What's in a name?

Well quite a lot as it happens, and a recent name-related event has led me to question how far we have come, or rather haven’t come, in the past hundred or so years since the word ‘feminism’ first entered our lexicon. 

My consternation was piqued when two friends recently tied the knot.  They shared over a decade of history and 3 kids, so you could argue that the marriage bit was just a formality. But to them it wasn’t; it meant a heck of a lot, especially as one of them had done it before, only to experience a miserable divorce just a few years later.  So this was the opposite of a rush-job; meticulously planned with every detail given due thought and consideration.

The bride isn’t a Brit so the main ceremony took place in her home town overseas, then they had a wonderful British wedding party so that all their local friends could celebrate with them.  The venue was stunning, the sun shone and the champagne flowed; Reader it was fab and all the guests agreed that everything was pretty perfect.  Until, that is, towards the end of the night when the rumour started circulating that the groom had taken the bride’s surname.

It was a bit like a fart in a lift in that nobody wanted to be the first to mention it.  It fell to a rather inebriated gentleman to bring up the subject which he did in what I thought was a particularly delicate and sensitive manner.  The exchange went something like this:

Pissed bloke: “Oi!  I just heard that you’re changing your name to hers?”

Groom: “That’s right, I am”

PB: “What the **** d’ya want to do something like that for?”

Groom (impressively still sporting an engagingly polite smile): “Well we decided it was easier for one of us to change, ie me, rather than her and all the kids having to change theirs.  It’s no biggie”

PB: “***** me!  Wouldn’t catch me doing something like that – no way!”

Now isn’t that just so supportive?  I must admit we had stolen the march on most of the guests as we'd seen the happy couple just the week before for a pre-wedding celebration (it’s any excuse to pop open a bottle or 3 at our gaff) and they’d told us about the surname decision then.   My reaction had been to say well done, open another bottle of fizz and congratulate them on putting the flagstones on yet another step towards true equality. And I meant every word.

When I got married it didn’t even occur to me to change my surname.  Why would I?  It was part of me, no, not just part of me, it WAS me.  Why would I want to suddenly, at the age of 29, acquire a new identity?  I generously offered to share my surname with my husband-to-be, but he had similar views to mine where his identity was concerned so we just stayed as we were.  We were married, we knew it and all our friends and family knew it.  I viewed it as a simple, personal choice that would be respected by all who knew me, at that time and in the future.

Now I happen to loudly and proudly refer to myself as a feminist and I always have done.  I consider it to be neither a dirty word nor a complicated one.  I believe men and women are equal and should therefore be treated as such. Neither gender should dominate the other, and from the moment of birth, the same opportunities should be open to all including later on, the choice of which name to adopt upon marriage.  My kids will parrot “there’s no such thing as boys’ toys or girls’ colours” because I’ve taught them they can wear what they like and play with what they like.  I’ve never understood why a parent would automatically bar their child from fifty per cent of experiences anyway. Bonkers.

If you struggle with the concept of feminism, then the journalist and author Caitlin Moran neatly sums it up by posing the question: ‘do you have a vagina?’ and ‘do you want to be in control of it?’ and apparently if the answer to both questions is ‘yes’ then congratulations, you are a feminist. Simple huh?  Only it’s not apparently.

My first Christmas as a married woman was a revelation when cards from all our dear friends, many of whom had been at our wedding, began to plop onto the doormat.  Despite everyone being made aware of the fact that I hadn’t changed my name, I would say that about seventy per cent of the cards were stubbornly addressed to Mr & Mrs D.....  Some of them were old fashioned enough to write to Mr & Mrs P D....., thus not only stripping me of my surname, but of my own initial too.  And as we all know, generally speaking who is it that writes most of the Christmas cards?  Yes, the women. 

My new in-laws committed the faux pas too, but somehow I can forgive more easily the older generation their outdated views, but my peers who themselves claimed to be believers in equality?  Much harder to accept, especially when I was happy to respect their choices to take their husband’s surname.  I didn’t feel the need to continually address them by their maiden name just to prove my point. 

At the time I felt irrationally upset by what I saw as our friends’ obstinate reversion to a bygone age where women ‘knew their place’. ‘I’m different! ‘I wanted to shout and yell ‘I make my own rules!  I have my own name!  But I calmed down and came to realise it’s not me, it’s them.  It’s other people who are most disturbed when a woman makes a stand, however small.  And I have some experience of making a stand and refusing to let other people tell me what is and isn’t possible purely because of my gender.

I’ve spent most of my professional life operating in a man’s world, first at Halfords, then inside the Ministry of Defence, then as Defence and Security Producer for the BBC and latterly as a property developer sporting (pink) steel toe capped boots and hardhat, bossing builders around.  At each juncture I’ve had to stand tall and prove my worth and knowledge as men (and occasionally a few women) tried their best to talk over me and ignore what I’ve had to say.  I guess I must be drawn to the challenge but I’ve never yearned to be a man, I love being a woman but being able to choose how I work it.

I’m sure that the less charitable among you are now concluding that I was probably born with a tad too much testosterone or something, but let me assure you that I can rock a skirt/blouse/heels combo and talk kids and home with the best of them.  And no, I don’t shave my face or arms.

Life should be about having the freedom to choose and being true to who you are and I take my hat off to my newly married friends with their new (for him anyway) joint surname and I wish them every happiness.  After all, he’s only doing what women have done for millennia and if we’re all truly equal then where is the quandary?  I don’t see one and neither should you.