# When did obituaries start referring to the wife & mother of the deceased by their maiden names? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 17, 2012, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-obituaries-start-referring-to-the-wife-mother-of-the-deceased-by-their-maiden-names/644277 "2012-12-17T05:44:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-obituaries-start-referring-to-the-wife-mother-of-the-deceased-by-their-maiden-names/644277/1 "2012-12-17T05:44:28Z")
As in this recent NYT obituary. I don’t read many obituaries. Has it always been this way? [Joe Allbritton, TV and Banking Titan, Dies at 87 By ROBERT D. HERSHEY Jr. Published: December 12, 2012](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/business/joe-allbritton-tv-and-banking-titan-dies-at-87.html?src=recg) > [@](#): > > Besides his son, Robert, who at one time was chief executive of Riggs, Mr. Allbritton is survived by his wife, the former Barbara Jean Balfanz, whom he married in 1967, and two grandchildren. > > Joe Lewis Allbritton was born in D’Lo, Miss., near Jackson, on Dec. 29, 1924, to Lewis A. Allbritton and the former Ada Carpenter. As a youngster during the Depression he stirred orange juice for $1 a day at a local bottling plant. While in junior high school he moved with his parents to Houston, where he worked after school each day in the cafe opened by his father. ---
**Author:** ![rsat3acr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a3d4f5/32.png) [@rsat3acr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rsat3acr)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-obituaries-start-referring-to-the-wife-mother-of-the-deceased-by-their-maiden-names/644277/2 "2012-12-17T11:56:38Z")
suppose it varies by publication. the obits of my family were written by us and submitted to the paper and printed for a fee much like a classified ad. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-obituaries-start-referring-to-the-wife-mother-of-the-deceased-by-their-maiden-names/644277/3 "2012-12-17T13:40:40Z")
I don’t know if it’s always been done, but I suspect that it has. I think the reason is for those people who knew the wife before she got married but wouldn’t recognize her under her married name. ---
**Author:** ![sugaree](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@sugaree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sugaree)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-obituaries-start-referring-to-the-wife-mother-of-the-deceased-by-their-maiden-names/644277/4 "2012-12-17T16:21:26Z")
This is the way I am used to seeing obituaries written, maiden names of deceased women, widows, and mothers printed, and also the married names of daughters as well, if applicable. And yeah, the idea is that as many people as possible can ID the deceased: “Oh, his mother was a Campbell! I bet that’s Lucretia’s cousin!” or “It says here that Rosa Smith Jones died…that must be the Rosa Smith that graduated with me.” I just did a Google search for old obituaries in a rural Pa county (so, not exactly on the cutting edge of up-to-minute news reporting trends). I found maiden names given as early as the 1900s/10s, although it would appear that the convention didn’t really take off until the 1960s/70s. In the 1800s, it seems, it was common for the deceased to be identified only as the son of his or her father, no mother named at all. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-obituaries-start-referring-to-the-wife-mother-of-the-deceased-by-their-maiden-names/644277/5 "2012-12-17T16:25:23Z")
I know distantly the obit editor of the Times. I’ll get ahold of her. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-obituaries-start-referring-to-the-wife-mother-of-the-deceased-by-their-maiden-names/644277/6 "2012-12-17T17:32:43Z")
Usually, I’ve seen it like this: Survived by his wife Barbara Jean (BALFANZ) and daughters Norma Jean (SMITH) and Betty Jean (JONES). So, it can refer to the maiden name OR the married name, but is just stuck in parenthesis to show that the person has another name they might be known by. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-obituaries-start-referring-to-the-wife-mother-of-the-deceased-by-their-maiden-names/644277/7 "2012-12-17T17:38:30Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > Usually, I’ve seen it like this: > > Survived by his wife Barbara Jean (BALFANZ) and daughters Norma Jean (SMITH) and Betty Jean (JONES). > > So, it can refer to the maiden name OR the married name, but is just stuck in parenthesis to show that the person has another name they might be known by. Oh, I forgot. It can also include the name of the spouse in the parenthesis, like … and daughters Norma Jean (Doug Smith) and Betty Jean (Harold Jones). ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2012, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-obituaries-start-referring-to-the-wife-mother-of-the-deceased-by-their-maiden-names/644277/8 "2012-12-18T13:57:19Z")
> [@sugaree](#): > > This is the way I am used to seeing obituaries written, maiden names of deceased women, widows, and mothers printed, and also the married names of daughters as well, if applicable. And yeah, the idea is that as many people as possible can ID the deceased: “Oh, his mother was a Campbell! I bet that’s Lucretia’s cousin!” or “It says here that Rosa Smith Jones died…that must be the Rosa Smith that graduated with me.” > … This makes sense. If you see a listing for Jane Smith, wife of William Jones, you might think, "Smith, Smith, my father’s mother’s maiden name was Smith, maybe Jane was his sister or something. Likewise, giving the married name could help you connect her with your family, e.g. if you see that she was Jane Smith [Jones] and you had a maternal grandfather named Jones, you might suspect that Jane might have been married to his sister or something.