Mar 7, 2009

Maiden Name

Sitting at Perks coffee shop today with one of my favorite professors and also now former Women’s Studies professor at Ohio University Julia, I was very excited to ask her questions that I always wanted to ask her when I took her class in 2008.

When I mentioned to her about my blog’s idea about cultural differences, her first reaction was to tell me her story about how she decided to change her family name to her husband's. As a native of Slovakia, she was torn between her tradition and her feminist instinct.

"For a long time, I thought about keeping my family name. My mother said, ‘now that you are married, you have to change your family name. It’s a part of our tradition."

For a number of reasons, particularly that it was very long and hard to pronounce, Julia eventually decided to honor her country’s tradition and changed her family name.
I was content to finally find out the mystery of her family name. It is an interesting subject to ponder because the practice of women changing their family names varies from area to area.

Chinese second-year student Stephanie Sun, majoring in Communication at Ohio University, expressed a revolutionary comment.

“My mother introduces herself as Ms. Wang,” Sun, who is from the capital of China, said. “We just do not have this tradition.”

In China, although usually seen as a county that where gender inequality prevails, women do not usually change their family name to their husband’s. The children usually carry their father’s family name. The same applies to Korean, Iranian, Vietnamese, and most of the Arab countries.

However, because Hong Kong was once a British colony and deeply influenced by British culture, women of that era would prefix her husband’s family name to her original name. In a Hong Kong movie In The Mood For Love 花樣年華 by Wong Kar-Wai, which is set in 1960s in Hong Kong, when the leading actress Maggie Cheung is asked how she wants to be called by the new neighbor, she says, “My husband’s family name is Chan.” Also, when the leading Tony Leung meets Cheung’s landlord for the first time, she introduces herself as Mrs. Shun although her husband is never mentioned nor appears in the entire film (assumed to be dead). Her real name was also never brought up in the film.

For the same reason, in most of the English-speaking countries and Western Europe including France, Germany, married women changing their original family name to their husband’s are more common.

In Spain and most of its former colonies, marriage has no effect on either of the spouses' names. Children usually bear the family name of the father followed by that of the mother. For example, my supervisor from work Enrique is Chilean and his last name is Hermosilla-Palma while Hermosilla is taken from his mother and Palma is taken from his father.

The custom of a woman changing her name upon married may not always be because of a country’s tradition. Many were due to imperialism and colonization, and some are because of political reasons and laws. After all, names do help identify a person. As an old Cantonese saying, “Don’t be afraid of having a bad fortune. Do be afraid of having a bad name.” If a name identifies who you are, keeping a good name is doing a good thing for your offspring.

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