Every so often, somebody starts a conversation about women changing their last names when they marry. And before long, people are making judgments about women abandoning their history, rejecting their families, or giving up part of their identity.
I understand why people value family names. I value family history, too. But I wish we would remember something before making assumptions about women.
Not everybody had a happy childhood. Not everybody has a family name attached to happy memories.
1. Some women have family histories they are still healing from.
We live in a world where girls experience sexual abuse, domestic violence, neglect, coercion, and control. Some grow up with adults who protect them. Others grow up with adults who harm them or stand by while someone else does.
A family name can mean love and belonging. It can also remind a woman of years she worked very hard to survive.
2. Sometimes the people who should have protected a girl helped cause the harm.
Think about girls subjected to female genital mutilation. In some communities, relatives arrange, encourage, or defend the practice. Some girls face forced marriages, threats, and punishment for refusing family expectations.
And sometimes the person who didn’t commit the abuse still caused tremendous harm by defending the abuser, demanding silence, or making the child responsible for keeping the family together.
Those experiences do not disappear when a girl becomes a woman.
3. We romanticize family loyalty without knowing what happened inside the family.
The recent controversy surrounding Ohio gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton is a painful reminder. Her opponent’s campaign released an advertisement featuring her estranged mother criticizing her. What the advertisement left out was the documented history of childhood sexual abuse allegations involving Acton’s stepfather and the family’s long estrangement.
Whatever someone’s politics, this should remind us how little outsiders may know about a woman’s family relationships.
A parent speaking against an adult daughter does not automatically make the parent the more trustworthy person.
4. Changing a name doesn’t erase a woman’s history.
Some women keep their birth names to honor their ancestors. Others change their names because they want a new beginning, a shared name with their spouse or children, or simply something different.
Women can love their ancestors without feeling obligated to preserve every family tradition. And a woman who changes her name has not necessarily rejected her heritage.
Her history belongs to her, regardless of what appears on her identification.
5. A woman doesn’t have to reveal her trauma to earn respect for her choices.
This is the part I especially want people to understand.
A woman shouldn’t have to tell strangers about childhood abuse, family violence, betrayal, or painful memories just to explain why she doesn’t want to keep a particular surname.
And she shouldn’t have to invent a serious reason, either.
Maybe she simply likes another name. That is enough.
I appreciate conversations about preserving family history. I especially understand their importance for Black Americans, given our history of slavery, forced separation, and the disruption of family identities.
But we should have enough wisdom to recognize that not every woman has experienced family as a place of safety.
A family name can tell you something about where a woman came from. It cannot tell you whether she was loved there, protected there, or ever wants to return.
So celebrate the women who keep their names. Celebrate the women who change them. And leave room for the women whose stories you do not know.
A woman’s right to make a personal choice should not depend on whether the rest of us find her explanation acceptable.
