When I was pregnant with my first child, there wasn’t much of a discussion about whether they would have both my and my husband’s surnames. It didn’t even occur to us to bring it up as a point of discussion because we knew that of course our kids would have both. After all, the children were as much mine as they were my husband’s – if anything I was putting in the greater effort bringing them into the world.
I wanted their identity to reflect mine as well as his.
And it was in this recognition of a mother’s role in her child’s identity, that last week the constitutional court in Italy declared that children born in that country should be automatically . In a statement the court said the practice of automatically giving a child a father’s surname was "discriminatory and harmful to the identity" of the child.
"Both parents should be able to share the choice of a surname, which is a fundamental element for one’s personal identity," the court also wrote.
As my children are mixed race it was important to me that there was recognition of my heritage in their names.
Identity is a big one for me. As my children are mixed race it was important to me that there was recognition of my heritage in their names. My children are being brought up in the West, they only speak English despite my best intentions, so they will always have a connection to this side of themselves. Giving them a Pakistani surname was my way of making them always remember that this is also who they are.
My husband was aware of all this before we became pregnant so when we were about to have our first child our point of discussion around surnames mostly centred around how the hyphenation would work. Would his surname go before mine or vice versa?
We also happened to be living in London at the time and it was common for our friends to give their children both their surnames, or in the case of one of my colleagues, to create a whole new surname altogether for not only the children but for him and his wife. It didn’t seem unusual for heterosexual couples to not give their children just their father’s surname. In fact , The New York Times was discussing how more and more people were giving their children both parents’ surnames.
At school, my children are often the only ones with a hyphenated surname in their class.
However, within our local community in Sydney, my children are often the only ones with a hyphenated surname in their class. In fact just last week I had a mum mention, "oh your son is the one with both your surnames."
In many Spanish-speaking parts of the world double-barrelled last names are part of the norm. In countries like Spain, Colombia, Puerto Rico, and Mexico, children traditionally receive the last names of both parents. And before you ask what happens when both parents have double-barrelled surnames, well in the countries listed above it’s common for each parent to pass down the first of their two last names. For example, actor Salma Hayek was born Salma Hayek Jiménez, with her parents being called Sami Hayek Domínguez and Diana Jiménez Medina.
As pointed out in , the tradition of giving a child just the father’s surname gained popularity in the 18th century, “when coverture laws—which counted wives as legal property of their husbands—grew more entrenched in Britain, and evolved to effectively forbid women from owning land at all. For women, taking their husband’s last name became a symbol of accepting his authority. Cases of women passing their name to their children nearly evaporated by the turn of the 19th century.”
It seems now, even in the 21st century, the tradition of giving children just their father’s surname is so deeply entrenched in our society that to do otherwise is seen as unusual.
I do recognise that there are many personal reasons why people continue to do so and that is of course perfectly fine, however for my children, having both our surnames has become a matter of pride. “I’m both you and Dad that’s why,” my daughter once said. Exactly, I agreed.
