What’s in a Name?
With a colleague in Hillsdale College’s English Department, I am this term teaching a course entitled Shakespeare: History, Politics, and Poetry. It is, to say the least, great fun. First we read the Roman history plays – Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra. Then, we read the second tetralogy: Richard II, Henry IV, Part I, Henry IV, Part II, and Henry V. Right now, we are doing the Venetian plays. Tomorrow, we finish The Merchant of Venice. Next week we do Othello. In this connection, every Tuesday night we show a film made from one of the plays. This week, Al Pacino as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice; next week Orson Welles as Othello in the play of the same name.
It falls to me to grade the third paper – the one dealing with the Venetian plays – and so I have spent the last few hours dreaming up questions. Venice was that rarity in Renaissance Europe – a society oriented more by commerce than by war or religion. In consequence, it was comparatively open to outsiders. The Jews were expelled from England in 1290, and they did not live openly there again until the time of Oliver Cromwell’s ascendancy as Lord Protector. There were few, if any, Moors in England. But both could be found in Venice – and so Shakespeare seized upon that venue as a place appropriate for the study of cosmopolitanism and its limits: a subject no less interesting to those of us who live in modern commercial polities that are relatively open to outsiders.
In the two plays, he also considers the question of fidelity. In both, willful daughters, unfaithful to their fathers, elope. In both, the fidelity of husband to wife and of wife to husband is thematic. In both, the treasuring of trinkets – three rings in The Merchant of Venice and a handkerchief in Othello – is treated as a sign of fidelity. Outward signs seem to matter.
As my mind went a-wandering in search of questions, I found myself, as I often do, pondering the present discontents and wondering what sorts of lives my current students (and my children) are apt to live. When I was a youth – lo, those many years ago – when a lass married a lad she took his name. Indeed, I cannot think of any earlier time in history since the inventions of surnames when this was not the case. Now, in sophisticated circles (not that I have much contact with such folk these days, but I do remember), this is almost unthinkable.
Am I wrong to think this an abomination? Is it not a symptom of some larger ill? I can see well enough that, given the prevalence of divorce, a woman’s taking the name of her husband might occasion inconvenience. But my sense is that sophisticated women today bristle at the very thought. “You do not own me!” she tends to think, and I have heard it said more than once. In effect, however, this means that wives are much more apt than ever before to keep their husbands at arm’s length. Is this choice not a statement that one’s professional life comes first? And if that is true, how long will the marriage last?
What’s in a ring? What’s in a handkerchief? What’s in a name?
That which we call a rose by any other word might well, as Juliet says, smell as sweet. But would that which we call a wife by any other word be so sweet?
I beg instruction.
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Comments :
Jun '10
Re: What’s in a Name?
Can't help you on the questions. I would note that at virtually any other university, the name of the course would be something like Shakespeare: Cross-Cultural and Transgender Constructs--Colonialism, Ethnicity, and Queer Theory.
Sep '10
Re: What’s in a Name?
No doubt many women today are torn between work and motherhood but I expect there are far fewer arranged marriages. One can find a great deal about the joys of erotic love and married love in the Bard...it is as lovely as a summer's day and it is the ever fix'ed mark who's worths unknown until its hight be taken.
Dec '10
Re: What’s in a Name?
Were I a student at Hillsdale, I would read Ricochet, to gain insight towards exam qustions.
That being said, I have been engaged twice but never married. Neither time to a conservative. My now fiancee, I suspect, will gladly accept my name, plain though it is. She is liberal, or at least apolitical, but I sense that she appreciates the strength of my convictions.
I have supported her through countless art shows where I have been lambasted in the abject, or, if people discovered that I was conservative, in person. But she has seen me maintain a smile and at least attempt to engage people in conversation.
I don't know the answer to this question, yet, but I know that I will find out soon. I think that even my liberal fiancee will accept my name, because she loves me and acceots my fondness for tradition, and deep down, she likes that.
Re: What’s in a Name?
I know some who do just that.
Feb '11
Re: What’s in a Name?
"In both, the fidelity of husband to wife and of wife to husband is thematic. In both, the treasuring of trinkets – three rings in The Merchant of Venice and a handkerchief in Othello – is treated as a sign of fidelity. Outward signs seem to matter." If your proposition is that outward signs of fidelity are important, and surnames are decreasing in importance amongst my generation because they engender feelings of inferiority, I see technology as stepping in to fill this fidelity gap. Most of my generation is on a social networking site, whether it be Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, etc., and everyone posts their "relationship status" to their profiles, this should be seen as a public (and lasting, because we all know anything you put on the internet is never going to go away) expression of their fidelity. Whether this is an adequate substitute can be debated, but I think this shows that while one outward sign of fidelity dissipates, another will take hold.
Jan '11
Re: What’s in a Name?
What matters is not that the woman takes the husband's name. What matters is that they both have the same name.
When you get married, you start a new family. Your "family" name identifies what family you belong to. That's why we have the names in the first place.
Our current "system" of naming comes from a time when everyone knew each other anyway, and the name was just a shorthand reference. John, the Smith, etc. Those days may be gone, but that's why we have family names.
Now it's clearly a cultural prejudice that the woman takes the husband's name, but it doesn't have to be that way. For all I care, they can make up a new name for themselves. John Doe and Mary Smith can become John and Mary PowerCouple. Who cares what they name themselves? What matters, though, is that they have the same name.
Why? Because family names designate families.
When they become parents, the whole point of having family names is so that the children (for whom they both share joint and several responsibility) will be known as children from that family.
Dec '10
Re: What’s in a Name?
During the Dark Age period of European Christendom, the establishment of traditions protected the way of life of a feudal society in which a middle class—as we know it after its Renaissance emergence—had no members of any mass.
Property is what the feudal lords kept, and it was their means to keep everyone else from the lack thereof in his place. Seigniorial rights, enforced with the laws of custom and lineage, abhorred any discontinuity ensuing from fractures in the long lines of accumulated inheritance.
Not passing judgment on the worth of our sisters among our brethren, it was not through them that the deeds of property maintained the order of feudal society—it was a name that bore the steadfast seal of who was a who, and who was not.
Considering freedom as a form of creative destruction, or unstable order having the appearance of chaos, the shirking of names, if it had not happened, would have had to be invented. Hence, instead of ladies, we now call them guys.
Feb '11
Re: What’s in a Name?
I think that the trend reflects the breakdown of marriage in general and it also reflects an increasing self absorption in society. The rates of divorce have destroyed the old concenpt of till death do us part. In the minds of these women (I would guess primarily liberal/feminist in worldview) why should they give up their independence i.e. their name, during a marriage if it will likely not last. The incresing self absorption in society reflects itself in that women don't think that there is anything wrong with this action. I also think that this affects primarily Anglophone societies more than other western oriented socities. I know that coming from a latin background it would be inconcievable to not take a husbands last name. Although in latin america a women retains her maiden name as part of her official married name. What is also interesting is that the children born of a marriage have the last name of the father and the mother.
Mar '11
Re: What’s in a Name?
"That which we call a nose would still blow"
Sorry.
Aug '10
Re: What’s in a Name?
My wife is from Singapore. The tradition among the cultural Chinese seems to be that the wife keeps her name, but the children inherit the father's surname. Among my in-laws this is the rule, there aren't any exceptions. My mother in law (who left China in the 1950's) follows this tradition - which leads me to believe it is the rule among Asian Chinese (Chinese, excluding those raised in the West) as well.
The other oddity is that my wife accepted Christ in middle school - so she adopted a baptismal name. So, while all of her official government documents in Singapore use her Chinese name, she goes by her baptismal name. Here in the US, all of her official documents are a hodge-podge which makes filling out the security paperwork an interesting exercise.
We agreed, when the kids came along, that they would have both American and Chinese names. So their American names are first and last, while their Chinese names are the middle ones. So our son goes by WeiEn (rather than call him junior) and our daughter is Charlotte.
Sep '10
Re: What’s in a Name?
I think KC has it pretty much right.
Life has been pretty much figured out by the many generations before us. I don't know, but suspect that the birth rate among women who keep their name is in the bottom quartile of all women. I think that to be true because it is true of educational attainment and I suspect that educational attainment and the keeping of one's name correlates. If so, in a sense these are evolutionary dead ends and the idea is (viewed objectively) a destructive one.
No broad generalization is universally true I realize, so if you are a mother of six who has kept her name don't be offended.
Jun '10
Re: What’s in a Name?
When I married almost 32 years ago, the new style of keeping the maiden name was in. I was musing about it one day. My dad said, 'You can't use it. I'm taking it back." Dad helped me make the right decision.
Jun '10
Re: What’s in a Name?
I don't see any such trend of sophisticated women keeping thier maiden names. It was more of a fad around here (ten miles west of Manhattan) and most educated women I know realized it was silly to insist on keeping her dad's name rather than taking her husband's. The lineage is still patriarchic, right? Many of us find it a bit quaint when a woman feels she is making some type of radical statement by keeping her name. A woman with a professional reputation can gradually introduce her new name without much trouble if she chooses. When the couple maintain different names or go for hyphenation, it's very confusing if kids are involved.
I took my husband's somewhat clunky surname but did use my maiden name for business when I was in sales and had clients from a wide range of industries and levels of sophistication. It was simply easier to spell and remember. Very Irish. Even when a client forgot & called the department to reach me, they'd usually be able to say, "It was Irish....O something?"
My daughter looks forward to the day she can dump the clunky surname.....ha ha!
Jan '11
Re: What’s in a Name?
You may recognize this quote:
To many, that's what taking a husband's name symbolizes.
When I got married, my wife did not take my name. She earned her doctorate under her maiden name, and I didn't see any reason to change it.
On the other hand, for those seeking correlations, we are childless.
Re: What’s in a Name?
It is common among my ivy league educated married female friends to keep their maiden names as their middle name (e.g. Sarah Smith becomes Sarah Smith Ward). I will probably do something similar when I marry.
In Hispanic culture (or at least in Mexico), both the mother and father's surname are expressed. For example, my Mexican grandfather's name is Jesus Ruelas Fraire. Ruelas is the family name of his paternal line, and the part of his name that his children inherited, whereas Fraire was his mother's family name. His wife and my grandmother is Nohemi Carranza Fraire (no relation). When my grandmother got married she became Nohemi Carranza de Ruelas, and her children took on the paternal components of each parent's last name (i.e. Ruelas Carranza).
Whew, that's confusing.
Edited on Apr 1, 2011 at 1:26pmNov '10
Re: What’s in a Name?
I was going to post this, but you beat me to it.
Personally, I like what my mother did, which was to take my father's name, and take her maiden name as her middle name. Which had unintended amusing results as not only is her maiden name an accepted male name, but many of our relatives still address her by the middle name she dropped.
Re: What’s in a Name?
These comments are instructive.
May '10
Re: What’s in a Name?
Someone I know who is pregnant with her first child told me her husband has already expressed a desire to have another child. The child in her womb now is a girl. Without a son, his family name will not survive the next generation (assuming the daughter marries and takes her husband's name).
Like KC Mulville said, the vital distinction is that marriage is acknowledged as the beginning of a new family. That recognition is important for property concerns and legal obligations (such as of the parent to the child). The aspect that is being lost is the permanence of family bonds.
Even among conservatives, there's growing resistance to the traditional assertion that — beyond legality — it is no more possible to divorce a spouse than to divorce a child or parent. Sacramental marriage is a promise, not a contract. It's a bond that cannot be broken even by those it joins.
Using the surnames of parents acknowledges one's inheritance. Again, legal inheritance should not be one's only consideration. Surnames are a useful reminder of Edmund Burke's point that we all have a duty to past and future generations.