I’ve just read about the outcome of an Australian court case concerning whether or not two children should have their surnames legally changed to that of their father. The father argued that it was ‘an Australian principle’ that children take their father’s surnames, ‘important for their sense of identity’, and - here’s the clincher - ‘right and proper’.
The judge rejected these arguments, and the father’s request for a double-barrelled surname, saying:
The flaw in the argument that a child needs to have a parent’s surname as part of theirs in order to prevent a confusion about identity or cement a relationship with a parent, is readily exposed when one considers that no one would dream of suggesting that the millions of Australian children who were given their father’s surname in the 19th and 20th centuries had, as a result, a less than satisfactory relationship with their mother and their maternal extended family or were confused about their identity.
There were particular circumstances relating to this case to do with disputed paternity and custody issues. Nonetheless, it raises an interesting question: whose surname or family name should a child have?
Names can be a badge of individualist identity, but they can also contain links to the past, to family and friends, and to a child’s wider community. There are as many diverse reasons for family naming practices as there are diverse families. And names - and who has the right to name - are also about power. In the Bible, for example, Adam, who was given the power to name the animals, was also given dominion over them. In the Grimm’s fairy-tale, if the queen could correctly guess the name of Rumplestiltskin then he would no longer have power over her. It is no coincidence either that naming - or more accurately re-naming - was (and is) part of the process of colonisation.
But back to the level of inter-personal relationships.
This recent Australian case resonated with me, because we grappled with similar questions (although without being too concerned with what was ‘right and proper’). What follows traces how we decided whose surname our baby should have. I am by no means suggesting that it is what everyone else should do, not least because we only represent one family type. I’m simply offering it up as one story among many.
First, we need to go back a little way, till the time BD (that’s not a mistake: BD means ‘Before Daughter’)
My partner and I are married (which still seems like a funny thing to say. I like to think that if we’d had the option of a civil union, I could say that we are united with civility instead, but married it is). After we were married, I didn’t change my name. I had no intention of changing my name, and my husband wasn’t the least bit concerned that I should change my name. That one was easy enough, as I’m reasonably sure that I wouldn’t have been seeing someone long enough to get to the marrying point if they were the kind of person who would insist on me changing my name.
I’ve heard many reasons for why women should change their names if they marry, ranging from the traditional to the very personal to the slightly unhinged. But none have been as compelling to me as ‘this is my name - why should I change it’? I come from a fairly traditional family: my name - or, more particularly, my surname - is my father’s surname, to which my mother also changed hers when she got married. As some have pointed out, if I refused to change my name for feminist reasons, then isn’t it at least a little ironic that I’m clinging to my father’s surname? Wouldn’t it be better to choose a whole new name? To which my answer is ‘this is my name - why should I change it?’ No-one expects my husband to change his name to mine, so why should I be expected to do the opposite, just because it has been a convention in a specific society for a specific amount of time (this genealogical website contains lots of interesting information about diverse contemporary and historical naming practices)?
So I didn’t. And it’s not like the world spun off its axis or anything.
So far, so straightforward.
When it came to naming the baby, however, there was much more to negotiate. The baby was going to be a new person, who was partly me, partly her father, and wholly herself. It was one thing to stand my ground when it came to my own name and identity, but it is another when I began to construct one on behalf of someone else.
First up was the fun bit. What would his or her first name or names be? We settled on some boys names fairly quickly, though struggled with a middle name that didn’t offer up potentially tease-worthy initials. The girls names were harder: I liked ones my husband didn’t, and vice versa. I couldn’t believe he suggested, among others, ‘Ena’. Had he never seen Ena Sharples glower out from under her hairnet in Coronation Street? We eventually settled on a first name - chosen first because we both liked it, but it had pleasing family connections too - and the middle name followed easily.
Now to the hard bit. Whose surname or names, in what order, and with what punctuation?
The completely new surname for all of us solution didn’t feel right to us, particularly, as I’ve already noted, I had been so firm all along with ‘this is my name - why should I change it?’ Double-barrelled names also received pretty short shrift: it felt unwieldy and carried connotations that didn’t appeal. Which left us fairly quickly with some finite options:
- father’s surname
- mother’s surname
- both surnames, non-hyphenated (as is the practice is in Spain)
- father’s surname, but with mother’s surname as a middle name
- mother’s surname, but with father’s surname as a middle name
I made my mind up pretty quickly - mine last and his in the middle - and, BD, my husband abstractly agreed.
But, once we arrived in the time AD, all bets were off. With an actual live baby to name, challenging social convention now had to be weighed together with creating a visible connection to her and to each other. As we went back and forth about what was the best solution, the surname box on the birth registration form remained blank. We received not one but three increasingly threatening letters from the Department of Infernal Affairs telling us that ‘failing to register the birth could disadvantage the child’ and result in prosecution. One was postmarked 26 December.
The third threatening letter did, however, force our hand. As our baby’s parents, we had to come to some firm decisions about what her name and her identity - at least for the first part of her life - would be. It was time to nail our colours to the wall. My husband supported my desire to have my surname as part of the baby’s, but didn’t want his erased in doing so. OK, so we include his surname. He was a little more confused about where it should go: in the middle or at the end? On some level, he felt that having his surname as a middle name would give it lesser importance - after all people are mostly called by their given and family names, not all their middle names all the time.
We continued to go back and forth over the same old ground: does that mean you want to double-barrel? No. Well, we could have both our names at the end? No. So does this mean you want your name at the end? I don’t know.
And so it went on.
How did we resolve this? Well, with time. Over time, we realised that the issue of surname order was actually informed by two others. One of the issues was creating connections with the baby. But as the minutes, days and weeks passed with her, a handful of letters on a form seemed like the least important way of creating connections with her. And as time passed, another issue that emerged was the kind of relationship that we have with each other: my husband is not the kind of man who wants to assert his right to have his name as the baby’s surname, and that is also more important than where on the form our respective surnames go. And, I have to admit, the more time passed, the more it became clear to me that I wanted my surname to be last. If we have another child, I am happy to consider the option of reversing what we did this time - having my surname as the middle name, and my husband’s as the surname - but this first time, I wanted the last word.
In the end, the baby was named with both our surnames: her father’s as a middle name, mine as her surname. If, in the future, she wishes to change it for whatever reason, that’s her prerogative. Until then, she has her mother’s surname, and her first name echoes the names of some of her female ancestors on her mother’s side. It means her father gets the presumptive inquiries directed to ‘Mr Pryor’ that I would otherwise have got. It means that her name recognises that her mother’s identity and family connections are visible and at least as important as her father’s. It might not be the final nail in the coffin of patriarchy (or even the first), but it does demonstrate that naming practices are not neutral, natural or trivial.
Just ask Rumplestiltskin.
