The Anglo-American tradition is that a woman changes her name upon marriage. In the United States, the name change is also a change of legal name. Historically, I believe, most state courts assumed that the wife would take her husband’s family name. These days, when a couple applies for a marriage license, there often is a provision on the application for one or both parties to legally change their names.
Since the 1970s, of course, it has become more and more common for women to choose an alternative, most commonly, (1) not change their names at all, (2) hyphenate their family names with their husbands’ names. There are some women who sort of transition from maiden name => hyphenated name => husband’s name.
But in any case, a married woman’s “social” name almost always is exactly the same as her legal name. If she chooses not to change her social name, then her legal name does not change; if she chooses to change her social name, then her legal name also changes.
Of course, there is nothing in U.S. law or custom to stop a woman from doing what is apparently done in France, which is to change her social name, but keep her legal name the same, and there are some women who do do that, but it seems to me that this is quite rare. Such cases would be noted as being out of the norm.
In my line of work I’m constantly discovering new naming traditions - when I started working with a clientele that was more Asian, I discovered that many Asian women don’t take their husband’s last names at marriage, either.
And then there’s India, which is apparently its very own ball of wax…
The complicated situation in India results from the fact that India is not a single culture and it comprises dozens of ethnic groups. Think of India as being like the whole European Union only even more diverse. In essence, there is almost nothing that can be described as “Indian” without further qualification.
That thread must have been before my time, but if you have further questions about names in India, I’d be happy to contribute.
This is precisely why Beavis & Butthead wasn’t set in Denmark.
Better hope others don’t speak English if one is going to name one’s daughter “Bendie.” On the plus side, she wouldn’t have to think up a cool stripper name!
Actually, I think this is not too terribly uncommon among professional women. At least, I’m thinking of where each name is used in its own context. In professional contexts, Mr. Gregor’s wife may still be “Dr. Haffensass,” but in other social contexts, she may be “Mrs. Gregor.”
In these cases, I think it’s might be more common for a woman’s “married” name to be her legal name and her maiden name remain her professional name, but not her legal name.
I’m not sure about that. I respond to my “married” name although the only time I come close to using it myself is on invitations, etc from “Mr & Mrs”. But my employer is only going to use one name for me, and that name has to be the one on my driver’s license, social security card and bank account (if I want direct deposit). If I’m using it for work, social security, driver’s license and bank accounts ( and all the other things associated with them), then I guess that’s my legal name.
Y’see, there is another of those “different” things. Someone from the cultures where a woman’s legal name is her birth name own no matter what her station in life could argue that there’s something seriously wrong with a society where she’s expected to change her legal name upon marriage. It’s just different, not an appalling violation of basic human rights. Same deal with the baby names. It’s not a slippery slope to fascism, it’s a different way of organizing things, and calling it fascistic is disrespectful to the victims of fascism.
Oh, I know that generally, and I learn new stuff about India all the time - probably 2/3 of the people I do immigration work for these days are Indian, so I’ve seen all sorts of quirks. It just would have been nice to have some predictable way to figure out how people’s names would change in different situations - it would make for a lot less editing of legal documents after the fact.
(And I can’t tell you how many debates I’ve had with clients that in any other context, I’d ordinarily be happy to use whatever nickname or version of their name they prefer, but the visa folks are demanding, and if their documents each have a different version of their name on them, bureaucratic hell will ensue.)
Thanks, and I may well take you up on that one of these days.
I’d be curious to hear what kind of arguments they are making. Names seem to be a problem for Indians who see themselves as joining the “first” world. Many Indians seem to be pretty cavalier about their names, especially the spelling. There are a lot of Indians who are overeager to appease the Western world by simplifying their names.
On the other hand, there are institutions like Calcutta University, who will issue certificates with only the “correct” spellings of Anglicised Bengali names like Banerji (Bandhopadhyay), Chatterji (Chattopadhyay), and Mukherji (Mukhopadhyay).
Mostly they can’t understand why I insist that the remainder of their documents match their passport; they’d rather go by whatever name they use in daily life. The State Department, of course, thinks otherwise, and more than one client has been subjected to lengthy security clearance on visa issuance because the DOS thinks they may be trying to pull a fast one by using so many aliases.
I mean, after all, how are we supposed to know that the birth certificate (if there even is one), passport, educational documents, and marriage certificate, each of which uses a different version of the person’s name, all apply to the same person? And don’t start me on the reversible order of first names and family names, or the common use of initials-only on official documents, or the birth certificates that list only the child’s gender (no name at all).
I have encountered these kinds of things too. One was with regard to a friend of mine, born in the United States, whose legal documents all had slightly different versions of his name. After finishing high school, he got sick of it and went to court to fix the problem. Another friend of mine ran into trouble when his father used a version of his name on a financial-aid application that was different from the name he was known by in his university records.
Are you ever able to get the message across that they have to choose one version of their name and use it on all legal documents?
Most of the time,they see my point once I explain the issue. But every once in a while, though they profess to agree with me, they keep doing the same thing anyway. With the guy who was forced (because of the security clearance issue) to go to his home country consulate in India to get his visa renewed rather than taking a much shorter trip to Canada, it was all I could do to keep from saying “I told you so.”
People, if your visa sponsor is hiring a law firm to do your documents for you, and paying lots of money for their expertise, you might want to consider listening to them.
Yes, I really do - and good Searching. Nobody went to a government agency and legally forced those people to change their daughter’s name from Bagina. There was no penalty levied against the mother and father for chosing that name.
All I said was that my wife chose to have the child’s name pronounced in a way that did not make every young girl in the room cringe all day.
A far cry from facism, IMHO.
When she is of age to do so, it is entirely possible that young Bagina will scamper off to the Sullivan County Courthouse ( conveniently located in bucolic and rustic downtown Monticello, New York ) and have her name legally changed.
Nobody went to a government agency and legally forced those people to change their daughter’s name from Bagina. There was no penalty levied against the mother and father for chosing that name.