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Chloe Angyal

Student/Intern/Writer

Chloe Angyal is a senior majoring in Sociology at Princeton University. Raised in Sydney, Australia, Chloe aspires to be a writer, a voice for her generation, and an all-around good person. In her spare time, she loves to dance, sing, ice skate, drink good wine, eat good food, rock out to bad music ...

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The Name Game

A few weeks ago, I was having dinner with some friends when a topic arose, igniting a fierce debate, and leaving me thinking for several weeks about something I rarely contemplate: marriage. The central topic of the debate was whether or not the women in the room, two of whom were hard core feminists, planned to take their husbands’ name when they got married.

    Marriage is something I try to think about as infrequently as possible, except to assure my friends that it’s an institution in which I have little to no interest (I haven’t managed to convince them yet).

    But the question of whether or not I’d take my imaginary husband’s name is not a difficult one to answer: I wouldn’t. Perhaps it’s because I wouldn’t see it as taking someone else’s name, but giving away my own, which I’ve had since birth. Also, having survived a childhood of medal ceremonies and a school career of attendance-taking with a last name that presents something of a pronunciation challenge (it’s pronounced “angel”, by the way), I’m quite attached to it. Not to mention the fact that I rather like my father, who gave it to me.

    My mother jokes that she kept her own name because she had printed too many business cards using her maiden name to justify the change, but I suspect that in reality, her motivation was more political than practical. And I’ve always thought I’d do the same. After all, Chloe Angyal is who I’ve always been, and I can’t imagine that marriage would change my life so much that it should change who I am or what I call myself.

    The most interesting part of the debate by far came when the women in the room posed that same question to the men, asking if they would take their wife’s name. The answer was a resounding “no”; the men in the room couldn’t even entertain the notion. I was disappointed, though unsurprised by their reaction. It’s taken a while for men to become comfortable with the idea that their future wives might not be changing their names when they marry, so the idea that men might have to adopt what has traditionally been the woman’s role will take even longer to gain acceptance (and let’s be honest, we might never get there). Then again, with more and more states allowing gay marriage, it won’t always be unheard of for men to take their partner’s name. Perhaps straight men will be next (for more on gay marriage and what it means for us straight girls who aren’t all that into the institution, read Courtney Martin’s piece in The American Prospect

    We tried to come up with a few solutions to the name issue, but had little success. One of the women present said that she would be willing to compromise on the last name – that is, she would take it, and her children would be also be given it - if her kids could be given first names that reflected the culture in which she, their mother, was raised. She’s Indian, and believes that a person’s heritage is something they should think about every day.

    When I insisted that a person’s last name is also a part of their heritage (mine, for example, is Hungarian, and reflects my grandfather’s just-in-time journey out of Eastern Europe to Australia, where the pronunciation was Anglicized but the spelling was not), one of the men expressed his idea that husband, wife and children should all have the same last name if they were to truly be a family. In the end, we could come to no agreement, leaving us to conclude nothing except that none of the people in that room could ever marry each other.
    Personally, I’m for the eradication of the last name altogether. Hey, it worked for Madonna.

Married women and engaged women: how did you handle the name issue?

Unmarried women: what would you do?