Medieval Naming Conventions 101

I dare you to say Clovis Clothild Chlodomer Chlothar Childebert three times fast.

Excerpted from page 92 of Stephanie Coontz's brilliant "Marriage, A History." 

The New York Times' Survey on Marital Name Decisions

'I Didn't Want to Lose My Identity': 16,000 Readers Reflect on Their Surnames
By Hanna Ingber, The New York Times

This is a great read. I particularly identify with the introductory story about Katherine Yuk, who hated her name as a child due to schoolyard teasing but eventually decided to keep it. I, similarly, was teased as a child for having the last name Dickson. I mean, kids can be mean when you have a slang word for male genitalia hanging out in your surname.

"The Wedding Morning" - John Bacon

I've also had some fun with automatically generated email addresses that cut off after so many letters; I believe my automatically generated one for law school was along the lines of "RDickso" or "DicksoR." It was bad enough that I called the IT department and begged them to change it for me, but they refused. I'm pretty sure I logged into that e-mail address only once, to set it to forward all my e-mails to my personal e-mail, and then never used it again. 

It also doesn't help that I have the less common spelling of a fairly popular last name, so my entire life, I've had to fight people spelling my name as Dixon, or alternatively, Dickens or Dickinson. (Nope. Fail.) It's become enough of a problem that if I don't receive an e-mail I'm expecting, I call and make sure they had the right spelling of both of my names (oh yeah, my first name is the less common spelling of a fairly popular first name as well, so that just adds to the fun). But as I get older (I'm 29 now), I've grown to embrace it more. I wouldn't call it my identity, but at the same time, I'm not certain I'd recognize myself by a different name. Dealing with the problems that go along with my name are just part of the package, to me now.

I'm actually a bit disappointed in this NYT article. The stories from various women about their choice is truly lovely but that's all there is. Give me some statistics, people! Did you survey 16,000 women and then not come up with numbers about how many kept their name vs. changed vs. combined? How many gave their own names to their children? How many women in homosexual relationships responded? What trends showed up among those couples? Really, this seems like a failed opportunity. I'm very much hoping that there are more installments in the future that provide more information from the survey. 

On "the Good Old Days" of Marriage

"...[F]or thousands of years, people have been proclaiming a crisis in marriage and pointing backwards to better days. The ancient Greeks complained bitterly about the declining morals of wives. The Romans bemoaned their high divorce rates, which they contrasted with an earlier rate of family stability. The European settlers in America began lamenting the decline of the family and the disobedience of women and children almost as soon as they stepped off the boats.  

Celebrations during a wedding in Ancient Greece.  

Worrying about the decay of marriage isn't just a Western habit. In the 1990s, sociologist Amy Kaler, conducting interviews in a region of Southern Africa where divorce had long been common, was surprised to hear people say that marital strife and instability were new to their generation. So Kaler went back and looked at oral histories collected fifty years earlier. She found that the grandparents and great-grandparents of the people she was interviewing in the 1990s had also described their own marital relations as much worse than the marriages of their  parents' and grandparents' day. 'The invention of a past filled with good marriages,' Kaler concluded, is one way people express discontent about other aspects of contemporary life."

A bride is led to her wedding, with her new husband at right. 

From Stephanie Coontz's "Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage"  

Resource Material!

Check out all the books I've checked out or purchased used to read for this blog! :D I'm in book heaven now. 

On the Legal Side: The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women

"...the full and complete development of a country, the welfare of the world and the cause of peace require the maximum participation of women on equal terms with men in all fields "

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1979 and is often described as the international bill of rights for women. States that are a party to the agreement pledge "to make equality between men and women a reality by providing equal opportunities in all fields, whether political, civil, economic, social or cultural, as well as in family life. Those States also committed themselves to reporting to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women on steps taken to fulfill their obligations." (Source: The UN handbook on the convention and its optional protocol)  States also have the option to sign onto an optional protocol to the convention which allows women whose rights have been violated and who have exhausted national remedies to seek redress from an independent international body. 

The United States has signed this treaty but not ratified it. To be honest, our country does this pretty often. For a treaty to be ratified by the United States, the Senate must advise and consent the President on the treaty by a two-thirds vote. Only after the Senate approves can the President ratify it. Here's what Wikipedia says about this: "While the House of Representatives does not vote on it at all, the requirement for the Senate's advice and consent to ratification makes it considerably more difficult to rally enough political support for international treaties. Also, if implementation of the treaty requires the expenditure of funds, the House of Representatives may be able to block or at least impede such implementation by refusing to vote for the appropriation of the necessary funds."

So what power does an unratified signature have?  "Where the signature is subject to ratification, acceptance or approval, the signature does not establish the consent to be bound. However, it is a means of authentication and expresses the willingness of the signatory state to continue the treaty-making process. The signature qualifies the signatory state to proceed to ratification, acceptance or approval. It also creates an obligation to refrain, in good faith, from acts that would defeat the object and the purpose of the treaty." [Arts.10 and 18, Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties 1969]

Here's the part that is most relevant to marriage and marital surname decisions:

Article 16

1. States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in all matters relating to marriage and family relations and in particular shall ensure, on a basis of equality of men and women:

(a) The same right to enter into marriage;

(b) The same right freely to choose a spouse and to enter into marriage only with their free and full consent;

(c) The same rights and responsibilities during marriage and at its dissolution;

(d) The same rights and responsibilities as parents, irrespective of their marital status, in matters relating to their children; in all cases the interests of the children shall be paramount;

(e) The same rights to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children and to have access to the information, education and means to enable them to exercise these rights;

(f) The same rights and responsibilities with regard to guardianship, wardship, trusteeship and adoption of children, or similar institutions where these concepts exist in national legislation; in all cases the interests of the children shall be paramount;

(g) The same personal rights as husband and wife, including the right to choose a family name, a profession and an occupation;

(h) The same rights for both spouses in respect of the ownership, acquisition, management, administration, enjoyment and disposition of property, whether free of charge or for a valuable consideration.

2. The betrothal and the marriage of a child shall have no legal effect, and all necessary action, including legislation, shall be taken to specify a minimum age for marriage and to make the registration of marriages in an official registry compulsory.

Book Excerpt: Elizabeth Gilbert on the Marriage Benefit Imbalance

Photo by Elycefeliz on Flickr. Used under a Creative Commons License.

At this point in my life, I still move around a bit too much for me to be comfortable building up much of a library. I regularly go through and clean out my books and donate any that don't have special meaning to me. 

I will never give away Elizabeth Gilbert's books. I've had "Eat Pray Love" for years; my copy is lovingly highlighted, dogeared, and underlined. On my recent move from Chicago to Northern Virginia, I listened to an audio book of her work "Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage" and then promptly bought a hardcopy of it. I've already started highlighting it and underlining it; there's a very good chance that part of its words on the radical nature of marriage will end up in my wedding ceremony. It's fantastic and fascinating and if my blog ends up being a quarter as brilliant, insightful, and educational as that book, I will be incredibly pleased with myself.

Today's excerpt, however, is a bit more realistic and depressing: 

...[W]e have to start with the cold, ugly fact that marriage does not benefit women as much as it benefits men. I did not invent this fact, and I don't like saying it, but it's a sad truth, backed up by study after study. By contrast, marriage as an institution has always been terrifically beneficial for men. If you are a man, say the actuarial charts, the smartest decision you can possibly make for yourself-assuming that you would like to lead a long, happy, healthy, prosperous existence-is to get married. Married men perform dazzlingly better in life than single men. Married men live longer than single men; married men accumulate more wealth than single men; married men excel at their careers above single men; married men are far less likely to die a violent death than single men; married men report themselves to be much happier than single men; and married men suffer less from alcoholism, drug addiction, and depression than do single men.

"A system could not well have been devised more studiously hostile to human happiness than marriage," wrote Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1813, but he was dead wrong, or at least with regard to male human happiness. There doesn't seem to be anything, statistically speaking, that a man does not gain by getting married.

Dishearteningly, the reverse is not true. Modern married women do not fare better in life than their single counterparts. Married women in America do not live longer than single women; married women do not accumulate as much wealth as a single woman (you take a 7 percent pay cut, on average, just for getting hitched); married women do not thrive in their careers to the extent single women do; married women are significantly less healthy than single women; married women are more likely to suffer from depression than single women; and married women are more likely to die a violent death than single women--usually at the hands of a husband, which raises the grim reality that, statistically speaking, the most dangerous person in the average woman's life is her own man.

All this adds up to what puzzled sociologists call the "Marriage Benefit Imbalance"--a tidy name for an almost freakishly doleful conclusion: that women generally lose in teh exchange of marriage vows, while men win big.

Now before we all lie down under our desks and weep--which is what this conclusion makes me want to do--I must assure everyone that the situation is getting better. As the years go by and more women become autonomous, the Marriage Benefit Imbalance diminishes, and there are some factors that can narrow this inequity considerably. The more education a married woman has, the more money she earns, the later in life she marries, the fewer children she bears, and the more help her husband offers with household chores, the better her quality of life in marriage will be. If there was ever a good moment in Western history, then, for a woman to become a wife, this would probably be it. If you are advising your daughter on her future, and you want her to be a happy adult someday, then you might want to encourage her to finish her schooling, delay marriage for as long as possible, earn her own living, limit the number of children she has, and find a man who doesn't mind cleaning the bathtub. Then your daughter may have a chance at leading a life that is nearly as healthy and wealthy and happy as her future husband's life will be. 

Laurie Scheuble: Marital Surname Guru

Laurie Scheuble is a fabulous sociologist at Penn State who researches a number of topics but most interestingly to me, marital naming. I'm sure I'll be mentioning her many many more times on this blog, so I wanted to start off by giving her a proper introduction! I came to know of her through her appearance on the "What would a feminist do?" podcast but you'll also see her quoted in many many news articles on marital name trends; she's pretty much the expert* on marital surnames these days.

By Jenn and Tony Bot, Used under a Creative Commons license.

Just as a few examples:

"Maiden Names, on the Rise Again" By Claire Cain Miller and Derek Willis, New York Times, June 27, 2015

“The pressure [to take their husband's name] is huge,” said Laurie Scheuble, who teaches sociology at Penn State and studies marital naming. “This is the strongest gendered social norm that we enforce and expect.”

She said the resurgence in keeping names could be because women now go to college at higher rates than men, celebrities often keep their names and couples commonly live together before marriage.

“When they do get around to marrying, they’ve already lived in a household with two names, so maybe it seems normal to them,” Ms. Scheuble said.

"A bride-to-be asks about keeping her last name" By Barbara Brotman, Chicago Tribune, April 13, 2015.

I was so certain, when I got married 31 years ago, that the tradition of a woman adopting her husband's name would become a relic of a dusty past, a sexist oddity one step removed from the "Mrs. John Smith" references that once erased women's first names, too.

I was so wrong.

Even back in the name-keeping heyday of the 1970s and '80s, the majority of women — including some of my most independent-minded, professionally accomplished women friends — were taking their husband's name.
...
The social conventions are just too strong, said Laurie Scheuble, senior lecturer in sociology at Pennsylvania State University. She is co-author with Penn State sociologist David Johnson — her husband, whose name she did not take — of a study that showed 82 percent of female college students said they intended to take their husband's name if they married.

"I don't think it's ever going to change very much," she said.

"A Marriage Proposal Can Bring Up Question of Identity" By Carol Guensberg, VOA News, December 24, 2016

"Ninety percent of women still change their names upon marriage, though 20 percent keep their birth surname as their middle name," said Laurie Scheuble, a Pennsylvania State University sociologist who has studied marital naming conventions for three decades. "It is, in fact, the normative thing to change your name to your husband’s."

According to Scheuble, "women who retain their birth surname tend to be well educated." They have careers, lower levels of religiosity, nontraditional gender roles and "husbands who are well educated, too, because it’s the whole tolerance factor." She has found no link between name retention and commitment to marriage. "There’s no differences in divorce rates among people who change their names or not." 

The researcher kept her surname when she married, as did another sister, to prevent it from dying out, she explained. When she and her husband had a daughter, Scheuble became the girl’s middle name. 

"Women get lost, women have always gotten lost" to historical records, Scheuble said. 

You can find some of her articles online - though most of them are behind paywalls - but I've really enjoyed reading the one article I can find available online for free.  I particularly find some of the hypotheses contained within fascinating. 

"Marital Name Changing Attitudes and Plans of College Students: Comparing Change Over Time and Across Regions" Laurie K. Scheuble, David R. Johnson and Katherine M. Johnson; Sex Roles, February 1, 2012.  [Internal citations removed to increase ease of reading]

"Practices may be indicative of social norms, but do they adequately reflect attitudes? There is evidence that social expectations for women in relation to work and family life have changed substantially over the last several decades and become much more progressive found that, over time, there have been higher levels of support for women's rights and less agreement with survey items that have a more restrictive view of gender roles. Why have these changes in norms not been reflected in an increase in the percentage of women who retain their birth surname upon marriage?

One potential explanation of this issue arose in a study by Nugent (2010): she conducted a content analysis of 600 internet posts on the topic of children's surnames. Although women sometimes had preferences to keep their birth surnames (and give these names to their children) partners, relatives, and others “enforce[d] the cultural mandates of single shared surnames." As such “cultural reality” thwarted women's “egalitarian agendas” because women are often held accountable to different standards than men when making sacrifices for home and family life. This justifies viewing attitudes as separate from plans or practices for marital naming and suggests that women's attitudes about marital naming may be more progressive than their actual plans. This is consistent with the theory of cultural lag that some elements of culture change far more slowly than others and that norms may change more rapidly than actual behaviors. While women are accepting of other woman retaining their birth surname when they marry they do not plan to do so themselves."

Other articles quoting Laurie Scheuble or featuring her research: 

"Not taking Hubby's Name? You May be Judged Harshly" By Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience, February 23, 2012

"Japanese women want to keep their surnames, but legal hurdles still remain" By Motoko Rich, New York Times, October 24, 2016

"Millenial moms making their last name a child's first name" By Alison Bowen, Chicago Tribune, October 27, 2015

"What's in a name? Hillary Clinton knows more than most" By Lisa Lerer, Associated Press, December 5, 2015

*Sidenote: I love seeing what areas academics become known as experts in. When I was a journalist, I always enjoyed combing through my undergraduate university's Media Sources Guide and finding the most unusual expertises possible. Some of my favorites: the science of happiness,  the history of death in america, vehicle safety devices, the history of nuclear weapons, using technology in natural environments, job satisfaction, and proms. I would LOVE to learn about the history of all of these things, quite honestly. 

The Survey in Which All Married Women Naturally Have Many Different Opinions

Are you a married woman who'd be interested in answering some questions about your background and surname decision? The survey's over here:  https://goo.gl/forms/ooeztPKzWrPOqlT73

As an overanalyzer and loving collector of All The Data, I naturally put together a survey to get the opinions of all my friends and family as soon as I came up with the idea to do this blog. All the married ladies, anyway. Don't worry, there will be SO many other surveys coming in the future, including those looking into the opinions of married men, unmarried people in general, and LGBTQIA folks (married or unmarried) in particular. 

Now, keep in mind that I'm completely untrained in the art of surveying (As always, this entire project is definitely a work in progress so constructive criticism is always welcome.). The answers I've received so far also came almost entirely from my friends and family, which lends itself to a bias since I'm naturally friends with and/or related to the best, most fabulous women ever.

That being said, I've received a ton of different thoughts and opinions from all over the map. I've heard so many different reasons women have for changing or not changing their names. These amazing women have at various turns delighted me, surprised me, shocked me with stories of their experiences, and really made me think.

Photo by Julochka on Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license -

Here's a selection of some of my favorite answers so far. Don't worry, there will be more to come!

On what influenced their decision: 

Religion, Spirituality or Change of Faith

"I am a practicing Roman Catholic. God calls us each by name according to my faith and therefore, I kept the name given to me first, middle and last at baptism."

"I read a lot (A LOT) of articles prior to my decision, spoke with people whom I respected who hadn't changed their own name, and dealt with a lot of backlash from my close family because it wasn't a "Christian" thing to do. I was raised religious, and am convinced it did a lot of damage to me, so I didn't want to consider that cycle of hurt in my life. I imagined myself signing my name "MyFirstName HisLastName" and just shuddered because it would have felt like giving up a part of me. I also chose to make my wedding as egalitarian and feminist as possible within reason (i.e. not wearing a veil over my face, having a female officiant, not having her say "who gives this woman away" to my dad, saying "You may now kiss each other" instead of "kiss the bride"). I didn't want to hyphenate because that was just another concession as a woman that my husband wouldn't have to make and would still make me feel like his property."

"I used to be Mormon, or LDS. It's an extremely conservative religion and feminism was a bad word. I felt a tug between what was expected (changing my name) and what I wanted (keeping my name). As I had a faith crisis and transition I became more feminist and more independent.

"I was raised a Christian, and while there was an expectation from non-Christian friends that I would change my name (simply due to societal conditioning), the expectation within the church that I would change my name was stronger, and I had many conversations with people where I had to strongly defend my decision."

Photo by Julochka on Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

Family Culture and Experiences

"My desire to keep my surname stems from my feminism, and that is my own family culture - I was raised a feminist, as was every other descendant of my maternal grandmother."

"My name change is ultimately based on what I wanted to do. My fiance would have been fine if I hadn't changed my name. I like the idea of the names matching purely because of the tradition to do so. Silly as it may be, I like the sound of Mr. and Mrs."

"My grandmother had a job and owned a business in a small town where that was not normal. A pastor preached a sermon that my uncle's polio was because she had a job. That background rather lets you know you can do what you believe is necessary and proper."

"I had somewhat of an identity crisis before I was married. My husband and I had been dating since 2007 (senior year of high school) and we knew in college that we wanted to get married once we both had stable jobs. We were engaged in 2013 while he was finishing law school. For a period of about 5 years I already felt like we were "married" because of our discussions and promises for the future. So taking my husband's surname was liberating for me because I had felt like we had already been married for a while. I also just really liked how my husband's surname sounded with my first name over my maiden name!"

Photo by julochka on Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

On The Practical Implications of Their Decision:

"My surname is much easier to spell and pronounce now and it's just more convenient on paperwork etc to have the same surname as my husband. It's made my life a lot easier in a practical sense."

"I received maybe a little judgment from some of my feminist friends, but changing my name hasn't kept me from having my own identity outside of being a wife."

"I am proud of keeping my name and surprised how few issues it creates. I expected challenges with international travel once we had children. It has been a breeze. Sometimes I joke, that if I were implicated in a crime ...then I would use my husband's last name. (He doesn't find that joke very funny!)"

"Changing my name hasn't affected my life, really. The only effect really is that my in-laws feel pleased and proud that I carry their name and my husband feels honored."

"There are some irritations when checking into a hotel room/rental car to remember who booked it (me or him) and what name it would be under. Sometimes it feels like I am lying "The name is ______. Oh you can't find it? Well, try ______ instead." Occasionally, on a holiday card or a place setting at a wedding -- they will put just his surname. I think that is more out of expediency/convenience as we both have really long surnames. There was one incident at a charity race, where I checked in for my race packet. Then I said, I wanted to pick up my husband's packet. The volunteer said - he's not registered. I got a little testy, because I had registered us both at the same time. She said, "Well, there is only one person with your name." I replied, "I decided to let him keep his own last name when we got married." She blushed and then found his race packet when I gave her his surname."

"I kept my first married name after we separated because I wanted the same last name as the children. It's less controversial at PTA meetings and doctor's offices to have to explain different last names. Just more simple and fewer people intrude. I.E. no one ever asks "Why did you take his name?" But seems like women have to constantly explain if they don't."