I will keep my name in marriage

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Marriage has traditionally been accompanied by the expectation that a woman will change her last name. In the modern day, what someone chooses to do with their name is complex and personal.

I have a hyphenated last name. For much of my life, I have taken pride in this; my mother, unyielding, refused to give up her name when she married and asserted that her husband and children should have the hyphenated name, too. I always admired this as a feminist stance against a patriarchy-reinforcing expectation. I, however, have also always found one issue unresolved: my mother’s last name was her father’s last name, which was his father’s last name— and so on. For generations upon generations, women have been expected to take their husband’s name in marriage— a signal of change in ‘ownership’ from being her father’s property to her husband’s. This results in a particular problem for the modern feminist. I have long maintained that I will keep my last name if I am to get married; however, I must also acknowledge that I am holding a combination of names passed down along a male line. 

This theme is explored in a poem by Michael Inioluwa Oladele entitled “Dashed—Lines,” which states, “How do I win a war I did not fight— / if my secret weapon is to reject my husband’s name / and stay with my father’s name—a name my mother could not reject? / How do I find the source—the first woman whose name survived before the war? / How do I walk a line if all the lines are dashed?” 

The poem frames this conundrum within a fictional “war” between men and women that occurred in the distant past; the women lost and, in defeat, took the “captor’s name.” The speaker is left in the battlefield wreckage, confronting the remains and considering what they can do to fight an already lost battle. The first lines of the poem present the speaker as “about to reject [her] husband’s name,” but the speaker eventually seems to come to the conclusion that doing so is a “continuity of the defeat that happened long before [she] was born.” This poem, while dramatized, aptly portrays the situation women today find themselves confronted with. 

So, what are we to do? How can one possibly confront this issue— confront a tradition that has been part of our institutions for centuries? 

I believe that this process involves a sort of ‘reclamation.’ I am staking a claim on my name. I am calling it—making it—my own. Regardless of its past, regardless of the patriarchal traditions that led it to me, it is now mine. I will not give it up for anything. 

I do not know, logistically, how a future partnership will work for me. If I have children, I do not know if they will take my name, my partner’s name, or a combination (although adding another name to mine would make it quite lengthy). All I know is that I will carry on with the name I was given, which I then chose as mine. 

Nonetheless, this is a highly personal decision, and it is not ‘one size fits all.’ Our names are deeply personal and complicated. Whatever relationship you have with your name— it is your own. You approach it how you need to, how you want to. 

On that same note, I would like to acknowledge that while I have examined this issue primarily through a feminist lens— and have focused on heterosexual marriages —this topic, I believe, applies to every person considering marriage in the future. All of our names have complicated, loaded histories. They can be challenging to confront emotionally. Your name and what you choose to do with it is a personal choice that deserves respect.