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:
“So easy is it, though many housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs in the place of the old.”
—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)
“Men have sometimes exchanged names with their friends, as if they would signify that in their friend each loved his own soul.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Good marriages are made in heaven. Or some such place.”
—Robert Bolt (1924–1995)