait to last week, since I've been divorced for three years? There were other things I had to attend to. There were tax filings, there was other financial things. I had to get settled from our divorce in order for me to be legally allowed to do it, and that just got completed last month. So I have been working on this.
Speaker 1:It seems like forever, and yet it's been a real important thing for me to reclaim who I am, who I was before I got married, who I want to become after that marriage is over and who I want to retain from that life for sake of our children and the connections that we had. These are incredible questions. I know that what is in a name? That's a big question for me because I have friends and family that said why change your name? It's such a pain in the ass, why do it? And then I thought about it and I thought I want to be who I've always been, which is Anna. I've always been Anna McBride. To my children I've always been mom, and to my sisters I've always been Anna. My siblings, we've always shared the same last name, mcbride. And so this process of changing back to reclaim who I am and who I want to remain being, or reclaim and become this is a very emotional process. It's hard to describe just how emotional it is. It's hard to describe just how emotional it is because part of it is a bit of letting go and a part of it is a remembering who I was before I let myself get lost. So this process of changing my name has allowed me to come back, and it's interesting. I'm feeling emotional right now because it's meaningful.
Speaker 1:Names have meaning. As I mentioned earlier, numerology even accounts for our name. Every letter in your name has a numeric value. According to numerology, add all the numeric values up and it adds up to one digit. For me, it's the number six.
Speaker 1:I have learned that what it means is that I'm meant to be a healer. It means that I'm grounded in wisdom. It means that I am at the center of a family formation and I happen to be the middle child. So how did numerology know that? I think that's very interesting and maybe some people might think it's contrived. However, I find it very compelling because I've always felt like my role in my family was to be the center, to be the grounding force, and in my married family I did the same thing. I was of service early in my life and I continue to be that way. And the name Anna also happens to mean grace and I've always felt like I've been guided by a sense of grace. I've been afforded grace in my life and I think the grace is what's bringing me back home to myself, think the grace is what's bringing me back home to myself, and I think it's interesting that this process is also bringing me closer to my siblings that, based on our upbringing, we've got a bit of estrangement going on because of the dysfunction that we grew up in, and now we're finding our way back to each other, connecting, staying connected, and all because we share the same last name. We share a lot of history together, and so names have a way of bringing us back to ourselves, back to our centers and our cores. That's why getting back to my original self and my original name really matters to me. Now the process is still ongoing for me. I have a bit more steps to do that are mostly dictated by offices being opened or closed or available, and that will be coming. But I want to talk right now a little bit about the history of name changing, because I think that will give us some context of name changing, because I think that will give us some context.
Speaker 1:So women have been taking their husband's name upon marriage, and that's for centuries, if not from the beginning of time, and that's kind of rooted in common English law. This tradition, which has its roots back to the ninth century led to women losing their maiden names and becoming legally considered under their husband's name at the time of marriage. Now, while the practice was common and often legally mandated, in the 1970s we saw a push towards women's rights and more flexibility in name choices, leading to a gradual shift in legal and social norms In America, for example. In the United States, the tradition of women adopting their husband's surname remains prevalent. According to the 2023 Pew Research Center survey, 79% of women in opposite-sex marriages took their husband's last name. 79%. 14% retained their maiden name and only 5% opted for a hyphenation. Demographic factors influence this. You know. Younger women ages 18 to 49, are more inclined to keep their maiden names. Now I happen to have gotten married at 21, so I could have kept my maiden name according to this trend, but I was trending separately with my family. Now, education plays a role in this 26% of women with postgraduate degrees tend to retain their maiden names, versus 13% with a bachelor's degree. And a political affiliation also affects, with democratic or democratic-leaning women twice as likely than their Republican counterparts to keep their maiden names.
Speaker 1:How about globally? Here's some interesting trends. Japan legally mandates a shared surname for married couples. How progressive, with 96% of women adopting their husband's name. Quebec, canada. Since 1981, women are legally required to retain their maiden names after marriage. Go Canada. Greece enacted a law in 1983 mandating women to keep their maiden names post-marriage. Love the Greeks. France, belgium and the Netherlands. Traditionally, women retain their maiden names, with legal systems supporting this practice. Very strong women there. Korea and Malaysia. Cultural norms dictate that women keep their maiden names after marriage. Some incredible trends that we could probably learn from in the United States.
Speaker 1:It's one thing to get divorced, it's another thing to change your name. And what I didn't consider were all the conversations I had to have and all the opinions I had to hear, people who wanted to just make sure I knew what I was doing. And those opinions still continue. But the important conversation that I wanted to have was with my children, whose last name I was changing my name away from, so we weren't going to share the same last name. That wasn't a difficult conversation to have with them. It just was an emotional one. In fact, one of my daughters wanted to change her name to match mine. That's how much she wanted to identify with me. And these are important conversations to have with your loved ones so that you can be at peace with your decision, which is why it's taken me so long to get here Now.
Speaker 1:All the opinions that I receive and continue to receive about whether it's the right thing or the wrong thing to change my name away from the one I've had legally for 40 years. Here's what I have to say about that. I didn't ask them. I didn't ask them. It's a hard enough decision to arrive at on my own. People who love me I would expect to just support me in my decisions. If it's right for me, it's the right thing, particularly if I'm at peace with it and my children are at peace with it and my happiness matters. I offer that to you as a reminder that change is always difficult, particularly for the people who aren't going to be pleased with your decisions. And yet the one person that you need to please the most is yourself. In the end, that's the only opinion that really matters is yours.
Speaker 1:Now, what about reverting after separation? Right, changing your name back. It's common for women to resume their birth names after separation, like I'm doing In the United States. This process typically involves a legal name change, which can be addressed during divorce proceedings. Legal name change which can be addressed during divorce proceedings. Changing your name when you get married is probably the easiest paperwork to file. Changing your name back to your maiden name post-divorce is a hassle. There's a lot to go through. My situation isn't unique and I have had conversations with many women that have had to do the same. It is interesting to me that no one ever mentioned this to me when I was getting married.
Speaker 1:To think about that what about your career, about your life, about your identity? It was just assumed that I was going to just become a we and share the name of my husband, and I didn't understand or appreciate what that meant to my self-esteem, to my professional career, to all the opportunities that I had hopes and dreams of when I was younger. It just complicates it younger. It just complicates it. I'm not suggesting that anyone needs to hold on to their maiden name if they want to change the name to their husband. I just think you ought to consider what it means and what it might do. I have a lot of friends who have professional careers in areas that either politics or celebrity, or in front of the camera, behind the camera, doing things in that capacity, that chose to keep their maiden name for consistency because they began their career early in life and they got married a little bit after that. I, on the other hand, didn't launch my career till well after I got married. I have sisters who use their maiden name for professional purposes and yet their legal name still has their husband's name in it, so it's possible to do that too.
Speaker 1:Luckily, in today's day and age, it is not so difficult to represent yourself from your origin. Yet, legally, it's important that you define it all the way through. In my case, to be very specific, it was important to me to change my name back post-divorce because, as you move forward in your life, I wanted to be known for who I always have been Anna McBride. That's how I came into this world and that's how I want to leave it. Women keeping their name.
Speaker 1:It's a very personal decision and one that I hope that from this podcast, you've learned that it's important to just know that you have options. You don't have to go with norms, you don't have to go with any type of social trend. You don't even have to go with what your family has always done. I would just really offer to any woman out there to consider what is right for you and go with that. So you have options. You have things to consider what is right for you and go with that. So you have options, you have things to consider and it's really a very personal process. It's been a pleasure serving and sharing with you my experience, strength and hope to help you along your personal journey about your name, the meaning of it, the role it plays in your life and how to reclaim where you came from post-divorce. This is the she Asked Podcast. I am Anna McBride and until next time, be well.