Customs like this have always interested me

Jun 20, 2018 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,
In a letter headlined, “Those double barreled surnames”, from Juliet Holder-Allen, an Attorney-at-law makes the following statement:
“The relevant provision in the Marriage Act, in most countries, and Guyana is no exception, requires that the wife take the surname of the husband, or if she so chooses to continue her identification in her maiden name.”
Now – I would expect an attorney-at-law to be more accurate in the use of words.
How can an individual be “required” to do something, and at the same time be given the option of doing something else. If I am required to do something, I HAVE to do that thing, I cannot opt out of doing it.
I think the word the writer means is that the wife is “entitled” to use her husband’s name. It is her right under the English Common Law of our former colonial masters, the British. If we have a Marriage Act that says so, it is merely following the precedent of the much older Common Law.
This continues to be a right in those countries that continue to accept that Common Law, even if there is no specific modern law which says so. My married name is actually NOT Mrs. Patricia Commissiong, as we frequently say. It is Mrs. Bertram Commissiong – my husband’s name, which I am entitled to use. And the wife of Lord Randolph Churchill – Winston Churchill’s father – was Lady Randolph Churchill; and Meghan Markle can now be called Princess Henry of Wales, or the Duchess of Sussex, her husband’s title.
But it is not the custom or an entitlement in “most countries”. Common Law countries are not a majority in the world. In Spain and former Spanish colonies, the accepted form is that she uses her husband’s paternal family and her paternal family name. And the children of the marriage use both family names. (I discovered this in my school days when our teacher, Miss Lucille Campbell, referred to the then political leader of Puerto Rico, named Munoz Marin, as Munoz. I wondered how she could refer to him by his Christian name – until I found out that Munoz was the paternal family name of his father, and Marin the paternal family name of his mother. And I once had an account with an internet firm run by Latin Americans, who asked for my family name and thereafter addressed me as Commissiong Robinson – my husband’s family name and my father’s family name).
In Russia, although not a universal practice, it is common for the wife to adopt the husband’s surname, but in the feminine form (the wife of a Romanov is Romanova). There has to be a formal application for this, and the application is usually part of the marriage proceedings.
Russian masculine and feminine versions of a family name are similar to the Latin versions of the Roman Empire. That famous name, Julius Caesar, for example, is not a given name and a family name. “Julius” is the family name, and the females of the family were all “Julia”. (The cognomen “Caesar” merely distinguishes one branch of the “Julii” – that’s the plural form of the family name. Julius Caesar’s given name was “Gaius”).
On the other hand, in some countries the wife’s name traditionally did not change – in China and Korea, for example. Today, some westerners (read Americans) may refer to the wife of Chairman Xi Jinping as Madame Xi, but that is based on a western assumption that everybody else does as they do, or everybody else ought to do so. And note that in China the family name is placed first, as it is in Vietnam, not last as in European countries and their former colonies.
I did a search of various countries and among non-common law countries, these are some of the arrangements that I found:
In Greece, since 1983, a woman is required to keep her own name after marriage (it’s called “gender equality”). In Italy, a woman keeps her family name and has the option of adding her husband’s name after her own.
In the Netherlands, persons who are married or who have a registered partnership, remain registered under their birth names, although they can use the name of the partner for social purposes. At the marriage or registration of the partnership, each partner can indicate if he/she will use the birth name, the partner’s name, his/her own name followed by the partner’s name or the partner’s name followed by his/her own name.
In Austria, since 2013, marriage does not automatically change the wife’s name; she has to apply legally to change it. Before that, her name changed automatically unless she applied legally to opt out of the change.
In Germany, since 1977, a woman may adopt her husband’s name or a man may adopt his wife’s name. And in France, way back in 1789 when they had their Revolution and beheaded the King, they passed a law that “no one may use another name than that given at birth”. So – “the Marriage Act, in most countries…requires the wife”? No, no, no! There is too much variation for that.
And no, I am not an Attorney-at-law, but I am a sociologist, and customs like this have always interested me. I first found out about the Common Law entitlement of a wife to use her husband’s name as a student in England in the 1960s. And then, – my husband is an Attorney-at-law, so I’ve got into the habit of actually reading laws and legal cases that interest me.
Pat Robinson Commissiong

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