Naming Independence

Happy Independence Day, everyone! For this 24-hour period, may grilled gluttony, safe and legal explosions, and patriotic rhetoric festoon your lives.

I chose to honor Independence Day by writing about women who change their last names after marriage. I mean, obviously. You know: Independence Day, women’s independence, Second Wave feminism, and patrilineality. This 4^th of July blog post practically writes itself.

I’ll admit, this topic concerns me a lot lately, since I’m getting married in two short weeks (gulp). Honestly, I have zero desire to change my last name; it’s my remaining connection to my deceased father, it possesses a charming shortness and sweetness, and, you know, keeping it pokes convention right in the eyeball. Win-win-win.

Some cultural pressure exists to change it, however. According to conventional wisdom, women should/do change their last names to create a sense of familial unity and to give any children who come along a single last name. Plus, given pressures from friends and family, changing one’s last name can seem like a no-brainer.  

But times, they are a-changin’. According to the New York Times, about 30% of women now decide to keep their maiden names, which is up from 14% in the 80s and 26% in the aughts. According to the article, this has less to do with feminism and more to do with practicality and convenience. I can tell you from personal observation, changing your name is a bit of a logistical pain.

Sometimes, though, I wish we had a different, less gendered and unequal, system for handing down surnames to our children. In my last novel, The Tithe, everyone’s last name looked something like this: “’Meryth d’ijo.” “D’ijo” means “child of” in Spanish, and “Meryth” was the character’s mother. In the novel, citizens name their baby girls after their mothers and their baby boys after their fathers. I’ll admit, as a literary sociologist penning this novel, I not-so-secretly enjoyed challenging patrilineality, the practice of giving all children their fathers’ last names and of tracing lineage through the father’s line.

But unfortunately, we don’t live in a post-apocalyptic kinda-utopia. Okay, maybe not so unfortunately. Anyway, we have this system, and we have to navigate its traditions while balancing our own values and ideals.

Me? I’m not changing my last name. It’s a symbol of independence to me for sure, but it’s also a beloved gift my dad gave me and a symbol of all I’ve accomplished over the past 40 years. I’m happy to buck the system and join the 30% of American women who just don’t want to bother.

Happy Independence Day to everyone, no matter what that may mean to you and your choice of names!