YOU might agree with me that Facebook has become one of the main public platforms for social engagement among many people.
For most people, it could be filled with old high school and childhood neighbourhood friends reaching out to accept their friend requests.
For others, what may seem challenging in confirming a particular friend request is the name change and the face change for some long lost friends.
With so many changes that take place as one grows, such as moving to another town, country, taking up a different profession and later getting married, name change too, is one of the outstanding changes.
Name change is exactly as described on Facebook, where one has to rely on the physical appearance of a profile picture on the list of names appearing for requests.
Despite the ongoing shift in societal norms and gender discriminatory practices towards more equality, many women still choose to replace their birth surnames with the family name of their spouse upon marriage.
Majority of women look forward to be called by their husband’s name once they get married and taking up a husband’s name is eagerly awaited, though the path that one decides to pick is entirely up to each woman.
This means that as long as women decide what name they should carry, inheriting a name of their choice once they get married should not be a forcing matter, but rather be a choice.
General observation suggests that during the past decades, the number of well educated women who are retaining their surnames even after getting married has greatly increased.
In addition, some women have decided not to change their name to preserve some personal autonomy.
Remarkably, some gender experts describe this conversation as being as old as feminism itself, while others argue that feminism is ultimately about giving women free choice.
Pardon me as I try to discuss the modern woman and explore how the changing of names of women upon getting married came into being.
“There is nothing wrong with taking your husband’s last name, and the majority of women around the world are holding firm to the tradition,” a marriage expert explains.
This shift has not only been dominant with the Western countries, but some African women too are choosing to do the same.
Like in other African countries, taking the husband’s name in Zambia has been said to be patriarchal and inherited from the idea that a wife and children are a husband’s property.
While there may not be a law compelling women to take their husbands’ last name, some marriage counselors believe that women who reject the idea of changing their name when they get married should not be too quick to judge others.
Studies suggest that it is important to understand the origins of the practice of name changing before the patriarchal custom is blamed as being the influence behind the act.
The custom of name changing was not an African notion.
It is believed to have been started by the French and later spread to Britain and other parts of Europe during the 11 th Century.
The practice of assuming a husband’s name was birthed in a deeply patriarchal society in Europe, which was also adopted into law for every woman to take her husband’s name.
For instance, in England, surnames did not even exist and the citizenry was known only by their first name.
However, as the population grew, keeping track of who was who became a bit more difficult, and the modern convention of using surnames as an identifier soon became the norm.
It was under the English common law that it was asserted that once married, a woman’s identity was covered by her husband from the moment of her getting married.
Furthermore, it was recognised that she and her husband essentially became one and without name changing, women could not own property or enter into contracts on their own.
It is documented that during this period, husbands had complete control over their wives, legally and financially.
What was alarming was that the law limited a woman’s recourse in rape and domestic violence cases, and women had no legal rights over their children.
Besides the marital surname change introduced, one important social issue to take note of is how the status of inequality in marriage stems way back.
Studies also show that women underwent an extended period of decline in rights and status that also saw married women’s identity merged with that of their husbands.
In many parts of Africa, names given to people were descriptive, depending on the circumstances that surrounded their birth, praising of something and generally, names also described people and their works.
Notably, we are told that the British colonialism, which began some two centuries ago, extended the idea of name calling by introducing it in Africa.
Elsewhere, women were not allowed to get passports, driver’s licenses, late alone register to vote unless they adopted their husband’s last name.
Further records indicate that in 1920, women were allowed to vote, though the fine print read that they could only do so using their husband’s last name.
It was not until over a half century later that a court upheld women’s right to vote using their maiden name.
In a discussion with some women, we talked about it beforehand as we interacted during a cooking session in preparation to take amatebeto for a fellow woman entering marriage.
I took interest to observe that some of the factors that have prompted some women to retain their surnames include their accomplishments achieved in their lifetime before they got married, which may be a challenge in certain circumstances.
“It took me a while to achieve and grow my business, which I have also marketed under my surname and after getting married, I weighed the options of being recognised under a different name tag as such trends in business branding can sometimes come with a cost. So I decided to maintain my last name,” one of them said.
For others working in various fields like legal, medical and media where their names are prominent, they said keeping their names is more pronounced.
Further as the discussion progressed, some women felt that it is important not to change their
names so as to have their personal autonomy.
“For so many years, everyone knows me by my names and suddenly one is expected to give it up after you get married? I feel nothing changes,” one of the women said.
She said there are cases, such as at church, among neighbours and some workmates who will call a woman by her husband’s name while people who know and have interacted with her from childhood would still continue calling her by her name.
Another woman said her parents had challenges of fertility, hence she was born alone in the family and choosing to maintain her fathers’ name had instilled that bond and continuity of her relationship with her father.
“I am very proud of using my husband’s name and that shows that I’m part of the family that I’m now attached to and being called Mrs feels humbling,” another woman said.
As marriage experts have observed,while the concept of taking your husband’s last name is ingrained in our culture and viewed almost as a right of passage, it should not matter whether that is done in keeping with, or going against the recognised patriarchal norms.