Women and Marriage

[MaineWriter]

If I may ask, how did you decide to do it that way, Leslie?

My ancestors came to this country in 1664 and with my father, the name would have ended (for this particular branch of the family) since I don't have any brothers. My husband's family has lots of boys so there were/are plenty of people with his last name.

Thus we decided (although it did take quite a bit of discussion) for the children to have my name. My son is named after my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. My daughter also has a family name. If she had been a boy, she would have been Samuel Benjamin, instead, she is named after Samuel's wife, Hannah Catherine.

In doing research on names, both when I got married and kept my name, and then when we were making the decision about the children, I discovered that there is a lot of misinformation on the subject. There are very few laws governing names. Most things are tradition. There is no law that a woman has to take her husband's name when she gets married. There is no law about what name you put on a birth certificate. A person has to go to court to legally change his/her name. The only exception is at the time of marriage--and that exception only exists for the woman. If a man wanted to take his wife's name, he'd have to go to court to have it legally changed.

Identifiers, such as Sr., Jr., and III are not part of a person's legal name. They are only used to identify the person while the person with the same name is living. If dad is John Smith, Sr., and his son is John Smith, Jr., when dad dies, the son can drop the Jr. and just be John Smith. My uncle did this and so did Barack Obama (even though Brokeplex insisted on calling him Barack Hussein Obama II all through the campaign. To my knowledge, Obama has never used a numeral with his name).

My father is a III (his father and grandfather were alive for much of his life). He never dropped it, by choice. When my son was born, we didn't add a IV to his name for a few reasons: 1) we had skipped a generation, so it seemed sort of pointless; 2) I thought IV looked a little bit ostentatious; and 3) since the only other person still alive with the same name was my father, who was still using his III, Lance didn't need anything as an identifier.

Probably the most confusing thing about Lance's name (and my father, grandfather and great-grandfather) is that they don't have a middle name! Just a first and last name, with unusual capitalization and spelling of his first name. Occasionally, when people have insisted on a middle initial (on a form, for example) he'll just put NMI for "no middle initial."

That's probably more than you ever wanted to know about names, isn't it? LOL

L

[serious crayons]

Thanks for the info, Leslie! And good choice on your daughter's middle name. 

I had a friend with no middle name, and she was constantly referred to as "none." As in, Jane None Smith.

[delalluvia]

Probably the most confusing thing about Lance's name (and my father, grandfather and great-grandfather) is that they don't have a middle name! Just a first and last name, with unusual capitalization and spelling of his first name. Occasionally, when people have insisted on a middle initial (on a form, for example) he'll just put NMI for "no middle initial."

I had a friend with no middle name, and she was constantly referred to as "none." As in, Jane None Smith.

I have no middle name either and I was not happy about that.  Everyone else had 3 initials.  Whenever someone is offering free monogramming, they rarely have their programs set for two initials, so I had to make up one initial. 

So I complained to my mother and she suggested I give myself one.  During the conversation I realized I had never known my mother's middle name and so I asked.  She just looked at me and said "I don't have one either."

So, I have kept my two names and not added anything else.  Guess not having an additional name can be just as traditional as having one. 

As for forms, I just put a dash or leave the field blank when a form or program asks for a middle initial.

[nakymaton]

I would have entered a civil union rather than a marriage, if it had been an option. I avoided marriage for seven years of a monogamous relationship because I didn't like the history that marriage implied, especially the transfer of property from father to husband. I finally gave up when I decided I wanted my college friends to visit me, and found that they wouldn't travel so far out of the way without a good reason. (Also, one of my friends got married in a very cool ceremony that was all about joining two different families and cultural traditions to one another, and I decided that I was willing to join an institution that had room for that kind of marriage.) A year later, my opinion of marriage was changed quite a bit by discussions with a lesbian acquaintance who really, really wanted to be able to marry the woman she loved. ("I would be happy to promise to obey her," she said.) If "marriage" has room for the relationships of my friends, then perhaps it can change beyond its history.

(I may not be legally married, actually. The marriage certificate never arrived. But I live in a Common Law state, and the wedding was over ten years ago, so I guess it doesn't matter that much whether we've got a piece of paper or not.)

I kept my name, because I would have lost credit for ten years of work if I had changed it, and because I associated name-changing with the idea of a woman as property. My son has my husband's last name because 36 years of feminism was exhausting, and I simply gave up fighting expectations at last. (Also, my last name is difficult to spell, and my husband's last name is easy. My son has been saved from a lifetime of spelling his last name over the telephone. His first name, however, which I thought was easy... well, it's already misspelled on a soccer trophy.)

[Brown Eyes]

Thanks for sharing all of these experiences and thoughts Friends!  It's really fascinating to read all of your perspectives.  And, nakymaton!  It's so great to see you Bud!



All this talk about the name-change issue is making me think of Lucy Stone (1818-1893).  She's an alum of Mount Holyoke College (where I went for undergrad) and is someone we heard about a lot on campus.  When she attended, Mount Holyoke was still called Mount Holyoke Female Seminary.  Later she also studied at Oberlin.  She was a major suffragist and abolishionist and was one of the first woman in the U.S. to keep her name after marriage.


http://womenshistory.about.com/od/stonelucy/p/lucy_stone.htm

Lucy Stone is known to women's history not only as one of the most important workers for suffrage and other women's rights in the 19th century and as a prominent abolitionist, but also as the first woman to keep her own name after marriage.

Here's a link to a detailed biography about her:
http://womenshistory.about.com/od/stonelucy/a/lucy_stone.htm

And, then there's this interesting tidbit about the occasion of her marriage to Henry Blackwell.

http://womenshistory.about.com/library/etext/bl_marriage_stone_blackwell.htm

Marriage Protest - 1855
 
When Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell were married, they protested against laws of the time in which women lost their legal existence upon marriage (coverture), and stated that they would not voluntarily comply with such laws.

The following was signed by Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell prior to their May 1, 1855 marriage.  The Rev. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who performed the marriage, not only read the statement at the ceremony, but also distributed it to other ministers as a model that he urged other couples to follow.

 
----

While acknowledging our mutual affection by publicly assuming the relationship of husband and wife, yet in justice to ourselves and a great principle, we deem it a duty to declare that this act on our part implies no sanction of, nor promise of voluntary obedience to such of the present laws of marriage, as refuse to recognize the wife as an independent, rational being, while they confer upon the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority, investing him with legal powers which no honorable man would exercise, and which no man should possess. We protest especially against the laws which give to the husband:

1. The custody of the wife's person.

2. The exclusive control and guardianship of their children.

3. The sole ownership of her personal, and use of her real estate, unless previously settled upon her, or placed in the hands of trustees, as in the case of minors, lunatics, and idiots.

4. The absolute right to the product of her industry.

5. Also against laws which give to the widower so much larger and more permanent interest in the property of his deceased wife, than they give to the widow in that of the deceased husband.

6. Finally, against the whole system by which "the legal existence of the wife is suspended during marriage," so that in most States, she neither has a legal part in the choice of her residence, nor can she make a will, nor sue or be sued in her own name, nor inherit property.

We believe that personal independence and equal human rights can never be forfeited, except for crime; that marriage should be an equal and permanent partnership, and so recognized by law; that until it is so recognized, married partners should provide against the radical injustice of present laws, by every means in their power...

[serious crayons]

Mel! How great to see you! 

The name thing does get exhausting. If you want to be free of patriarchal influence, you have to color way outside the lines. I know a woman who tried to get around it by adopting both her parents' last names as her name, connected by a backslash, not a hyphen. As in, Jane Smith/Doe. But of course, whichever was her mother's name presumably would still have the taint of patriarchy.

The only way out is to go the Malcolm X route, I guess. The problem there is that the X has a tone of antagonism and rejection, understandably of course. And most women who are concerned about their last name don't want to out and out reject their fathers and husbands. They just want to assert their own identities.

[opinionista]

Thanks for the info, Leslie! And good choice on your daughter's middle name. 

I had a friend with no middle name, and she was constantly referred to as "none." As in, Jane None Smith.

In my family us girls don't have a middle name. Only my brother does and he doesn't like it and always goes by his first name. He doesn't even add the initial. Very few people know he actually has a middle name. So it turned out to be pointless for my parents to give him one.

[delalluvia]

The name thing does get exhausting. If you want to be free of patriarchal influence, you have to color way outside the lines. I know a woman who tried to get around it by adopting both her parents' last names as her name, connected by a backslash, not a hyphen. As in, Jane Smith/Doe. But of course, whichever was her mother's name presumably would still have the taint of patriarchy.

The only way out is to go the Malcolm X route, I guess. The problem there is that the X has a tone of antagonism and rejection, understandably of course. And most women who are concerned about their last name don't want to out and out reject their fathers and husbands. They just want to assert their own identities.

Naw, I never get tired of being a feminist.  How could I?  That's who I am.

What's sad is it's so ingrained in many cultures for the women to suborn their identities to their husbands that some of their menfolk don't consider it that.  Instead they consider it a sign of "joining" or being "one" and are hurt if their wives won't do it.

But on the other hand, some of the men certainly don't consider it a sign of "joining" or being "one" if asked to give up their names.  They consider it for exactly what it is - a submissive act - and they don't like it.

And some actually get angry and/or what's worse, think it's a joke if it's even suggested that they do what they fully expect their wives to do.

One woman had the best response when asked why she didn't take her husband's name.

"Because he won't take mine."

 

[Front-Ranger]

I adopted my mother's middle name as my name (it's also my middle name). I like middle names. I think of them as an opportunity to express your hidden but true self, to pay your respects to ancestors, and to carry on matrilineal traditions. My daughter's middle name is Giuliana. It's Italian for gardener. And sure enuff, she is a gardener. These women in Italy knew about herbs and natural healing plants and cultivated plants as food and medicine.

[serious crayons]

Naw, I never get tired of being a feminist.  How could I?  That's who I am.

Oh Del, I certainly wasn't suggesting that.

I was simply saying ... well, just what I said. If you want your name to be completely free of the taint of patriarchy, you pretty much have to start from scratch and make something up. Or maybe go Cher's route. 


If marriage is about equals forming a joint partnership, then both spouses hyphenating both their names is most appropriate. For example, the (male) minister who performed my mother's funeral has a hyphenated name for that reason. But outside of Unitarian pastors (and other especially feminist/progressive male groups), there aren't that many men who want to do that.

So, failing that, women can just keep their own names. Which is easier anyway, especially if they have a professional identity associated with their name. I wouldn't have wanted to change my name, not even to a hyphenated one, and frankly not even if my husband had done the same.

When I hear of a woman with a hyphenated name, and her husband DOESN'T have one, it strikes me as pretty much the same as changing her name altogether -- a unilateral concession.