What's in a Name? (A Tale of Sexism)

What’s in a… surname? A lot, and I’ve recently been catching interesting comments from young feminists on various forums.

This time, I’m not going to give any name, but if you read my somewhat recent posts, I bet you’ll be able to follow.

So, let’s talk about an imaginary young lady, who recently got married. According to our laws and customs, she’s to be called by her husband’s surname now – and this is what happens to most women who get married and do not keep their birth surnames or hyphenate.

Now… if a woman's somehow marrying up and the average quill-pushers and assorted camera-equipped mosquitoes get to make money by mentioning that woman, they’re going to belittle the recently married lady, because their common jealousy and pettiness need to remind the world that she married up, that she’s not as good/important/whatever as her husband.

That bothers me a lot (I may well be an annoying stickler for proper protocol, but I definitely wasn’t raised in a barn).

Oh, and the people using the lady’s maiden name are, according to me and my values, being sexist.

About a fortnight ago, I read a few comments that really bothered me. Still talking about the same young woman who married well, I caught several sisters saying that we must keep using her maiden name because she’s not her husband’s property.

Right… 
Sorry, but I’ll have to do this:

Whilst it’s super cute that some of our sisters want a newly-married lady to not be viewed as chattel, they’re all forgetting one tiny detail (and when I say “detail”, I’m being extremely sarcastic). The surnames we’re given are from a male, nearly always so in our neighbourhood. Whether it’s a father, or a grandfather in the case of a single mother raising her child or children alone, our surnames come from men.

Basically, a woman has her father’s surname until she takes her husband’s.

I’ll always be in favour of a woman deciding to take her husband’s surname, because that sister will have chosen that man, whilst her being born to her father and being given his surname is just a mere twist of fate.

It’s not being sexist to call a married woman by her husband’s surname, it’s merely respecting her choice.

One solution to avoid sexism would be to encourage young women, and men (why not?) to choose their own surnames when they come of age, but we’d be back to square one the moment there’s a wedding and a child enters the picture… because we can’t hyphenate up to a point where a surname would be longer than the directory.

Nothing’s perfect, and nothing will be about surnames: there’s always one surname in a couple that’s going to disappear in the long run, but… when it comes to a charming woman who married for love, let's respect her choice. That is the only way to not be sexist – and petty.