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Marriage and Last Names
Interesting discussion here about women taking the last names of their husbands when they got married.
I'd be willing to bet very few LDS women--even the neo-feminist LDS women--thought much about this issue when they got married, if only because of adherence to tradition.
The reasons given by the women in the Volokh comments tend generally toward family unity as the main reason they gave up their maiden name upon getting married: all the family members (especially the children) having the same name makes it seem that everyone is one family unit, not like one member has a distant, detached relationship from the others. (I can't imagine any mother--no matter how protective of her pre-marriage identity--would easily want to be separated, even abstractly, from her children by having a different name than them...) Since the family unit is even more emphasized in LDS culture, I would think this reason would be even stronger among Mormon families.
Another, more strictly LDS reason might be genealogy. I'm sure those who are trying to research their ancestors from previous centuries would be frustrated to find that the last name of the family line changed suddenly, either from the husband changing names, or the entire family using a new family name for whatever reason (immigration?). Perhaps subconsciously, a LDS woman who has done genealogy in the past would be more sensitive to conforming to tradition, since she's experienced first-hand how difficult it can be when family names change in family trees arbitrarily.
There are many LDS women who have not taken their husbands name upon marriage: either using their own, or creating a new one--and I see no reason to object from a family unity standpoint as long as everyone has the same last name. A good friend of mine married a "Hooker"..and decided, not unreasonably, that she'd rather her kids not be Hookers, and so they decided as a family to use a different last name entirely.
Would LDS society look down upon a woman who kept her maiden name while everyone else in the family used the father's last name? Quite possibly...because you might wonder why she would insist on remaining 'separate' from the rest of the family. I, for one, have no objection to NOT using the husband's last name, as long as the family used the same name together. There are legitimate aesthetic reasons for not automatically using the husband's name (I'm thinking "Julia Gulia" from "The Wedding Singer") but reasons for keeping to tradition, also...
May 18, 2005 in Current Affairs | Permalink
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Tracked on May 18, 2005 2:07:40 PM
Comments
If I remember right, in Chile, things are a bit different. Everybody has two last names. The women do not take the last name of their husband. Instead they optionally append "de [Husband's Last Name]" to indicate that they are his wife. The children's two last names are taken from the first of the last names of their parents. Like this:
Alberto Manuel Cordero Cortez
marries
Juana Maria Palma Parra
and she becomes
Juana Maria Palma Parra de Cordero
Their children are named
Sandra Lucia Cordero Palma
Juan Jose Cordero Palma
It was always fun to fill out the baptismal forms for families being baptized. It was also difficult because the forms were designed for naming traditions similar to our own and often did not have enough space for the full first and middle name plus two last names. This system had interesting advantages for family history.
I find this Chilean name tradition appealing and I think that if we could modify it slightly so that the men also appended "de [Wife's Last Name]" to their names upon marriage, it would be a quite a good system.
Posted by: Jonathan Max Wilson | May 18, 2005 1:48:15 PM
I didn't add it to my original post, but it's the same way in Taiwan as well. Married women will still be referred to by their maiden name, and sometimes with the husband's last name added to the end. Rarely is the maiden name replaced completely.
For our kids we'll be using my name for legal purposes in the US, but The Baroness's maiden name for their legal names in Taiwan...
Posted by: The Baron | May 18, 2005 2:23:15 PM
I doubt that LDS society as a whole* would "look down upon" a woman who kept her maiden name -- there are certainly enough people who do so for professional reasons that it's not a rare occurrence. There would, though, be more than enough instances of confusion as to who's related to whom to make it a mighty hassle.
*Disclaimer because there's always SOME yayhoo willing not only to invent new standards of righteousness, but to inflict them on others. (Odds are very good that the person who vocally objects to a woman who kept her maiden name will also preach to her about the evils of letting her children eat white bread.)
Posted by: The Only True and Living Nathan | May 18, 2005 2:59:04 PM
I took all my husband's names when I married them, and I love my husband very much. I don't have any problem with taking his last name, but I like my first husband's family and his last name better.
I think if he dies before me, I'll take that name back.
Posted by: annegb | May 18, 2005 3:18:05 PM
I took my husband's last name for the sake of family unity. My own surname became my second midde name, and my husband adopted it as a second middle name too. No hyphenations.
But if I had to do it over, I might have kept my birth name legally. For social use, at the kids' school, I could have been Mrs. Hisname no matter what my legal name is, as I liked. My friends who kept their birthnames are often called Mrs. Hisname no matter what they prefer.
If you visit the DAR or some other old female charity, you will see the oil paintings of the benefactoresses labeled this way: Mrs. Glenn Hisname (Johnna). Mrs. Johnna Hisname was never an option, which is a big part of why "Ms." had to be invented.
And since you speak of genealogy, it gives me great peace to know that after I'm gone I will be known by my birth name on the records of the church. My married name is pretty, but it is still less my name than my birth name is.
"Maiden name" is a stupid expression. I hope I live to see it pass out of use. "Birth name" is better.
Posted by: Johnna | May 18, 2005 5:13:02 PM
Trying to be a hip 90's kind-of-guy, I asked my then-fiancee if she wanted to keep her own last name or take mine or create some kind of hybrid. She shot me the first instance of the look I'd come to know as the "are-you-really-this-dumb-or-are-you-pretending?" look.
It turns out that where my last name comes relatively early alphabetically, her last name started with a W. She was NOT going to pass up a chance to finally jump from the end of the line to the beginning!
Not that I've ever seen that look again lo these 12 years...
Posted by: Chad too | May 18, 2005 5:30:05 PM
I want to see the brain cramp when Mr John Smith-Jones marries Miss Emma Johnson-Wilson. 8-)
Posted by: Daylan Darby | May 18, 2005 9:46:51 PM
Hypenated last names go back a long time, and the conventions are long established.
When Mr. John Smith-Jones marries MIss Emma Johnson-Wilson, their children are the Wilson-Jones. Matrilineal name are dropped, and the father's father's name gets the privileged final position.
Unless the land in the Maternal name is being inherited. Property trumps.
Today, they'd probably just become the JoWiSmiJoes.
Posted by: Johnna | May 19, 2005 12:24:41 AM
Genealogy causes me to think of my female ancestors with their fathers' last names more than their husbands'. That's how we keep the records and how we find a lot of information on them, too. Also, in one nice history writen by my Swedish g-g-g-grandmother, she always referred to her husband as "Rosberg." I got the idea that was what she called him to his face and that she thought of it as exclusively his name and not hers. "Mrs. Rosberg" ends up sounding like "Rosberg's wife." That's the perspective on women's last names genealogy has given me.
Posted by: John Mansfield | May 19, 2005 6:19:22 AM
I'm not sure how genealogy would have the impact, because on the forms, females are always listed by birth names, unless the birthname is unknown.
I can think of two "famous" LDS women (musicians) who use their married name in personal life, and their birth names in their musical public life. Julie De Azevedo and Cherie Call
MRKH
Posted by: Mark Hansen | May 19, 2005 9:19:03 AM
Eliza R. Snow never took Brigham Young's name either. And he was the prophet and his last name held a lot of clout! Yet another reason why I admire her.
Posted by: maria | May 19, 2005 10:10:20 AM
"I took all my husband's names..."
His name was Anne?
Posted by: Kim Siever | May 19, 2005 3:40:06 PM
I have a friend who's last name was/is Fagg. Needless to say his fiancee had strong reservations about taking his last name. So strong in fact that she demanded that he change it. He decided to do so and adopted his father's first name and the common -son on the end. He and his wife are now Mr. and Mrs. Garyson. I don't know what is better. The same is true for the Butt Family that I know. Tough call for the wife marrying in.
Posted by: K Jones | May 24, 2005 10:39:24 AM
i wanted to have my husband take my last name, out of being practical. he would have only had to change two documents, his liscense, and his SS. however for me i had to change multiple docs, credit cards, banking, ect.
i did take his name though, but it was such a pain. ;) it did take me a long time, and people in the church just assumed that i had taken his name and called me by it. i think it's an interesting assumption that the wife will take the name of her husband. i do agree with having the same name for family unity though, and if it is a made up name, that's great too.
Posted by: Aimee Roo | May 24, 2005 10:57:49 AM
My wife and I retained our last names upon marriage some 20-plus years ago (back in the days where it looked like doing so would be the norm within a few years), and we alternated last names for the kids (giving middle names based on the last name of the other parent). We call ourselves the Smith-Jones family (or sometimes the Jones-Smith family), and it all works out fine. There have been those in the church who have a hard time dealing with it, but at least in the ward where we are now, although in a conservative part of the country, people don't care and seem to handle it just fine. And I must say that when we were sealed in the temple, the temple workers handled all the names correctly without missing a beat. Hurray for them!
Posted by: Fred | Jun 28, 2005 7:41:40 AM
