Losing Their Identity — Women’s Changing Names in Documentation
There is a tradition in the English-speaking world that a woman take her husband’s surname. This is a trend I have not followed, and in recent decades it has become less of a certainty, but anyone who has attempted to trace maternal lines in genealogy research knows the struggle of confirming that the married woman — their grandmother, great-grandmother, aunt — is also the single woman living with her parents in the previous census or vital records. If there is a marriage certificate listing the parents, it’s much easier, but that isn’t always the case for numerous reasons:
- The marriage license may not have required parents be listed.
- The parents may be given only by initials or be step-parents (they weren’t asking about biological relation, simply who was “giving the bride away”).
- The marriage record may not be available because marriages weren’t recorded at that time.
This isn’t the case for all regions. In some countries, the maternal name is taken. In others, the married woman retains her birth name, but then you end up with other problems, such as tracing the children. If you go back farther, you end up with people who chose a name other than their birth name and you have to trace their various “lives”. In yet other regions, they combine the family names…
