Abstract
This chapter focusses on the continuing practice of female name change after heterosexual marriage. It aims to understand how this anachronistic practice is made to seem and become natural and what the significance is of this for families in the UK. Partly this is a taken-for-granted assumption where tradition lies outside conscious scrutiny and if scrutinised can often evoke incomprehension, anger, and conflict. But also people actively use female name change as a handy tool in displaying family. In these ways meaning ‘leaks’ from a patriarchal past to contemporary marriages.
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Notes
- 1.
Preferences might also have changed between marriage date and the survey date, which, presumably for some respondents, could amount to decades.
- 2.
These rights for married women have been extended to one partner in civil partnership (since 2005) and same-sex marriage (since 2013).
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Carter, J., Duncan, S. (2018). The Leakage of Meaning: Traditional Naming Practices. In: Reinventing Couples. Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58961-3_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58961-3_5
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