If a woman takes her husband’s name in marriage, is it a sign of commitment or of inequality? Sophie Coulombeau surveys the cultural history of the practice – and those who have resisted it
‘Marrying left your maiden name disused,” Philip Larkin wrote in 1955. “Its five light sounds no longer mean your face, / Your voice, and all your variants of grace.” Larkin’s poem, written about his friend Winifred Arnott, sees the lost maiden name as a symbol of the erasure of a woman’s youthful and sexually desirable self, now swallowed up in domestic duties and motherhood. The birth name, to him, “means what we feel now about you then: How beautiful you were, and near and young”.
Reading Larkin is never a simple matter, and his depicted transition from “maiden” to “married” name invites multiple interpretations. On the one hand, it’s easy to understand the poem as an elegy for a loved person who has been married out of existence. On the other, the narrator admits that the subject of his elegy is “thankfully confused in law” with her husband-to-be. The shedding of the maiden name could be seen either as a tragic sublimation of identity or as a natural and welcome step; an escape from the erotic attentions, perhaps, of such men as the poet himself. But whether the name change means obliteration or maturation, we should not make the mistake of imagining that it means nothing at all.
As my partner and I make decisions about our marriage next year, I’ve found myself thinking about Larkin’s words. If marital surname change was open to ambiguous interpretations in 1955, it is even more so in 2014. Recently, lawyer Amal Alamuddin’s decision to change her name when she married George Clooney was both fervently criticised and heatedly defended. Just a few months earlier, the singer who has announced herself, in the space of a few years, as Cheryl Tweedy, Cheryl Cole and Cheryl Fernandez-Varsini was variously mocked and praised for her willingness to change her “brand” for each new husband. Feelings about these women’s decisions ran high in the press and on social media. Some feminists pointed out that women suffer detriment to their careers when they change their names; that they signal their submission to their husbands, and reinforce to their children the idea that women are inferior to men. (One recent survey found that school pupils thought men taking their wives’ surnames would demonstrate a “weak character” but the reverse would show women were “grown-up”.) Others defended Amal Clooney and Cheryl Fernandez-Varsini, claiming that women’s surnames mean little to them, that the birth name is usually the father’s name anyway, or that their decision to take their husband’s name showed that they were truly committed to the partnership.
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Reading Larkin is never a simple matter, and his depicted transition from “maiden” to “married” name invites multiple interpretations. On the one hand, it’s easy to understand the poem as an elegy for a loved person who has been married out of existence. On the other, the narrator admits that the subject of his elegy is “thankfully confused in law” with her husband-to-be. The shedding of the maiden name could be seen either as a tragic sublimation of identity or as a natural and welcome step; an escape from the erotic attentions, perhaps, of such men as the poet himself. But whether the name change means obliteration or maturation, we should not make the mistake of imagining that it means nothing at all.
As my partner and I make decisions about our marriage next year, I’ve found myself thinking about Larkin’s words. If marital surname change was open to ambiguous interpretations in 1955, it is even more so in 2014. Recently, lawyer Amal Alamuddin’s decision to change her name when she married George Clooney was both fervently criticised and heatedly defended. Just a few months earlier, the singer who has announced herself, in the space of a few years, as Cheryl Tweedy, Cheryl Cole and Cheryl Fernandez-Varsini was variously mocked and praised for her willingness to change her “brand” for each new husband. Feelings about these women’s decisions ran high in the press and on social media. Some feminists pointed out that women suffer detriment to their careers when they change their names; that they signal their submission to their husbands, and reinforce to their children the idea that women are inferior to men. (One recent survey found that school pupils thought men taking their wives’ surnames would demonstrate a “weak character” but the reverse would show women were “grown-up”.) Others defended Amal Clooney and Cheryl Fernandez-Varsini, claiming that women’s surnames mean little to them, that the birth name is usually the father’s name anyway, or that their decision to take their husband’s name showed that they were truly committed to the partnership.
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