Je suis une housewife….among other things
Welcome to the Madame Perrier section of my blog. It is a personal blog – as opposed to being about books, business or otherwise – in which I will write about daily life, motherhood and the general concerns of a 21st Century woman trying to juggle too much. If you wonder about the name, it’s because Mrs P is my alter ego: a not quite surrendered wife to Le Bloke.
Before Christmas a friend emailed to say that she was “dropping her feminist principles” when addressing the mountain of greetings cards on her desk. Writing two names for couples where the wife had kept her maiden name would take too long. I could sympathise, but the trouble is addressing me as Mrs P means addressing someone who doesn’t exist. Does it matter? Well, it does to me for a number of reasons.
Of course there is the standard feminist objection that taking my husband’s name infers I am his chattel, a word, I am informed, provides the root for cattle. Okay, you probably knew that, but come on, who wants to be called a cow? I like being a woman in my own right, not someone obliterated by the name of someone else. If I had a terrible surname, then perhaps I would take his on board. Likewise, if he had a terrible surname, he could take my name if he wanted.
There is also a professional argument. I have spent a long time building a name for myself as a journalist, commentator and industry expert. My byline has meaning. If I suddenly changed it, I would be starting from scratch. As seasoned marketeers will tell you, you don’t mess with the brand (unless it’s gone all Ratner). Besides, you try growing up in ’70s Manchester with a name no one else has. One day I will tell you about how I was called “Samantha” for a fortnight. I have fought hard for this name, I am not going to relinquish it easily.
Also, I – and here my logic breaks down, as it does occasionally – want to keep my surname because it is a remnant of my father, who died 10 years ago. Sentiment in these matters has a place. Anyway, have you seen the paperwork involved in changing your name? Bank accounts, bills, ownership documents….business cards… passports. Those who know me well know that in my life if admin is unnecessary, it is jettisoned in favour of a more interesting occupation, like writing blogs about life as the wife of Le Bloke.
© Danuta Kean 2012
12 Responses to “Je suis une housewife….among other things”
I completely agree about keeping your own name. Early on in my marriage lots of people were surprised and my mother-in-law was appalled but my name seemed part of me and I couldn’t imagine being called anything else!
I changed my name because I thought that I would spend longer as Mrs H-W than as Miss D, and because I didn’t want to have a different surname to my children. I hadn’t established myself sufficiently in my professional life when I got married for it to make a huge difference to my ‘brand’, but I totally understand WHY people choose to keep their maiden names (and don’t understand why MILs seem to get so upset about it!). It’s a personal choice, and people do either for personal reasons – we should just respect each others choices.
i shucked off my former name without a backward glance. it’s an awful one – a proper noun with unpleasant associations – which had hung like an albatross around my neck since i was old enough to understand what it meant. my husband’s name is lovely and bland – and the majority of my work has been done using it. for various complicated work-related reasonns, i’m now faced with the prospect of coming up with a nom de plume – very inconvenient – but i certainly won’t revert to my old/real name!
I was having this discussion with new flame before he left. I told him I wouldn’t take his name as long as his ex-wife was still using it. Even then I don’t think I would use it for work. I have been a Coady for too long now and I have always written under that name. It is also a seriously cool surname even if everyone spells it wrong!
I changed my name when I got married, and am very much in favour of the practice. True, there is the implication of ownership by one’s husband, but, crucially, if you don’t change your name, you have your father’s surname – so there is the implication of ownership by your father. Of the two, I feel strongly that to take your husband’s name is more feminist, because you get to choose your husband and you don’t get to choose your father. Also, in a decent contemporary relationship, husbands do not have power over wives. Mine certainly has none over me! Whereas in every father-daughter relationship, the father inevitably would have had some degree of power, before the daughter was 18. So, the feminist argument against changing your name when you marry is one that strikes me as deeply flawed.
I’m with Sophie on this. And I wasn’t very happy as the person I was under my previous name so I happily changed it and have had the ‘new’ one for 34 years. Bizarrely (or in my case just typically contrarily), just recently I’ve been thinking of using my previous surname. It’s so long since I’ve associated it with my family that all ghosts have been laid and now I’d quite like to have the cool association with the world’s best guitars. With love to you all from Judy Fender.
If my maiden name had been preferential to my married name, I would have given serious consideration to keeping it. As it was, I was very happy to take on the name of James and am equally content to build my brand with this surname.
My maiden name has a harshness to it, and I have no desire to be associated with it.. My brother felt strongly enough to change his by deed poll. I got married.
Kind regards
Laura.
I think I’d buy the ‘feminist’ argument for taking husband’s name if husbands also took wives names, but they so very rarely do. How about being really radical and naming the children after the mother, not the father? Or better still, both. Then the child can pick one or other as adult name, if they wish. I can’t imagine wanting to lose my family name, nor would I want my wife to lose hers. we both now have each other’s surnames as middle names. Happy all round.
It always strikes me how much more mutable the idea of a ‘name’ is to women than to men – even if we end up keeping it, we’ve had to think about it, and grew up as kids in all likelihood thinking we’d relinquish it one day. I changed my name – twice!! – and due to various bureaucratic vagaries I still have my US passport in the first married name, and have a longstanding confusion with Inland Revenue over their continuing use of the second (which I signed a paper swearing in law never to use again).
I ended up, pace the choice thing Sophie mentions above, taking a hyphenated version of both my parent’s names. It seemed more respectful of my mother and also suitable. My mother uses Evans Bush since her divorce in the seventies, and we appear to be a global family of two.
But the thing about my name now is, I’ve worked for it. I’ve established my reputation with it, which is something I could never do in either of those marriages. I earned it. It’s mine, and nobody can take that away.
And Danuta, re having the name no one else had – my sister was christened Hurley. Celtic, family name. She’s changed it. :/
When I married, I gave up (no I tried to hold onto but 20 years ago It seemed like hard work) my maiden name . I am recently separated from said husband and certainly when I took his name (which infact was not his fathers was never his legal surname until after we were married but was the name that he had been known by for years, It was his stepfather’s name ) it felt sort of ambivalent neither really his nor mine but ours.I also never expected to be unmarried to him so willingly took it on. We have three children and I think (think, though early days , months in) that I will keep the name as it was the name of us as a family unit for 20 years. or maybe I will give the children an opportunity to take my maiden name,it’s something we have discussed, the name thing. why not? It’s a funny place to be. I shall insist on Ms for now.
I find your comment very moving. Also, it raises a very important issue about what happens if we break up. I wish you well in your future Mary.
I have a similar view to your own concerning bureaucracy and unnecessary paperwork (99% of all paperwork is unnecessary, the other 1% is called good books). However by a twist of humor of the ancient Gods, we did not have a choice. My wife is Brazilian and I am Italian. On all Brazilian documents you need to have your parents names as well as your own including middle names. On Italian documents they no longer print your middle name. Including your birth certificate unless you ask for the extended version. I also have a previous marriage (which included my middle name as this happened in another country of which I also hold a passport, and this happened when Italy still printed middle names on official documents). Also, married women in Brazil are expected to change name but retain also their mother’s name. Not doing so only causes further problems with paperwork. To add to this, my wife and I could not agree on a single name for our little daughter, so she ended up with a first name and a middle name, and two surnames. And my wife now has three surnames, composed of her mother’s maiden name, her father’s surname and now mine too. At this point I think I can safely assume that if she is chattel, she’s also communal property. I am seriously thinking people should be allowed to go by just a single name, a la Cher. And the process should require them to simply go and register it somewhere where they scan a thumb print and that’s that.
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