What is the story behind this?
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In Germany, one spouse, normally the wife, becomes <her surname>-<his surname>. One of my male friends made his name the dashed name. It worked well when he divorced (that rhymes with hunt) and changed his name back. His credentials remained the same.
In many world cultures, the men take the woman’s name. The opposite is true in western culture. It is very common in Asian cultures for men to take on the wife’s surname, or the wife maintains her surname and the husband maintains his. In many spanish countries (spain, chile’, mexico,) it is common for the wife and husband to both maintain their respective maiden surname.
Traditionally, the woman leaves her family to join her husband who is now the head of her new family. It would follow that she takes the name of her new family.
Edit: this is why the father of the bride gives away the bride at the start of the ceremony. If the father is not available, typically, another male member like a brother or paternal grandfather will give away the bride.
Women were seen as the property of their husband. Women couldn’t even *own* property until about 100 years ago.
I think in Spain they double barrel the surname depending on if it’s a girl or boy or something, it seems fairer.
The children need a last name, and the father’s last name had a lot more to do with their inheritance and power than their mother’s. So, if you husband and your children have the same last name and people are going to call you Mrs Smith (if your husband’s last name is Smith, which used to mean he was a blacksmith, but that’s a side track) then you might as well change your name to Smith and make everything match, legally.
As someone who’s tried non-standard name usage (my name has a first initial and middle name like J. Edgar Hoover) being the non-standard person is super not fun. My kindergarten teacher thought I was deaf when I didn’t respond to any of her names/nicknames for the initial, and it’s all downhill from there.
Women can be stubborn people, as can men of course, but changing to your husband’s name is generally going to make her life easier.
So, at least in western cultures, women traditionally actually REPLACED their surname, and came to belong to another family, right? Recently there have been several changes in this tradition, to the point that they stopped RENOUNCING their last name and started just ADDING their husband’s name… Can anyone say more or less when that was consolidated? When women stopped being “forced” to give up their surnames? It was in medieval times, in the XVII, XIX, or even XX century…?
It’s not mainly in the past. In most English speaking countries, as well as many other western countries (except spanish, Icelandic, and Russian speaking) this is still the most common practice.
In the grand scheme of things it is a recent phenomenon for women to take their husbands last name. It is a show of “ownership” by the man.
In Islam for example, women are supposed to keep their birth name. This is derived from a ruling that states “No one shall attribute their lineage to someone other than their father”. This is considered to be “unbelief” in Islam (unbelief because you are going against the ruling of God..according to Islam).
Resource: [https://islamqa.info/en/answers/114624/ruling-on-wife-taking-the-husbands-last-name-if-the-husband-insists-on-that](https://islamqa.info/en/answers/114624/ruling-on-wife-taking-the-husbands-last-name-if-the-husband-insists-on-that)
So some answers are as mentioned before, patriarchy and inheritance and all that. And those are reasons. But another reason is that people would belong to households. And everyone in that household would share that name. These names would give you an identity in the social order of Europe. It started with large household names, and then smaller household also started to add their own names because they didn’t want to just be known as some distant house. That’s why in central europe and france you had this surname thing.
However, other cultures had less to do with these kinds of traditions hence the lack of surnames in places. For example, in nordic countries there weren’t surnames but rather father’s name. Thor Odinson literally meaning Thor son of Odin. Similarly, Arabic and Jewish names also forgo family names and show a relation. Example, Muhammad **Ibn Battuta** which just means Muhammad son of Batuta
Earlier, this was because of the terrible misconception that women or female children were either the property of the parents or of the husband. Since during marriage, the parents (especially the father) gave away “their property” to the other family it made sense that the woman took the man’s surname. This was common especially in western cultures. Now , we know that the two spouses in a marriage are equal (gender doesn’t matter) but people can still take their spouses’ last name for tradition’s sake or of they like it.
The difference is earlier it was a misguided cultural necessity, now it’s a choice.
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