Married and maiden names

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A "maiden name" is the family name carried by a woman before any of her marriages. A maiden name may be indicated using the word "née" (pronounced "nay", IPA: [ne:]), from the French word for "born", hence Margaret Hilda Thatcher née Roberts. A married name is a name (if) changed by a married person.

The term is ambiguous for those who changed their birth name before any marriages; therefore some prefer the term "birth name", which can also be used in the case of a man changing his name upon marriage.

Contents 1 Customs relating to maiden names in heterosexual marriages 1.1 Europe and North America 1.1.1 Use husband's surname 1.1.2 Use maiden name 1.1.3 Join both names 1.2 The Spanish-speaking world 1.2.1 The Philippines 1.3 East Asia 1.3.1 China and Korea 1.3.2 Japan 1.4 Other 2 Homosexual Marriages and Names 3 Legal status and criticisms 4 Genealogy 5 See also

[edit] Customs relating to maiden names in heterosexual marriages

[edit] Europe and North America

[edit] Use husband's surname

Traditionally, in the US, women have assumed their new husband's surnames after marriage to him, although this was never legally required except in a couple of states in the US. All the children of the marriage are then given their father's surname, so that the mother's surname is not used by any of her descendants. Some areas have a custom of using the mother's maiden name as a given name for one of the children.

This practice means that women inherit their surname from their father, and change it to match their husband's. This has been criticised for a number of reasons: it can be construed as meaning the woman's father and then husband had control over her body and "brand" her with their names to signify that control or possession; and it means that lines of male descent are seen as primary, that a woman has no inherited name tying her to her female ancestors.

However, many women choose to retain their maiden names after marriage: either using it alone or as part of their name in conjunction with their husbands' surnames. Some people also use their married name in certain aspects of their lives (e.g., their personal and social lives), while using their maiden name in other instances (e.g. professionally).

[edit] Use maiden name

Women who keep their own surname after marriage may choose to do so for a number of reasons. Objection to the use of their husband's name for feminist reasons is one such reason, but there are others which may justify keeping their own name. Some women dislike undergoing the difficulties required in a legal name change. This process is expediated somewhat for newly married women in that their marriage certificate in combination with identification using their maiden name is usually sufficient evidence of the change, but the process still requires approaching every contact who uses the old name and asking them to use the new. Other women simply prefer their own surname to that of their husband.

Where this practice is in the minority, a woman retaining her surname after marriage may encounter difficulties with having people correctly use her name, or in some cases recognising her marriage. Many people who know of the marriage will simply assume that she has the same surname as her husband and will use that name to introduce her and address her. Alternatively, people who are aware that she and her husband have different surnames may not realise that they are married.

Some women may retain use of their own surname under particular circumstances, and use their husband's surname in others. This is particularly common among women who have a professional career in which advancement depends on work associated with their name, such as an academic career. These women do not want to risk having their pre-marriage work no longer associated with them and may use their maiden name as their surname in professional dealings but use their husband's surname in social contexts. The American suffragist and abolitionist Lucy Stone (1818–1893), wife of Henry Brown Blackwell, made a national issue of the practice of taking a husband's surname as part of her efforts for women's rights in the U.S., and women who choose not to use their husbands' surnames have been called "Lucy Stoners" ever since.

Finally, many women, celebrities in particular, are so associated with their maiden name in the public that they prefer to keep it.

On the other hand there are countries where it is customary for a women to keep her own name. In many Civil Law countries women keep their own names for official purposes, but what name they use for social purposes vary. In The Netherlands maried women will remain registered under their maiden name, but may choose to use their husband's name, or join both names. In Belgium a women must use her maiden name for official purposes, and will use her maiden name for most private purposes too.

[edit] Join both names

It is common for women, especially in the U.S. and Canada, to take their husband's name but put it after their birth name. For example, if "Kate Wilson" marries "John Smith", her name would become "Kate Wilson Smith" or "Kate Wilson-Smith". Sometimes both husband and wife will adopt the joint surname; whether the maiden name is placed first or second reflects personal preferences. In other cases, women will use their maiden name as a middle name (perhaps dropping their birth middle name) and use their husband's surname as their surname.

Most versions of the practice of women having a different surname from their husband face difficulties on the basis of problems about their own children's surname. Various alternatives are used:

• most commonly, children are given the surname of one parent, usually the father's;
• female children are given the mother's surname, and male children the father's; or
• children are given the hyphenated surname consisting of their mother's and father's surname.

This last practice may result in difficulty for the next generation, who have the surnames of all four grandparents to combine into a surname for their own children. One solution some couples have used when both spouses had hyphenated last names is for the wife to contribute her mother's name and the husband his father's to form a new hyphenated last name for themselves and their children.

[edit] The Spanish-speaking world

In Spain and in many Spanish-speaking countries, the practice is for people to have two surnames, a paternal and a maternal surname (their father's surname followed by their mother's surname). For example, Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar's full name is "Pedro Almodóvar Caballero", Almodóvar being his father's surname and Caballero being his mother's surname.

Not in Spain, but in some Spanish-speaking country as Bolivia, when a woman marries a man, she will often add her husband's surname to her father's surname using the "de" (of) preposition. For example, if "Clara Reyes Alba" were to marry "Alberto Gómez Rodriguez", the wife could use "Clara Reyes de Gómez" as her name (also "Clara Reyes Gómez" and rarely "Clara Gómez Reyes"). This form is mainly protocolar and usually doesn't require an official name change, i.e., legally, her name will still be her birth name.

Any children a couple have together take both surnames, so if the couple above had two children named "Andres" and "Ana", then their names would be "Andres Gómez Reyes" and "Ana Gómez Reyes". It was also used that for single mothers, and when the father wouldn't (or couldn't) recognize his child, the mother's surename was used twice, for example, "Ana Reyes Reyes".

It should be noted that some Hispanic people drop their maternal surname (even if not formally), so as to better fit into the English-speaking or non-Hispanic society they live or work in.

[edit] The Philippines

Christians in the Philippines have partially adopted the system used in the Spanish speaking world, as most Filipinos have two surnames (one is sometimes considered a middle name). Children will take their mother's maiden name, followed by their father's surname. Women drop their mother's maiden name when they marry and use their own maiden name, followed by their husband's surname. In everyday use, people usually use their second surname, that is, the one of their father or husband. For example, if Maria Santos Buenaflor (casually called Maria Buenaflor or Ms. Buenaflor) were to marry Jose Buenavilla Llamas (casually known as Jose Llamas or Mr. Llamas), Maria would change her name to Maria Buenaflor Llamas. If they were to have children named Juan and Ana, they would be called Juan Buenaflor Llamas and Ana Buenaflor Llamas (known casually as Juan Llamas and Ana Llamas).

[edit] East Asia

[edit] China and Korea

Chinese and Korean women may or may not change their names after marriage. However, they will usually be addressed, or referred to, by their husband's surname with the title Mrs. (in Chinese, wife of).

Chinese women can prepend their husband's surname to their maiden surname, or replace their maiden name with their husband's. (In Chinese, the surname is written before the given name.) Prepending is more common amongst Hong Kong Chinese and, by extension, overseas Chinese women, but is usually only done using Chinese characters, rarely in other languages. Legally, overseas Chinese tend to follow the Western custom of merely using the husband's surname when writing their names in English. The use of her husband's surname indicates a woman's marital status (such as when co-signing or appearing with her husband). She may choose not to reveal this in some circumstances.

For example, Miss Karen Huang Jiali (surname Huang, English name Karen, Chinese name Jiali), an American Chinese, marries Mr. Chen. In Chinese, she can retain her full name from before the marriage. On Chinese language documents she might sometimes write her full name in Chinese characters as Chen Huang Jiali (husband's name always first), or else solely use her maiden name or her husband's surname. However, if only her surname is to be used, she would be called Mrs. Chen, or Miss Huang (even when married).

However, on English documents her English name must also be used, and the profusion of names is likely to confuse non-Chinese. Hence the maiden name is sometimes discarded, unless she chose never to adopt her husband's surname. Also, English ordering might be followed. In this case, her name could be Karen Jiali Chen, Karen Jiali Huang or Karen Chen nee Huang.

The use of a combined "double surname" (without the given name) in a similar context to Westerners, for example, Mrs. Chen-Huang or Mrs. Huang-Chen, is rare but used to be very common in Taiwan (with or without the hyphen). But these must not be confused with the many two-character Chinese surnames, such as Ouyang, which are not a result of combining a husband's and wife's surnames (recently. The name may have originated from such a combination centuries ago.) The "double surname" of a woman who either had a two-character surname, or a husband with one, would then contain three characters (maybe even four).

[edit] Japan

In Japan, marriage law requires that legally married couples share a surname. It is customary for the wife to take her husband's surname. Though a husband is legally permitted to take his wife's surname, this is very rare. In the Japanese language it is common to avoid second and third person pronouns and instead refer to a person in conversation by their surname plus a title such as san (さん) or sama (様) which may indicate the relative rank, profession, or gender of the person but often not her marriage status (as in the English 'Mrs.' and 'Miss') . Many women who have well established careers or circles of friends may wish continue to be referred to by their maiden name after they marry in order to maintain continuity at work or among their acquaintances. However this is an informal practice not recognized by law, and a wife and husband may not use separate surnames in official settings. Although women's rights groups have attempted to introduce legislation that would allow married couples to maintain separate surnames, a practice which in Japanese is referred to as fūfu bessei (夫婦別姓, literally: 'husband-wife, different-surname'), such legislation has not yet been enacted.

[edit] Other

A less common, but growing, alternative is for the married couple to create a new non-hyphenated name. This name may be a combination of letters from both surnames or it may be a new name altogether. This allows any children following on to have the same name and is equal in that both parties must give up their original surname. One possible criticism against this practice is that it makes families harder to trace via genealogy. In many countries, including the United States, a legal record must be filed in order to make this name change, which increases the level of added difficulty.

[edit] Homosexual Marriages and Names

The relatively recent public and legal acceptance and acknowledgement of marriage equality for homosexuals has given the world's gay communities little time to establish their own set of nuptual naming practices.

Though some hetero-feminists have asserted that taking a marital name detracts from the individual worths of the spouses, some queer feminists choose to change their names such that their new names might serve as daily and public markers of their marital unions, and their rights thereto.

[edit] Legal status and criticisms

Laws respecting married names vary. In areas whose legal systems derive from the English common law—such as most parts of the USA, Canada, and the UK—a name change usually does not require legal action, because a person can choose to be known by any name (except with intent to defraud); this is why authors, actors, and step-children, as well as married women, can adopt new names without taking any legal action. In many jurisdictions whose legal systems derive from the civil law—such as France, Spain, Belgium, the Canadian province of Quebec, and the U.S. state of Louisiana—however, the default position is for a woman's "legal name" to remain the same throughout life: Citizens there who wish to change their names legally must usually apply to do so via a formal procedure.

The term "maiden name" itself has been criticised by many American feminists since the 1970s. Those who find the traditional term unacceptable and even offensive say it demeans women by labeling them according to their sexual status ("maiden" is a synonym for "virgin"), and see this as a further sign of a maiden name being used to label a woman as sexual property of a man.

[edit] Genealogy

Most genealogists prefer to refer to a mother by her maiden name when they are constructing a pedigree, whether in chart form such as a family tree or in some written form. This convention is used because it is a concise way of presenting genealogical information. Thus they would write (or show on a pedigree chart) a child as e.g. the son of John Smith and Mary Brown.

However, some novices might describe the child as eg the son of John Smith and Mary Smith or perhaps as the son of John Smith and Mary Smith née Brown.

[edit] See also

• Given name