why is she Melinda French Gates now? it’s not like anyone would suddenly not recognize the name Melinda Gates. Her name was on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Going by Melinda French Gates seems like something one would do if there was already another Melinda Gates, and one needed to differentiate from them.
Maybe she just wants to user her previous surname more now that she’s divorced?
No, the vast majority of people who change their last name to their partners’ drop their middle name and replace it with their maiden last name. That’s what my wife did, as well as 95% of the people I know who have done this. This is totally average and not actually the thing you’re trying to make it out to be.
Or if she wanted you to remember who she was (gates) and somehow start to separate herself and distance herself from her former husband.
Many divorced women choose to hyphenate to make a transition of sorts without losing a major part of their identity
as i said in another comment:
wouldn’t that be Melinda French-Gates?
in the article (and others about this), her name isn’t hyphenated, and when only referred to by her last name, it’s just “Gates”
Gates said that she has voted for both Republicans and Democrats in past elections.
Probably to bring French to the forefront after divorcing Bill.
Better question would be why she kept Gates but that’s probably for recognition purposes, I’d guess.
That and changing your name is actually pretty annoying, and it only gets more annoying when you have a lot of assets with a particular legal name tied to them.
She has lawyers and accountants that will do a lot of the heavy lifting, but it’s still an obnoxious pain the butt.
It’s pretty common to see people change their name when they get married, but come divorce time say “nah, fuck that, I’m not doing that shit again.”
