A strange feeling comes over me these days when I log into Facebook or Instagram. Most times, I see someone I went to high school with announcing their wedding or the birth of a child. While these announcements can be jarring for along-term single person like me who feels miles away from traditional life milestones, that’s not the reason for my discomfort.
When I see these posts, I have to take a moment to analyse the woman’s face. Her first name and appearance will be vaguely familiar, like looking at an old photograph of someone you once knew, but for the life of me, I won’t be able to place her.
Then, it will click into place: she’s changed her last name to her husband’s. A name and identity that’s been hers for 30 years has been eradicated. The name I knew her by—Smith, Thompson, whatever it might have been—has vanished into thin air, as if it was never really hers to begin with.
I was in primary school when I first realised there was something different about my last name. My mum, a diehard feminist, kept her maiden name when she married my dad. When they to have children, they came up with an approach that seemed most fair: any girls they had would get Mum’s last name and Dad’s last name as their middle name, and it would be the opposite approach for boys.
As a result, my brother has a different last name from my sister and me, something kids in primary school found hard to understand; I was sometimes asked whether we had the same parents. Even harder for some people to understand is that my mum didn’t change her last name to my dad’s in the first place and that I don’t have his last name.
"The name I knew her by...has vanished into thin air, as if it was never really hers to begin with"
Over the years, people have asked if he felt emasculated by my mum’s decision. When I call Dad up to ask him what the reception was like when people found out about their break with tradition, he says there were a few encounters he had where people thought it was “against the law.” “People didn’t realise it was an option because it was so unheard of. When I went to register your birth, the woman at the office did a double take. She had to tick a specific box about the child getting the mother’s name,” he explains. My personal history goes a long way to explaining my stance on women changing their last name to their husband’s, but even without my lived experience, I would keep my name if I got married. Of course, as a feminist, I believe women should be free to ditch their maiden names if they want to, but what baffles me is that it’s still the norm.
You would think, given the leaps and bounds we’ve made when it comes to gender equality, that this tradition would have evolved, and that more men would betaking their wives’ last names in the name of redressing the balance. What I take issue with the most is that it’s so expected and so commonplace for women to change last names, that some women I speak to aren’t aware of the deeply patriarchal history of this practice. It stems from the stomach-turning belief that when a woman marries a man, she becomes one of his possessions.
While in Western countries the concept of ‘owning’ a wife hasn’t existed for over a century, the name-changing tradition is still firmly entrenched. And yes, I do realise that there are a multitude of valid reasons why a woman might want to discard her maiden name, like distancing herself from estranged or abusive family members or simply disliking how it sounds.
Fear may also play a role for some women. Opening the conversation with your partner might inadvertently reveal some long-held and not-so-pretty beliefs he harbours about gender roles. Another driving force keeping this tradition alive in heterosexual relationships is the belief that having the same last name as your husband—and any potential children you have—unifies you. After all, are you really a family unit if you don’t all share the same last name?
I can only speak to my experience, but I can assure you that, beyond the odd comment in primary school, I’ve never felt less close to my dad and brother due to our different last names. In fact, I do feel a connection to their last name as it’s one of my middle names. Personally, I think it’s time we evened the playing field. Women are expected to fuse their identities with their husbands’ without complaint, so why don’t more of us broach the decision differently? It should be a discussion rather than an expectation. I have a friend whose husband took her last name—the result of an open conversation about their values and the example they wanted to set for their future children.
After all, as Mum pointed out to Dad all those years ago, women deserve to have more say in the name that they and their children will have for the rest of their lives. “Your mum was the driver in doing it.She said, ‘I’ve got to go through the effort of having the baby. This way, both lines of descent have an opportunity to carry on.’ It just seemed a fair thing to do. Ultimately,I always thought it was the woman’s choice because she has to do all the hard work, so she gets the naming rights,” says Dad. Hopefully, one day soon, we’ll see more men discarding expectations and tradition by engaging in discussions like these; discussions that truly consider their partner’s identity and desires.
This article originally appeared in Issue 01 of Cosmopolitan Australia. Get your copy and subscribe to future issues here.
