In my 8 years of marriage, there had been numerous situations where I feel awkward to explain my view on last names. But something inside me boils when they call me Mrs. Vagmi. First of all, it amuses me because Vagmi is a unique name which could be used for a woman also. So if it is a friend, I would joke saying "sorry my husband is a man and you should be calling him Mr.." First of all it is very absurd to use one person's first name to use as someone else's last name.
At Tamil Nadu, (India), there is no concept of first name and last name at all. There is only one name which is the given name. So to blindly adhere to the British system, they took the first names of their husband and attached to the wife's. The first name or the only name of the father and attached it to the son or daughter. Now as per western tradition, you call people by their last name and Mr or Miss. Since this credit card callers are trained in that tradition, they will call and ask "Is this Miss. Shanmugam?". I jokingly would say my father is a man, so you should not be asking him as Miss". The best part is not a single person got the joke. I will give up and say "Fine. I am Shanthi here. What is it?"
The point of last name is to identify a clan / caste / or a family. Something like Pillai, Iyer was used for some few generations when caste system was pretty dominant. But due to modern views, people didn't want their caste to reflect in their name. So they made this funny choice of fixing the first into last.
It is 67 years since independence, but we have not become free of the British imposed rule of taking this last name. Unfortunately, even the passport office mandates to take a last name. Even if I want to sign in facebook, I should specify a last name. So it looks like we don't have a way out of last name.
So we have to continue this folly of adding a last name at least in documents unless some sane high ranker changes this rule. Anyway, it is one thing to adhere to document and another to follow it in our day to day life. Why should you write or call someone Mrs. ..... while you very well know their first name?
Traditionally (I mean Indian tradition which is long forgotten and buried), Radha Krishnan meant "Krishnan" whose lover name was Radha. Uma Shankar meant "Shankar" whose wife was Uma. Seetha Rama meant "Rama" whose wife name was "Seetha". Yashode bala means "son of Yashoda" referring to Krishna. But in current situation it is so confusing whether it is a man named Umashankar or the woman named Uma who has taken her father's or husband name Shankar. Anyway, our literature points out that we were embracing matriarchal values. Unfortunately due to this Mughal and British rule, women's identity were stolen and oppressed in several ways. Now why don't today's women themselves want to embrace that matriarchal value, but take pride in this western patriarchal view?
Today women are taking pride in fusing their husband's name with theirs, viewing it as a mark of love. But I view it as they discarding their original identity and adhering to the tradition of "a woman is first a father's property, next a husband's, and later the son's". I feel being owned like a property is degrading to a woman. Didn't our great grandmothers love their husbands? They didn't take their husband's name to prove it. So why should a woman change her identity after marriage? In one of the forums, I read this "This was because it was assumed that the husband would buy or build the house, and the wife would come and live in it. So his last name was the name of the house. " Does this apply to the current society? It is all a joint venture now.
I recently visited a friend and her parents. Her father was referring to her as "the little one" in Tamil. I joked "she doesn't look little" for which their immediate response was "She is always our little one". It kindled my old memories and I remembered how she adored her father. As a child, she used to cry if someone told her "she was not like her father". But now her facebook profile reflects her husband's name. The same person who cried if someone just said "She didn't look like her father" has now stripped her identity of her father. The irony is her parents still identify her with the same "little one".
I don't know how her school friends could search and connect. I still have great difficulty trying to identify old friends simply because they changed their identity.
Why should a marriage not be an inclusion? Why should it be an identity change? It is no more the case that the woman goes to a husband's family. It is that two individuals are joining to start a family. Just like the daughter in law is part of this house, the son in law is part of the other house. There are families with only daughters. They treat the son in law as the son. Does that warrant a change in the son-in-law's name? When the society is marching towards such inclusive nature, isn't it high time that we stop this identity change? Isn't the later more self-respecting to both?
I once lost a donor for my trust because I was unwilling to call his friend as Mrs.(husband's name). I bluntly asked "Doesn't she have a name?" He was offended and said "I should be more respectful to elders". So I told him in my culture showing respect means addressing them as "Anna (Brother), Akka (Sister), Uncle (Mama), Aunty (Athai)" Even in western culture it is "Sir, Madam". Why should you say the husband's name to show respect to a woman? Obviously that was the end of it. I learnt through time that people first take offence when there is a difference of opinion and hardly could see my point.
I basically do not even subscribe to the view that a child should take only the father's name while the mother is the one who toils her life out to bring up the child. Anyway that can be a different blog post.
For now, whether you like to stick to the British view of women being the husband's property and in the pretext of respect, lose your identity, atleast please count me out. Always please address me only with the one and only name which is "Shanthi" with no strings attached.
Bottom line, I don't like being addressed with my husband's name as it is not actually my real(Indian) tradition as well as it is not inclusive.
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