Mother's maiden name?

I think it doesn't matter, just that you toe the line for what you said in the first place. My mother and her brothers and sisters split on the family name, by one letter, and apparently grandfather changed his name to seem more english than irish.. from michael to james (don't get me going).

I think many people would assume that for practical purposes a married woman's "maiden name" may as well be the name she possessed imediately before the marriage into which the relevant child was born. Or any invented name you feel inclined to use. Of course many people old enough to have a credit card have mothers who were never married. And no shame either in my opinion.

A woman's maiden name is the name she was born with, or if she was later legally adopted, it would be that name.

I reckon your mothers maiden name will be the one appearing on her birth certificate which should detail any legal name changes that have been effected.
KA ( known as) will not have any legal standing.

The reason that a bank or other card issuer asks for a client's mother's "maiden name" is to furnish the answer for a "secret question" that in theory at least can only be answered correctly by the card holder and thus used to verify his or her identity if necessary. As far as I know there is no jurisdiction in which there is a compulsion upon the client to actually provide the true maiden name of their mother. Since such information might be available to an identity thief I don't think it's particularly useful as a security safeguard. My own (UK) bank required me to formulate my own secret question and provide the answer. Suggested examples included mother's maiden name, unsurprisingly, but also first school, pets name, a character from a novel, holiday destination, etc.

It seems like more people are beginning to believe so. I have a friend who was recently married and she considered not taking her husband's surname out of rejection of the inherently patriarchal system such a practice represents. (She had her husband's full blessing on this, had she chosen to do so.) Eventually she chose to take her husband's name after she was asked why it was any less patriarchal to keep her father's surname rather than her husband's. It's a pretty tough bind.

Just because they ask the question doesn't mean you have to give them the correct one.

I have a couple of completely made up nonsensical words I use as an answer to all these security questions no matter what the question is.

Much less prone to hacking by someone digging for info such as mother's maiden name, pet names, etc.

Yeah, but if I stick to the truth I have less chance of forgetting what nonsensical word I chose, which I guess is the point, as was pointed out re 'secret question'.

Really I'm more interested in what a maiden name is, legally. There doesn't seem to be a lot of agreement in the various posts - the birth certificate is interesting, do they really change it if you get adopted? I'm not sure my mother was legally adopted anyway, or are you adopted by default if your mother marries? And what if it's all in a post war refugee camp in middle Europe?

My daughter was born X, adopted legally and her name was changed to Y. Her maiden name is now Y. That's all I know. It was a legal name change via adoption. When a woman gets married (in Canada, anyway), you can USE your married name, change all your ID, etc, but it's not a legal name change, so when or if you divorce, you don't have to do anything but change everything back into your BIRTH name which is your maiden name (unless adopted).

Hey thanks Mame, that does make sense - but just to clarify - if your daughter was to request a copy of her birth certificate from your equivalent of a Public Records Office, would it say her last name was X or Y?

see here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Married_and_maiden_names

It would be Y. Y supercedes X. Sorry, didn't see you'd responded.

That's kind of weird - I always thought birth certificates were set in stone and couldn't be changed. Certainly much family history is based on them. Rule 1 of geneal0gy never assume anything about any generation - work back from yourself and get the documents. Much time has been spent researching the wrong family tree because a researcher neglected to check their own parents birth certificates.

Agree. bfn.

Agree, bfn.

Of course, one should keep track of what one said, possibly on, er, paper.