Today in awesome: Zoe Saldana’s husband took her last name
Guardians of the Galaxy actress and new mom Zoe Saldana is known for maintaining her privacy while in the spotlight. But she did share a piece of her marriage during an InStyle magazine interview and we are so excited to learn this Saldana family nugget. Are you ready for it? When she and husband Marco got married two years ago, he took her last name!
Women’s names are still an endless topic of debate, as a growing number of women opt to keep their own last names upon marriage. But men’s last names aren’t open to the same kind of discussion, with most people assuming that if a last name is to change upon marriage, it will be the woman’s. What’s more, for men who do change their names there’s often a lot of push back — while a woman’s name can be changed without question, a man changing his name seems to strike a chord among many. That’s a concern Zoe shared with Marco before he made the switch.
“I tried to talk him out of it,” she says in the interview. “I told him, ‘If you use my name, you’re going to be emasculated by your community of artists, by your Latin community of men, by the world.’ But Marco looks up at me and says, ‘Ah, Zoe, I don’t give a s–t.’”
He’s not the only husband making a name change. Jay-Z may have hyphenated his last name along with Beyoncé when they tied the knot (the jury seems to be out on whether he did so legally), and way back when John Lennon made his middle name Ono in honor of Yoko. Jack White’s last name was also the result of taking his wife’s name upon marriage back in 1996 when he got hitched with White Stripes’ Meg White.
But the practice of a man taking his wife’s surname is still far from common. We love that Zoe and Marco decided to do what’s right for their family, rather than bowing to tradition out of a sense of obligation. And let’s be real: Marco Perego Saldana is one of the coolest names ever!
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