Ginger Without Borders

When a women gets married in the west, there is an expectation that she takes her husband’s last name (what we also call a ‘surname’). So if John Smith and Jane Doe got married, Jane would become Jane Smith.

This is not, however, a universal practice. For my husband’s family, for example, a woman will take her husband’s first name as her new last name. So if John Smith and Jane Doe got married, Jane would become Jane John. Any children of the marriage would also be (first name) John. The husband, however, remains John Smith. As a result, under this system, the family’s surname effectively changes every generation (making a genealogist’s job an absolute nightmare, I’m sure).

This difference of traditions came up in our conversations with the extended family. Technically, while my husband uses his dad’s first name as his surname on official documents, he does have a family ‘surname’ was we know it—Carlos (which is a result of the Portuguese colonizing his family’s village hundreds of years ago). However, we discovered that this ‘surname’—which he had thought was a family name of multiple generations—was actually a male relative’s name from only two generations back.

For my family, on the other hand, our surname dates back to when the family first moved to the United States in the 1700s. When my relative wrote to the government to obtain a legal deed to the land he lived on, my relative’s handwriting was so terrible that the government sent back the deed with the wrong last name. But my relative couldn’t read anyway, so he never bothered to fix it. As a result, the only people I’m related to with my same last name originate from the same area on the border of North Carolina and South Carolina.

As for me, partially as a result of pride in my family’s history and story, I prescribe to the newer tradition of women keeping their original name at marriage.

After all, Lena Kingston just sounds weird.

P.S. I am still alive. And as adamant as ever that I will not change my name.