Louise O'Neill: Yes, this is going to be a column about women changing their name after they get married

This Christmas, I binged the first series of The Crown on Netflix. It was perfect for those indolent days, a whirl of beautiful dresses and sparkling jewels and repressed emotions.

While it’s impossible to know how much of the series is historically accurate, the episode where Britain’s Prince Philip insists that his surname, Mountbatten, be given to Queen Elizabeth and to his children, is presumed to be factual.

In the biography Philip and Elizabeth: Portrait of a Royal Marriage, Philip is quoted as saying that “I am nothing but a bloody amoeba. I am the only man in the country not allowed give his name to his own children.”

It bothered him so much that in 1960, Elizabeth was said to have visited the prime minister to “revisit the issue of her family name, which had been irritating her husband since 1952”.

Firstly, my dude, Mountbatten was a name that you adopted, since you were born into the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg (try saying that after a few drinks), and secondly, maybe don’t marry the queen of England if you’re going to get upset about her keeping her own name?

Yes, this is going to be a column about women changing their name after they get married. I have wanted to write this for some time but have been reluctant to do so, because I know that the subject can cause grave offence.

Many of my closest female friends have chosen to change their surnames; some were barely off the altar before they updated their social media accounts. Whenever I scroll through Facebook these days, I am often left wondering who half the people on my page are because I don’t recognise their new aliases.

But, as my mother keeps reminding me, “that was their choice to do so. And, Louise, you keep saying feminism is about choice, don’t you?”

As much as I hate to admit this, my mother is right. It is a choice. It might not be the choice that I would make, but I respect other people’s right to do so.

I am, however, hoping that I can critique the system without criticising individuals. And while I have no doubt many women consciously consider the decision to take their partner’s surname, many others do it because it’s expected on a societal level.

That it is as if by retaining her own surname, a woman is attempting to emasculate her husband, or shame him in the eyes of his family and friends.

And if you feel overwhelming pressure to do something, is it really a choice?

In sociology, there is a debate over which is more important to human behaviour, structure or agency.

Agency is seen as our ability to act independently and to make choices of our own free will, but structure – the patterns of cultural expectations within our society – can limit our agency.

Do we act of our own accord or in ways that are dictated by the society in which we live? There is no doubt that some of the customs surrounding heterosexual weddings, and often marriage itself, can be inherently patriarchal.

The man must ask his girlfriend’s father for ‘permission’ to propose, the father must ‘give the bride away’, as if she is a piece of property, and then the new bride is expected to take the groom’s name, to indicate that she now belongs to him.

To be clear, I know that we don’t consciously subscribe to such ideas in a modern society. But our acceptance of them as harmless traditions that cannot or should not be challenged irritates me.

One of the most memorable aspects of Margaret Atwood’s seminal novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, is how the handmaidens are renamed once they enter into the Commanders’ houses. They are called Offred or Ofglen, because they literally belong to Fred or Glen.

It’s shocking, but Atwood’s correlation between that and our own insistence that women should take a man’s name is clear.

Women are always the ones who are expected to sacrifice, to subsume their own needs and desires, in order to take up their rightful identities as wife and mother.

You might argue that you just want all of your family members to share the same surname, because it makes travelling easier, which is an issue for another day, and because it creates a sense of unity.

Then why doesn’t the man have to change his name? Why don’t you both change your surname? Why can’t your children take your name rather than their father’s?

You are the one who carried the baby in your womb for nine months and then had to give birth. Surely it’s not too much of a stretch to have your name mentioned on the birth certificate?!

I don’t want to seem as if I’m being hyper critical of women who change their name.

Women are put under enough pressure, and are already held up to far more stringent standards of behaviour than men are.

But why do we all, men and women, just blindly accept all of this and not stop to think about the implications?

And while some might say that we carry our fathers’ name already, so what difference is it if we decide to take our husband’s instead?

Maybe it’s because, as much as I adore my father, I don’t want to constantly be defined by the men in my life.

Is that really too much to ask?

Louise Says:

READ: Sarah Moore Fitzgerald is one of this country’s finest writers for young people, and her latest book, The List of Real Things, left me utterly enchanted.

Moore Fitzgerald has such incredible heart, and it shows in her writing.

BUY: Oscar nominated actress, Ruth Negga, is slated to play a female Hamlet in a new production of the Shakespeare play at the Gate Theatre later this year.

Ruth Negga + Hamlet = me scrambling to get as many tickets as I could.

Don’t miss out.