Customs Relating To Maiden Names in Marriages
In many cultures, traditionally a woman inherits her surname or birth name from her father and changes it to match her husband's surname (which he inherited from his father). This name change custom has been criticized for a number of reasons. It can be construed as meaning the woman's father and then husband had control over her, and it means that lines of male descent (patrilineality) are seen as primary—that a child has no inherited name tying him or her to female ancestors (matrilineality). Moreover, it means that women have no matrilineal surnames of their own, but only "place-markers" indicating their relationship to men. However, for a further treatment of matrilineal surnames or matrinames, see Matriname.
In the remainder of this article, birth name, family name, surname, married name and maiden name are always patrilineal surnames unless explicitly stated to be matrilineal surnames.
Read more about this topic: Married And Maiden Names
Famous quotes containing the words customs, relating, maiden, names and/or marriages:
“The customs of some savage nations might, perchance, be profitably imitated by us, for they at least go through the semblance of casting their slough annually; they have the idea of the thing, whether they have the reality or not.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is by teaching that we teach ourselves, by relating that we observe, by affirming that we examine, by showing that we look, by writing that we think, by pumping that we draw water into the well.”
—Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881)
“Then louder cry’d the Clerk Colvill,
O sairer, sairer akes my head;
And sairer, sairer ever will,
The maiden crys, ‘till you be dead.”
—Unknown. Clerk Colvill (l. 33–36)
“I come to this land to ride my horse,
to try my own guitar, to copy out
their two separate names like sunflowers, to conjure
up my daily bread, to endure,
somehow to endure.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“Women have entered the work force . . . partly to express their feelings of self-worth . . . partly because today many families would not survive without two incomes, partly because they are not at all sure their marriages will last. The day of the husband as permanent meal-ticket is over, a fact most women recognize, however they feel about “women’s liberation.””
—Robert Neelly Bellah (20th century)