It happens all over. It's accepted too. Add your husband's name, or that of his family to your name. It's the norm. All these years of existence, I have wondered why on earth a woman must change her name after getting hooked by matrimony.
After all, her name is her identity. It's the one thing that connects her to her parents - to their love, their hopes for her, struggles in raising her, protecting her, and going through that immense pain of losing her to her man. Her name is what she is known for. Her parental legacy is what has made her what she is today.
It's why I am amazed when Mandira of My Name is Khan pronounces Khan, her would-be surname the right way for her son. The scene may have been used to depict the mother's effort in getting her boy to accept the new father. Still, there could have been something better to show that emotion.
Remember how Maya of Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna is shown feeling hit when she must drop her surname (her husband's) after separation. Or Suhana of Sasural Genda Phool, the popular Star Plus soap, is reminded often that her name is not Bajpayee, but Kashyap, post marriage.
We have the most `PR-ed' actor Aishwarya Rai add the `Bacchan' name to herself with pride. And Ms Rai is a trendsetter. Popular culture, in this instance Bollywood, has nurtured this trend just as society - read the elders of your family, parents-in-law, friends, and the all-knowing relatives scoff at you if you have not changed your name, or added your husband's to your existing name.
It somehow elicits the judgement that she has not quite accepted her husband's family as her own.
When I visited an alternative medicine specialist, he not just gave me some acupressure therapy, but volunteered to advise that my existing name that had my dad's surname to it, did not have good vibes. I would be in better health he said, if I added my husband's name to it. I refused. Inside of me however, I burned. Who was he to judge my lineage? Or what my parents had named me? I do get the point when one goes to a numerologist for such advice. For an acupressure therapist to comment on my name's merits!
Let me admit, my husband has made no such demand after I got married. If he did, I would have stood my ground. In fact, he hates the idea of changing names after marriage. It is not a practice in his family. Remarks by an outsider to my family stunned me once. It was a construction worker over-seeing the building of the home of my parents-in-law.
``How can you not change your name? It's something you MUST do,'' was her demand during a chat. She was also aghast that I addressed my husband in singular and not plural - the giving respect bit. She would not understand what all this meant to me, or that my individuality and hers mattered just as much as that of our spouses, in marriage.
She has been trained by the culture around, to judge other women by how they dress, if they wear the bindi, or all the essential signs of being wedded such as the kalmetti or toe-rings, bangles, mangalsutra and the likes. We were from completely different planes of thought. For that moment, I explained the `respect' part away saying addressing him in plural would keep a distance between us.
It left me with bitterness for a long time though. That bitterness would get a new life every time I saw it getting repeated in my extended family, among friends - implying that a certain relative was less virtuous because she did not wear thaali, or did not dress traditionally enough for a celebration in the family.
It's the yardstick used to judge a woman when it comes to surnames too. Legally speaking, I have heard about passport troubles, but had I changed my surname after marriage, it would have required an affidavit to endorse. I got lucky with the passport. At least, the passport officials did not insist on a name change affidavit.
Why does such burden of expectation elude our men? Why are men not expected to take on their mother's names? Or those of the wife's family? Does that make them any less men? Has history not had men who took on their mother's names and became warriors of repute?
Gautamiputra Satakarni was known as one of the greatest rulers of Satavahana Empire. Karna of Mahabharata was known as Kuntiputra although raised by his charioteer father Adiratha whose wife was Radha and so Karna was also known as Radhey. India is replete with examples of matrilineal communities, and culture. It is another disturbing trouble that existing matrilineal societies are turning patrilineal, a symptom of patriarchy that pervades today's world.
If a woman chooses to keep her parental name, the dilemma posed to her by men would rest mainly on the note - `But it's your father's name that you are keeping! Not the mother's!'
My counter - `At least it is not your father's'. Arguments aside, there is nothing wrong in adding your mother's name. It would in fact make you respect a tradition that is very much Indian and part of its history - a history that somewhere belongs to your own ancestors.
Such a dilemma hit me recently too. After a lot of thought and some mock arguments with my husband, I decided to add a surname. Wait a second - not my husband's name, but my mother's clan name. It's why my Linkedin profile has two letters after my name instead of one. The second letter means my mother's clan.
I tried the same with my Facebook profile too - guess what, it does not let me change it! After a few exasperated attempts, I have given up on Facebook for now.
I had a very personal reason to do so. Both my grandfathers were into writing. My maternal grandfather was a scholar in Sanskrit and Telugu, and wrote as many as 60 books. My paternal grandfather was a poet, and had an amazing skill with the right use of maatras, metre, and the math of telugu poetry - specially couplets.
Ability to write came to from the genes of two clans.Writing is what defines me as a person largely. It gives me my identity. It only made sense to be respectful to them both.
As for `accepting' my husband's family is concerned - there are a million other ways I can do through.
After all, her name is her identity. It's the one thing that connects her to her parents - to their love, their hopes for her, struggles in raising her, protecting her, and going through that immense pain of losing her to her man. Her name is what she is known for. Her parental legacy is what has made her what she is today.
It's why I am amazed when Mandira of My Name is Khan pronounces Khan, her would-be surname the right way for her son. The scene may have been used to depict the mother's effort in getting her boy to accept the new father. Still, there could have been something better to show that emotion.
Remember how Maya of Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna is shown feeling hit when she must drop her surname (her husband's) after separation. Or Suhana of Sasural Genda Phool, the popular Star Plus soap, is reminded often that her name is not Bajpayee, but Kashyap, post marriage.
We have the most `PR-ed' actor Aishwarya Rai add the `Bacchan' name to herself with pride. And Ms Rai is a trendsetter. Popular culture, in this instance Bollywood, has nurtured this trend just as society - read the elders of your family, parents-in-law, friends, and the all-knowing relatives scoff at you if you have not changed your name, or added your husband's to your existing name.
It somehow elicits the judgement that she has not quite accepted her husband's family as her own.
When I visited an alternative medicine specialist, he not just gave me some acupressure therapy, but volunteered to advise that my existing name that had my dad's surname to it, did not have good vibes. I would be in better health he said, if I added my husband's name to it. I refused. Inside of me however, I burned. Who was he to judge my lineage? Or what my parents had named me? I do get the point when one goes to a numerologist for such advice. For an acupressure therapist to comment on my name's merits!
Let me admit, my husband has made no such demand after I got married. If he did, I would have stood my ground. In fact, he hates the idea of changing names after marriage. It is not a practice in his family. Remarks by an outsider to my family stunned me once. It was a construction worker over-seeing the building of the home of my parents-in-law.
``How can you not change your name? It's something you MUST do,'' was her demand during a chat. She was also aghast that I addressed my husband in singular and not plural - the giving respect bit. She would not understand what all this meant to me, or that my individuality and hers mattered just as much as that of our spouses, in marriage.
She has been trained by the culture around, to judge other women by how they dress, if they wear the bindi, or all the essential signs of being wedded such as the kalmetti or toe-rings, bangles, mangalsutra and the likes. We were from completely different planes of thought. For that moment, I explained the `respect' part away saying addressing him in plural would keep a distance between us.
It left me with bitterness for a long time though. That bitterness would get a new life every time I saw it getting repeated in my extended family, among friends - implying that a certain relative was less virtuous because she did not wear thaali, or did not dress traditionally enough for a celebration in the family.
It's the yardstick used to judge a woman when it comes to surnames too. Legally speaking, I have heard about passport troubles, but had I changed my surname after marriage, it would have required an affidavit to endorse. I got lucky with the passport. At least, the passport officials did not insist on a name change affidavit.
Why does such burden of expectation elude our men? Why are men not expected to take on their mother's names? Or those of the wife's family? Does that make them any less men? Has history not had men who took on their mother's names and became warriors of repute?
Gautamiputra Satakarni was known as one of the greatest rulers of Satavahana Empire. Karna of Mahabharata was known as Kuntiputra although raised by his charioteer father Adiratha whose wife was Radha and so Karna was also known as Radhey. India is replete with examples of matrilineal communities, and culture. It is another disturbing trouble that existing matrilineal societies are turning patrilineal, a symptom of patriarchy that pervades today's world.
If a woman chooses to keep her parental name, the dilemma posed to her by men would rest mainly on the note - `But it's your father's name that you are keeping! Not the mother's!'
My counter - `At least it is not your father's'. Arguments aside, there is nothing wrong in adding your mother's name. It would in fact make you respect a tradition that is very much Indian and part of its history - a history that somewhere belongs to your own ancestors.
Such a dilemma hit me recently too. After a lot of thought and some mock arguments with my husband, I decided to add a surname. Wait a second - not my husband's name, but my mother's clan name. It's why my Linkedin profile has two letters after my name instead of one. The second letter means my mother's clan.
I tried the same with my Facebook profile too - guess what, it does not let me change it! After a few exasperated attempts, I have given up on Facebook for now.
I had a very personal reason to do so. Both my grandfathers were into writing. My maternal grandfather was a scholar in Sanskrit and Telugu, and wrote as many as 60 books. My paternal grandfather was a poet, and had an amazing skill with the right use of maatras, metre, and the math of telugu poetry - specially couplets.
Ability to write came to from the genes of two clans.Writing is what defines me as a person largely. It gives me my identity. It only made sense to be respectful to them both.
As for `accepting' my husband's family is concerned - there are a million other ways I can do through.
1 comment:
Hi, Nice post. When I didn't agree to change my surname after the wedding, I was dubbed as a feminist beyond repair! http://arjunpuriinqatar.blogspot.com/2011/09/feminist-beyond-repair.html
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