ABSTRACT
The focus of this book is on what British women do with their last names when they marry and how this impacts upon their sense of (gendered) self and factors into social organisation. I will focus exclusively on ‘name changing’ – when women take on the last name of their husband – and ‘name retaining’ – when women retain their previous last name, be that their birth name, name given to them as a child after a mother’s remarriage, adopted name, or name from a previous marriage. The decision to investigate name changing and name retaining exclusively was taken for several reasons. First, that name changing remains the norm in Britain (Valetas, 2001: 2), but despite that there continues to be little empirical evidence about naming practices (Johnson and Scheuble, 1995: 724). It was important therefore to add to the empirical evidence about the naming norm to build up a picture of what women in contemporary Britain are doing with their name and why. Valetas’ study (2001) shows that the norm in Britain remains strong and more so than in other European countries, with more people than anywhere else in her study believing women should change their name to their husband’s on marriage. Taking this into consideration, the decision to completely oppose the normative expectation to change names seems like a daring decision and one which also needed consideration. The two – norm and opposite – are relational and investigating them together was necessary.
