A Rose by any other Name

I would like to talk about patrilineal naming practices.
First, I would like to state that what is common in the US and GB for naming practices is not common everywhere.

First I would like to define those:
A woman taking her husband's name upon marriage is not only not the standard in other countries, in many places, like Quebec, France, Belgium, Greece, and Italy, it is something a person cannot legally do. In Japan, both spouses must assume one of their surnames, and while it doesn't have to be the man's, it usually is. In Malaysia, Korea, and the Netherlands it is normal custom for a person to not change their name upon getting married. In many Hispanic cultures it is normal for a woman to hyphenate her name with her spouse's, and even to give their children both surnames. In many Islamic cultures women keep their birth names when they get married. About 30% of US women now keep their birth names when they get married.

Patrilineal surnames are much more commonly given to children than matrilineal ones, or other forms of surnames. Even names that were originally not patrilineal, like patronymic and occupational surnames, have evolved to become patrilineal, like Potter, Smith, and MacEwan.

OK, so there is the background. Now, here is the commentary on this:

I had a male boss recently who's name was written with III after it. I saw someone on facebook today whose name was styled the same way. My uncle had Jr. after his name. My father, his father, etc. going back in a direct like 5 generations had the same first and last names, with a different middle name.

Showing your genealogy with your name is something that in this culture, only men can really do. For women it is almost considered inconsequential because of the assumption that someday they will marry a man and take his name. It is assumed that any children she has will bear their father's surname.

I am a fifth generation Texan, and I have ancestors through my mother's side who were at the Jamestown colony. These are things to be proud of. However our culture puts little to no value on who our mother's family is, as shown by our naming practices.

I have never seen a woman style her name Sr, Jr, or with a Roman numeral after it showing her to be descended from a family of notable women. Why? Well, do we accept with this that women of our ancestry and history are not notable? That is just ridiculous, and really, it ought to change. Because the history of women is just as important as the history of men.  Genetically we get 50% of our DNA from each parent, but we get all of our mitochondrial DNA from our mothers. So clearly our maternal line is at least as important as our paternal line, or more so, especially since it is very hard to lie about who someone's mother is.

OK, so now I want to talk about why women change their names when they get married. Why? Did who you are suddenly change just because you joined in a legally-confirmed long-term relationship?
The hassle of changing names almost always falls on the woman. She has to change all her ID's, her bank account information, and any degrees earned prior to marriage are no longer in her legal name. Why would someone do that to themselves? Oh, because "that is the way it is done"? Why? If men had to go through this, the process probably would have halted in the 1960's, or earlier. Is it because our career is deemed less important and therefore our professional reputation does not need to be maintained? If "family cohesiveness" were so important to the man, why does he not consider changing his own name, either to that of his spouse, or maybe they could both change their name to something new? "Well that is just silly!"
Why? Why is it any sillier than a woman giving up her identity, her professional renown, and all her monogrammed towels?

And have you ever noticed that in some cases men are treated with less respect if their wives choose not to change their names? This happened to Bill Clinton when he was running for office in Arkansas. Hillary Rodham, quite proud of her family, and wanting to preserve her professional name and independence, chose not to change her name when they got married. Bill some flack from got Arkansas voters for this and Hillary Rodham finally changed her surname to Clinton, in order to assist him in his campaign.

Well, I guess what I am saying is that it would have been cool if I had been named Catherine Potts III.
Perhaps some day, our society will progress to the point that a woman's identity is not based on some man in her life.