Jennifer Lopez Says Taking Ben Affleck's Last Name Is 'Romantic': 'We're Joined Together'

Jennifer Lopez is proud to be Mrs. Affleck.

In a December cover interview with Vogue, the multi-hyphenate star said that while "people are still going to call me Jennifer Lopez," her "legal name" after her wedding to Ben Affleck this past summer "will be Mrs. Affleck because we're joined together."

"We're husband and wife. I'm proud of that. I don't think that's a problem," added Lopez, 53.

The singer and actress laughed when asked whether she'd ever want Affleck, 50, to take her last name. As she explained, "No! It's not traditional. It doesn't have any romance to it."

"It feels like it's a power move, you know what I mean?" Lopez said. "I'm very much in control of my own life and destiny and feel empowered as a woman and as a person."

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Annie Leibovitz/Vogue Jennifer Lopez on the cover of Vogue's December 2022 issue

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Lopez told Vogue that she "can understand that people have their feelings about" her name preference, "and that's okay, too."

"But if you want to know how I feel about it, I just feel like it's romantic," she said. "It still carries tradition and romance to me, and maybe I'm just that kind of girl."

The Marry Me actress also opened up about reconnecting with Affleck, whom she was first engaged to in the early 2000s before they split. They eventually got back together almost two decades later, saying "I do" in Las Vegas this past summer before celebrating their wedding with a ceremony in Georgia in front of friends and family just over a month later.

Annie Leibovitz/Vogue Jennifer Lopez for Vogue's December 2022 issue

"I always felt like there was a real love there, a true love there," Lopez said. "People in my life know that he was a very, very special person in my life. When we reconnected, those feelings for me were still very real."

And while she isn't sure she'd "recommend" the way their relationship has played out "for everybody," as "sometimes you outgrow each other, or you just grow differently," Lopez told Vogue that she and Affleck "lost each other and found each other."

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"Not to discredit anything in between that happened, because all those things were real too," she went on. "All we've ever wanted was to kind of come to a place of peace in our lives where we really felt that type of love that you feel when you're very young and wonder if you can have that again. Does it exist? Is it real? All those questions that I think everyone has."

The pair initially dated for two years, stirring up a tabloid frenzy with their relationship, but split in 2004. Following their breakup, both Lopez and Affleck pursued other relationships and started families.

Lopez was married to Marc Anthony from 2004 to 2014, and they are parents to now-14-year-old twins Max and Emme. Meanwhile, Affleck was married to Jennifer Garner from 2005 to 2018, and they have three kids together: daughters Violet, 16, and Seraphina, 13, plus son Samuel, 10.

"You go through all these relationships, and you're searching and you're connecting and you're disconnecting with people, and you're like, God, is this just what life is? Like a carousel, roller coaster, carnival ride? And then it settles," Lopez said.

She added, "But the journey to that is the mystery for everybody."