There is much in a name

Why do women have to reinvent themselves to fit in this dystopian idea of marriage and society?

I have a question that has been bothering me for the longest time: are women an extension of their husbands, and if so will I lose my individual identity when and if I marry? Our society treats marriage as something fundamental: there is an order of things, a strict timeline of when something should be done, and childhood, education, jobs, marriage, children, and even death has to follow this pattern. And while this can be rigid or pliable for different social groups, it raises the question of what will become of the women.

A woman’s absence is so embedded in our lives that it almost always escapes scrutiny. It appears in school admissions form, in legal documents, in introductions at social gatherings, and even in the way families narrate their histories. Women are treated as an extra in their own homes, they are just ‘mrs’, while their husbands have names, their children carry their husbands names, they are never the ones that create lineage, they simply incubate it. It is the absence of a woman’s independent identity, most visibly reflected in something as fundamental as a name.

Identity in India is inherited and most important, it is patrilineally inherited. A child is their father’s son or daughter. Surnames travel through male lines. Lineage, property, and legacy are traced through men. The mother, despite being the primary biological and emotional anchor, often becomes the secondary reference. 

For almost all women in India, their name is not the primary marker of identity but a shifting label dependent on male association. At birth, she is known through her father and upon marriage she is known through her husband. Later in her life she is identified through her children. At no point, her identity is her own. The most baffling part of this ordeal is that society sees it as a normal order of things.

This fluidity is romanticised as tradition, highlighted in television and movies. The aunt is always the problematic one if she overstays her welcome, or if she wants the share in property for which uncle and father have been fighting for ages. For uncle and father to fight over grandfather’s property, it is about right, but not for aunt. They have paid enough for her wedding; she has to forfeit her right, as that’s what good women do.

All of this carries a troubling implication; the idea that a woman’s identity is not autonomous but derivative. The expectation of changing name is not symbolic; it signifies transfer from one patriarchal unit to another. It defines her role, shows her what her position in society looks like. It was only in 1999 that it was accepted that women too can be natural guardians of children during the father’s lifetime. The fact that such basic recognition required litigation speaks volumes about society. 

When I was in school I would often think why my mother’s name was not included in the identity card. Is my mother’s right over me any less than my father’s? 

A lot of people with whom I have discussed this matter think that I am making an issue out of nothing, and that is just how things work. Having only father’s name is convenient and to them, I often answer that we should replace father’s name with that of mothers and they find it odd. I am not arguing for removing the father’s name but adding the mother’s name. I don’t want to diminish my mother’s presence in my life and one day if I become a mother, I don’t want my presence to be diminished. I want a woman’s name to stand on its own.

To challenge this is not to reject tradition, but to question the assumption that underpins it. Why should identity flow in only one direction? Why should one parent’s name carry more weight than others? Why should a woman’s sense of self be dependent on her relation with men? 

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