Couverture by any other name

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ms. Lauren joins the naming game. Oh how fun, the naming game!

UPDATE: Tyler Cowen chimes in on the dispute over women taking their husband's name upon marriage. Eugene Volokh, you may recall, got the whole thing started, and I've blogged about it below and before.

If a married woman changes her name because she feel like it more power to her, right? Let's have a closer look.

To start, this argument is besides the point when it comes to the claim that everyone in a family must have the same last name in order to avoid some unspeakable confusion. Will the children of a woman who kept her "maiden" name go through life thinking that she's not their mother? Will they think that she loved them less than their father?

But the real reason is that husbands, who were weaned on the rememberance of couverture, will feel that their wives have not surrendered themselves completely if they don't take their name upon marriage.

For a wife to take her husband's name in the eighteenth century was to have her identity erased, her rights suspended, her agency subsumed under her husband's. For a woman to take her husband's name today is not to lose any of her rights, but it is to concede that the identity that dominates in a family is that of the husband, not her own, that the family is his family, that its name is his name, and what's more important—what people like Leon Kass can't stop yelling about—that the children are his children.

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Historically the roles of men and women within marriages have reflected their roles within society. Laws and customs have traditionally restricted women?s opportunities, limited their legal rights, and required them to be under the protection and control of a man. For example, under the legal doctrine of couverture, developed in England during the Middle Ages, the law viewed the husband and wife as one person?and that person was the husband. In the 18th century, English legal scholar Sir William Blackstone summed up the laws of marriage by stating that ?the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated? into that of the husband. English colonists in North America brought their legal traditions with them and the common law of the United States and Canada incorporated the legal disabilities of women. As a result of couverture, a married woman lost many of the legal rights she may have possessed before marriage. For example, a single woman who owned property lost her rights over that property upon marriage. A bride?s wealth became her husband?s.

The tradition of legal patriarchy (male authority) is reflected in social practices related to weddings and marriage. For example, in many cultures the bride?s father ?gives? his daughter to the groom. During the wedding, the father may physically walk the bride to the groom and transfer her to the groom?s arm or he may verbally state that he gives her to be married. Traditionally the woman?s loss of her maiden name after marriage signified that her identity was absorbed by that of her husband. It also signified her subordination to him in many matters. For example, a wife was legally obliged to live wherever her husband chose, as well as to maintain the home and submit to her husband?s sexual demands. The husband also had the right to control and physically discipline the wife. In return, the husband was obligated to financially support the family. Wives had no control over property, even if they had owned it before marriage.

So your "maiden" name is also the name of a man; isn't your husband's less oppressive because you chose to assume it? If anything, it's even more so. I recommend a discussion on h-net a few years back; here's the highlight:

Peter Fosl [another commenter] has hit on the crux of this issue: the long history of couverture, or "woman covered by man." A huge body of patriarchal custom was built upon this concept, including the loss of all personal and property rights of the woman.

To those who ask what the difference is between using the father's name and taking the husband's, there's a difference. Girls grow up with the patronym as their identity, the name they are known by and answer to, but this identity is seen as malleable, unlike male identity. Taking their husband's name renders them unrecognizable and often unfindable to old schoolmates or whoever. The culture teaches women to conflate loving their husband with subsuming their own identity, while few men would dream of proving their love for their wives in this way. (Well done, Peter.)

Meanwhile, the custom of naming after the father persists as the dominant model, anyway. Another alternative to hyphenated names, but one that is not often considered, is naming the children with the mother's last name. This often gets a strong reaction, though, as being unjust to the father. Matrilineage is still unthinkable within the dominant culture. Different standards for goose and gander are very ingrained indeed. It's worth pointing out that even in strongly patrilineal cultures like the Arab or Chinese, women keep their birth names.

If you want to change your name because you don't like it—say your daddy named you Robin and his last name's Banks, but you've always wanted to be a financial analyst—by all means, go ahead. If you want to change it to keep your kids from going though life singing "Sometimes I feel like a Motherless Child," get over it; they won't.

And if all you want is to uphold tradition, well, just make sure you're clear on the tradition that you're holding up.