We live in modern times and tradition is something ever-changing. Some traditional things last, and some just don’t. Others, like a woman taking her husbands name after they marry, actually become controversial. My favourite motto to live by in life is, ‘live and let live’. But, yet, it seems we can’t.
Some woman see submission or sexism when a woman changes her name. But where did that woman get her name? And where did her mother get hers?, and her grandmother? To stop it now feels like closing the stable after the horse has long bolted.
All of this does make me sound pro changing my name, I know. I am in a bit of a muddle with it to be honest. Part of my thinks it is something to do if you have children, so you can be a family u
nit, the stories of woman being stopped at airports because they have a different surname from their children are common. If I have children I certainly don’t want to have a different surname than them. It would just be too weird. This means I have to take my fiancee’s name, he has to take mine or we have to double-barrel our names. That is if we have children. If we don’t, does it really matter? Part of me thinks not.
There is a part in The Crucible when John Proctor has two choices: change his name or die. He chooses to die, “It is my name”, he says; “I cannot have any other”. This is a pretty extreme example but I remember watching TV with a friend. There was a woman with a very long double-barreled surname. My friend commented on the ridiculousness of her name; “Oh, just lose your ego woman!” But it is not just ego is it? It’s your identity. My name is me. Well, actually, my name is a stage name, albeit one that I use for everything now. It belonged to my grandmother, a Lithuanian who died when she was only 40 of kidney failure. Not surprisingly, I would like this to live on. I am only a handful of people in the world with the surname ‘Balavage’. An Anglo take on ‘Bullovich’. You see? Surnames, they change. As does identity. I even pronounce my surname differently than she would have: Ba Lav age, with a quiet ‘V’. At my friends Nick Cohen’s book launch, the amazing writer Francis Wheen complimented my on my surname, ‘Like a glamorous French actress’. I have pronounced it the way he said it ever since.
So when I marry I have a few choices: change my real name and keep my stage name, change my name completely and just keep Balavage for acting, or double-barrel my name. I have until next year to decide, but I am already in a pickle. What to do?
It is not about feminism or inequality. If a woman wants to take her new husbands name, she should be able to, if a man wants to change his, he should and if a woman wants to keep or double-barrel her name, she should be able to without rudeness: it’s her identity after all: Live and let live.
What do you think? Will you change your name?