Even Juliet worried about her lovers name. Why oh why did he have to be a Montague? Nevertheless dear ole’ Romeo and Juliet never got to the point of sitting down at the dinner table and having the discussion over wine and candles about names, sadly enough. In Juliet’s state of love induced euphoria she reasons that, “that which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.” Whilst this is poetic and rather charming in theory, she may have changed her tune if she had been given a chance to really think this through, in the 21st Century.

Names do matter.You know how I know? I have posted just about every update and novelty on Facebook. I receive a few comments sometimes but never as many as when I recently posted something about changing my name that challenged the tradition of taking ones future husbands name.  I received a plethora of comments, e-mails and even phone calls. People had an opinion. Conclusion: Names matter. Fact.

Names don’t only matter based on the fact that I got feedback on Facebook. When I say people, I mean women. Only two man out of all of my male friends, including my fiancée, commented. One commented on Facebook the other sent me a personal e-mail on the matter.

The question of surnames has arisen for, as you may guess, I am getting married and have been confronted with the question of “are you going to take Carlos’ name?” Simple answer, no. Why? Because I don’t see why a woman must concede her name, a part of her identity, in order to create a unified family. Why does anybody have to concede anything? Why can’t two people marry and each keep their name?

Confession: Taking my future husbands name was something I considered for a brief while. I remember when I would have a crush on boys at school, I would day-dream of myself as “Jenny Smith” or “Jenny Pope” (I am using false names because writing the real ones embarrassed me too much – I actually blushed). That was all I knew of as a little girl, my mother had my father’s name (although originally she kept her maiden name) and people around me seemed to do so as well so I didn’t think of the roots of such a tradition or custom. I soon learnt how until very recently women were considered the property of men, so loosing their own name came along with loosing the few rights they had from before. Imagine my shock. Meanwhile I was learning about the Romans and found it a superb idea to have slaves feed you grapes, whilst you lay reclined on copious amounts of pillows. Go figure.

I find it worrying that so many women of my generation, in their mid-twenties, consider taking their husband’s name a romantic gesture and a means of creating a family. If Lucy Stone, the famous suffragist and the first American woman to keep her own last name in 1855 was here she would put forth her two cents or re-iterated that, “a wife should no more take her husband’s name than he should hers”. Women before us have fought tirelessly for the right to keep their own name and we just sit back and sweetly say “oh what a lovely tradition, lets uphold it.” Rubbish I say! I wonder how many of these women really think about the origin of this tradition. We must pay tribute to those women who dared to shake the paradigm of women being a man’s property thus automatically taking their husband’s name. Why are we taking our rights for granted? We should all, men and women alike, appreciate our rights as women and recognize that there is so much more that must be done for women’s rights (and a number of other human rights that fall by the way side but I shan’t touch upon them just now).

Some of the comments I received on Facebook told me to calm down, to see this as a choice I have, as a woman who has rights now. This method of making it my “choice” to take my husband’s name is to me a fairly weak argument. Okay sure, so what you are telling me is to not see the need for further change and revisit an antiquated tradition from a “novel” perspective that is supposedly “mine”?  This presumes that we somehow have not been influenced by society in our decision. Furthermore, it is interesting to me how women adopt the role of having the responsibility to take on their husband’s name so as to create a family. Why is it the woman’s role? Men and women may be biologically different, but we both have the same responsibility, as equals, to create a family together. This is what we have fought for, for so long. Lets own it, don’t you think? And by “lets” I mean men and women. Gone are the times of women fighting for their rights alone.

If we as women automatically take on our husbands names without much thought (or no thought at all) this is a grave situation. It is our duty to question why we do so. Sure, in a few years we may not even have names, maybe we will identity one another by an electronic fingerprint which would at least recognize each and everybody’s individuality. For now, we have names and the remains of a tradition that should haunt us far more than it does.

I am disappointed in my fellow women. Recently I found (in Wikipedia) that in October of 1855 Lucy Stone spoke at the National Women’s Rights’ Convention in Cincinnati for the rights of women. A heckler interrupted the proceeding calling female speakers “a few disappointed women.” Lucy Stone apparantly got up on the platform and retorted that yes, she was indeed a “disappointed woman.” “In education, in marriage, in religion, in everything, dissapointment is the lot of woman. It shall be the business of my life to deepen this disappointment in every woman’s heart until she bows down to it no longer”.

I am no Lucy Stone but I sure as hell won’t become apathetic or abide by traditions that from part of a questionable paradigm. Maybe we all should be more “disappointed” using this as fuel towards positive change.

I welcome opinions and comments for this discussion does not end here, next topic – what do we call our kids? (This one will be relived in a few years)