The BBC is talking about the cultural practice of changing names on marriage here.
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| Sarah |
This is not the whole story.
Although it touches on themes of identity, in concentrating on women "giving up" their identity on marriage (not so long ago, I would have been Mrs N. J. Halton and that would be the end of it. Being Mrs S. Halton in my own right would, shockingly, imply separation or even divorce) it seems to ignore the fact that many people have different identities through their lives and even their days. Women are lucky enough to be able to assign different names to their different identities. Take me as a case in point - my parents gave me my name (for my grandmother, who was named for her grandmother - but that's another blogpost all of its own!) and frequently refer to me by the name they gave me; I married before I felt I had really made a mark on the world and so took my husband's name - I swapped an 8-letter name no-one could spell for a 6-letter name no-one can spell. In fact, it's not his name either - the name comes from my father-in-law's stepfather and so belongs to none of us by blood. I am Mrs Halton for primary schools and tradespeople; Dr Halton for professional purposes and secondary schools (oddly, it does change the way they think about you, but that's more about the non-gender specific title Dr than the maiden / married name divide); I am Maiden Name to school friends. I am, I suppose, also Mum to the children and Sissy to my siblings and these names are no more or less part of my identity than my surname.
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| Mrs Sarah Halton |
The history of names used in the article is enlightening but does not show whole picture - Dr Coulombeau has believed history and legal documents written by men. Research in the last 10 years on early medieval female agency shows that male researchers in the 1940s and 50s saw what they wanted to see, that women were subsumed into their husbands' legal identity at marriage. In fact women had far more identity and power than earlier historians were able to perceive, particularly prior to 1050; they were asking the wrong questions. They were also applying the feudal model to an earlier period. Dr Coulombeau is right about feudality seeming to use women merely as adjuncts to men, but it is notable that this flexed depending on the social position of the woman - an heiress would use her maiden name to identify her husband's right to her lands and on occasions, men would take their wives' names to completely tie down their claim to her birth family's lands and honours. It is also important to ask how women created their own identities and how they saw themselves.
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| Dr Sarah Halton |
Names are, and have always been, a way of identifying people by tying them into a place in society and often geography. Early surnames for both men and women made reference to where they came from, how they looked or acted, or what their trade was. We are all familiar with the surnames Cooper, Weaver, Thatcher, Fletcher, Brewer and so on. Names ending in 'son' are self-explanitory, it's just a shame that the UK has never adopted the Icelandic custom of giving daughters the suffix 'dottir'. Surnames like Red, Brown, White and Black often refer to physical characteristics (hair colour) to differentiate people of the same given name within a settlement. Rulers have a long and glorious history of cognomina to identify them - William the Conqueror was also William the Bastard; Ragnar Loðbrók was also known as Ragnar Hairy-Breeches (although he may be apocryphal); Charles the Bald and even Æthelræd Unræd (no-one ever said cognomina had to be flattering!). Women also took these names, even after marriage, to identify them within local society. Ælfgifu of Northampton (c. 990 - aft. 1040), the first wife of Cnut the Great, ceded her position in England to his second wife, Emma of Normandy (the widow of Æthelræd the Unready).
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| Mrs N. J. Halton |
In maintaining that women lost and still lose their identity in changing their name on marriage, Sophie Colombeau misses or ignores important points about the nature of dower and dowry; a widow retained her right to one third of her deceased husband's land and goods, and often the dower granted by her parents on marriage. The dower was frequently passed down to daughters of the marriage after the death of the wife / widow, making it land closely identified with the maternal line and giving women and identity based on their mother. Victorian families on the up loved nothing better than to use maiden names as second or third given names for their children, making the line easy to see in family trees and passing parts of both parents' identities to their children.
Different cultures deal with married names in different ways. In Icelandic culture, a name is a name and is irrevocably connected to an individual regardless of marital status. The name at birth is most normally conferred based on the father's given name, so Halldóra the daughter of Jóhann is Halldóra Jóhannsdóttir; her brother is Jóhannsson. Some children are given a matronymic, but this is rarer.
In the USA, I much like the idea of appending the new married name to the end of the full name, to allow a woman a composite name that reflects all of her identity. Thus, Jacqueline Lee Bouvier (Lee being her own mother's maiden name) became Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy in common usage when she married John F. Kennedy. On her second marriage, she became Jackie Kennedy Onassis. It can mean stacking up names to an insane degree if many marriages are undertaken, but it allows one to construct a public identity that reflects the true history of one's identity, and raises the question of why we do not afford men the same opportunity to reflect their heritage and development as an individual. Arguably, it is a way of wearing one's heart on one's sleeve and that is perhaps why it has not really taken off in the UK - because we prefer to keep all our different identities separate.
Spanish-speaking countries see women keeping their own legal name (usually a hybrid of their parents' names) but being referred to socially as "Senõra de [husband's name]". Their children then take a hybrid of their surnames. In Spain, the hybrid tends to be Father's Name Mother's Name; in Portugal and Brazil, it tends to be the other way around. The same is true in France.
The keeping of a patronymic (for that is what a maiden name really is) on marriage in the modern world is often a question of how much of mark the individual woman feels she has made on society at the time of her marriage. The average age of first marriage for women rises. The ONS reports that in 2012, the mean age of first marriage for women was 34 years. This is almost ten years older than it was estimated to be in 1846 and that change is partly responsible for women choosing to keep their names. Dr Coulombeau is now on the faculty at Cardiff University, lecturing on romantic literature with a background in doctoral studies on personal naming at identity formation in the late 18th century within the study of English literature; of course she would not have a longer view on naming traditions (she would do well to read Dr Cordelia Beattie on the subject). Equally expectedly, of course she will keep her name on marriage, as she mentions in her article. She has an established professional identity to protect and nurture. There is one minor misunderstanding, though - she mentions at the end of the article "sign[ing] my unchanged name in the register". She will do that whatever she chooses to do with her name on marriage, as her name at marriage will be Coulombeau.
Of course, in the UK, changing one's name by usage is easy. You just start using another name, provided there is no intent to deceive. If you really want to go by the book, putting a small advert in the local paper will achieve this. Your documents will retain your legal name, but you can call yourself anything you like!
