Source: BBC
My name is Sophie Coulombeau. But a year from now, after the fuss from my wedding has died down, it could be something rather different. For me, to adopt the surname of my partner and relinquish my own would profoundly affect how I think about my own identity.
On the one hand, it would bind us into a family unit and make it easier to know what to write on the birth certificates if we ever have children. But on the other, it would make me first and foremost a wife, while my husband would remain, quite simply, himself. Introducing myself as “Sophie Hardiman” would mean that saying “I do” had fundamentally changed the answer to the question “Who am I?”
If I chose to take my new husband’s name, I’d be far from alone. A Eurobarometer survey, conducted in 1994, suggested that 94% of British women took their husbands’ names when they got married. Recent smaller-scale research, however, suggests that this proportion has shrunk over the last two decades, especially among highly-educated and younger women. In 2013, academic Dr Rachel Thwaites found that 75% of respondents took their husband’s names. Just last month, the Discourses of Marriage Research Group, a multi-institutional network interested in marriage equality, found that 54% of female respondents did the same.
Categories: Behaviour, Europe, Europe and Australia, European Union
I have no problem in ladies retaining their own name, if they so wish. But what about the children? This question should be legally settled.
What Islam says?
Well in many Islamic countries there is no system of family name like in the Western countries. Consequently the ladies usually keep their names. Often children are given names of the father’s tribe, but not necessarily. Any other views from readers?
In Islam there is no specific instruction about naming your children. But we all know that Islam wants the children to be recognized by their father. So much so that an adopted son should maintain his father’s name and not take the identity of the new father. So whether the wife changes her name or not, the children will be recognized with their father. In Arab countries some times they recognize children by “bin” so and so. And this can go upto their grandfather or sometimes even great grandfather.
I do not believe it is necessary for the woman to change her last name to match her husband’s name. But if changing he name brings about the thinking mentioned in this article, it may not be a bad idea.