Surnames - male domination the subtler way

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."
- Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet: Act II, Scene ii

Surnames have been around for a long time now. Though still construed to be a kind of identification, surnames in their own subtle way, actually end up destroying a woman's identity. In fact a lot other stuff also contribute to this, but not so powerfully. For example, take the way a woman is addressed. It seems the honorific used to address a woman always depends on her relationship with a man. An unmarried woman is Miss, a married woman is Mrs. and a divorced or widowed woman is Mz (thankfully this honorific is almost extinct these days). Though the neutral Ms. has become popular, many suppose it should only be used for unmarried women. Though it seems to be a rather trivial issue, its implications are serious. The honorifics subtly imply that a Miss is her Father's property, a Mrs. is her husbands property, whereas a Mz. is yet to find her owner. Yet a man is always a Mr., no matter his marital status. What nonsense!

Maybe Shakespeare got it wrong. Its true of course that there's a lot in a name, certainly not in the context of Shakespeare's play. Surnames define an individual's identity. Yet they are almost universally based on the Father's name - either the child's father or the mother's father. I'm yet to meet someone with a mother's name for a surname. Still worse is the logic of most governmental institutions that almost by default ask for a father's/husband's name as if a mother had no role to play in the child's development. The story goes on with the society expecting and often compelling a newly married woman to adopt her husbands surname. Its ironically funny that when Miss A marries Mr. B, Miss A becomes Mrs. B overnight. Miss A suddenly ceased to exist. Family and friends never care to ask her if she had adopted her husband's surname. Whether she likes it or not, everyone start addressing her as Mrs. B.

The worst starts when a child is born. It is no secret as to how much pain the woman goes through to give birth to a child. Yet, every child is assumed to have the father's name suffixed. In the most feminist case the mother's father's name is suffixed, usually in a double-barrel-ed way - that leaves the child in a rather difficult position to fill application forms. I still wonder why a child cannot have a mother's name for a surname?! Why can't governmental organizations ask for father's name and mother's name instead of father's/husband's name? Why can't society have a neutral honorific for women? Will our male-dominated patriarchal society ever change?

Well, only time can tell. But for now, I can only reiterate that
If you are female, if you are feminist, you are FREE!

Favorite passage from Shakespeare

To be or not to be

To be, or not to be: that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause: there's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life;

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscover'd country from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!

The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons

Be all my sins remember'd.

                - by William Shakespeare, Hamlet