ABSTRACT
As Luxton and Fox (2009: 3) have argued, the word ‘family’ is often used with an assumption that its meaning is uncomplicated, though in fact defining the concept can be difficult and complex. The Office for National Statistics defines families as being started ‘when people form partnerships or marry or when they have children’ (Macrory, 2012: 1). The Oxford English Dictionary gives several definitions of family, showing how the word has changed in use over time, but also how difficult it is to accurately describe this grouping in the present day (see Oxford English Dictionary Online). There are political discourses surrounding ‘the family’ and from the political Right a narrative of maintaining ‘family values’ (Grice, 16th July 2013). When used by politicians, it becomes clearer that ‘family’ can have a myriad of meanings, sometimes with highly political overtones. What we have called family in Britain has changed over time and can be defined differently, depending upon context. However, the nuclear, heterosexual family, connected by genetics, continues to be a dominant conceptualisation of ‘normal’ family life and still underpins much political and economic policy (Griffin, 2007). The family name is one way of displaying and ‘doing’ family (Morgan, 2011) within contemporary Britain; it is a process of ‘kinning’ (Nordqvist, 2014: 271) which has the potential to be both fixed and creative (Mason, 2008). It is also one way of delineating and keeping track of families in Britain by the state: the norm of one family unit sharing one name delineates relationships of care and protection. This family is often presumed to be a biological, heteronormative one and, when not possible, this remains an ideal to strive towards, rooted by its name into past, present, and hopefully future too. These issues will be discussed in more detail below, starting with the importance of genealogy and the name’s place in creating a lineage.
