Does a man care whether his wife adopts his name or not?

As she married her boyfriend of five years last September, Dr Juliet Nanteza, a paediatrician with a leading private hospital in Kampala, had already decided that she would remain known by her maiden name and not adopt that of her husband.

She realised that since her maiden name was the identity of her five-year medical practice, losing it would accordingly mean losing almost her entire professional identity. The paediatrician didn’t even think her husband would care whether or not she adopted his name, so she didn’t bring up the topic as they discussed how to rearrange and combine their individual lives into one existence.

What Dr Nanteza didn’t know was that her husband, a city businessman, wouldn’t accept her decision not to adopt his name. Only five months from the date of their luxurious wedding, the newly-weds were at loggerheads as the husband unconditionally demanded that the wife adopts his name.

It is the couple’s elders who settled the escalating conflict, with a ruling that the pediatrician remain known by her maiden name only in her professional circles and on her formal papers like academic transcripts, while in the social circles she goes by her husband’s surname.

According to Joseph Musaalo, counsellor and director of Adonai Counselling and Training Services as well as the Head of Counselling and Guidance at Uganda Christian University Mukono, the scenario of marrieds contending over a wife’s stand on adopting her husband’s name isn’t a common one in Uganda.

Eddie Muwuma, the head of the Marrieds’ League at Grace Christian Ministries, agrees with Musaalo, saying most men normally don’t express much concern whether their wives adopt their names or not.

However, both marriage counsellors add that the wife’s stand on the issue will always have significance for any married couple, whether the husband is concerned or not. And both gentlemen reckon that a woman should never consider whether or not to adopt her husband’s name only in light of what it means to her. That rather she should find out and try to understand what it means to her husband, then the two jointly decide on a way forward.

Why he wants you to use his name

1. It is a reflection of your commitment
Muwuma says in his 10 years of counselling and guiding marrieds, he has come to know that many men take a wife’s adoption of their name to reflect total commitment, while reluctance or even refusal to do so is often taken to reflect low commitment or even absolute lack of it.

Singer Angela Kalule echoes a similar perspective here, saying when a wife takes on her husband’s name the man is rest-assured she has really committed and settled, because “the name sort of shouts to the whole world: ‘I’m taken by the gentleman whose name I bear.’”
Ian Musiimenta, a secondary school teacher, simply personifies the assertion. Musiimenta says if he married a woman who refused to adopt his name, he would straight away suspect that she was planning to walk out of the marriage at the earliest opportunity, or at least that she wanted to find it easy posing before other men as available for the taking.

Muwuma, acknowledging that men and women see things differently, says it is important here for women to understand the men’s perspective of the whole thing. “It will often be hard for women to understand men on this, but it is just like the way men don’t get how offering an engagement ring is very important to women as a sign of love and commitment. The two sexes have learnt to find a compromise on the issue,” he says,

2. It bonds and identifies their families
Aaron Tumukunde, a marketer in the process of organising his wedding, on his part says his wife will have to adopt his name so that the whole family will have one identity, for he also plans to have all their children named Tumukunde. To him, the wife’s adoption of his name isn’t about her or him, but about the family as a whole.
“I come from a family where we didn’t use a single family name, and comparing that with my aunt’s family where they used a single family name, I can see their single family name gave them a closer sense of unity and a single identity wherever they were. I wouldn’t want my own family to miss out on that.”

3. It is a source of pride and status
For Nicholas Lukyamuzi, 31, an accountant who has been married for two years, it doesn’t matter whether his wife adopts his name officially or not, but it matters even to his marrow that she be known by his name in the social circles –among their families, friends, at church, and other such social circles.

Lukyamuzi says we should remember that in our society, people who have families are generally seen in a different “noble light”, as responsible men who have proven their mettle and usefulness to society, and he says personally, he wouldn’t want to miss out on that privileged status.

Musaalo agrees with Lukyamuzi that the man indeed has some pride and status to gain from it; “Adopting a husband’s name is some sort of public testament to the husband’s position as family-head, a position we African men cherish and most especially in these times when some women have usurped it. “It somewhat proves to the world that the man married the wife and not the other way round, which many men today would like to prove.”

What is in his name for the wife?
According to Musaalo, adopting your marital name earns a woman a lot of respect from the society because marriage is an esteemed institution that only the responsible and focused can enter and sustain. He says it is for this reason that many unmarried women take on their fathers’ names, at least to appear like they are married when they are introduced to people who don’t know about their marital status.

Japheth Mwesigwa, who has been married for 40 years, adds that adopting the husband’s name should be something every woman in Africa does because, with the history or relations between wives and their in-laws, it helps calm bad blood where it exists. “A woman’s in-laws will naturally feel more attached to her if she even bears their family/clan name, and that name itself is like a seal that she has indeed crossed from her former family to theirs,” he explains. It is, however, still entirely up to a couple whether she takes on his name or not.

Why might a woman not want to adopt her husband’s name?

“It is simply unfair to women. I personally believe it’s important for me to keep my identity, which is quite different from my husband’s, and I think it’s good for women that there is absolutely no legal requirement in Uganda’s laws obliging a woman to adopt her husband’s name. What makes that practice even worse is that it’s just one of the colonial legacies bequeathed to Africa from Victorian Europe, one of those sexist colonial relics that have been integrated into our tradition.
The famous 18th Century British Jurist, Sir William Blackstone, aptly described the culture and belief from which the practice originated when he said, “In law, husband and wife are one person, and the husband is that person.” In that culture, a woman’s legal existence was completely consolidated into the husband’s under whose wing she performed everything.”
Sylvia Tamale, Law Professor.

“I think any wife will find it easier or harder to relinquish her name depending on how much and what quality of reputation she has previously established with it. If you have worked so hard over a long time to establish a reputation, it might be harder. But then if your husband minds it, you have to adopt the name for the sake of the marriage. Luckily, mine is very liberal and doesn’t mind.
Sarah Kizito, Entrepreneur.

“Whatever the woman wants is what should be acceptable to the couple. If she wants to adopt his name, fine, if she doesn’t, the man shouldn’t pressure her or read so much into it. Only insecure and unfair men really make a fuss about a woman who decides to keep her maiden name.”
Rita Akoth, Student.

Adopting the husband’s name surely reflects a woman’s commitment, which settles a husband’s heart and even bonds a couple closer because now they even share an identity. And in any case, the woman has more to earn from it because she will be automatically identified as married whenever she introduces herself as Mrs so-and-so.
Angela Kalule, Musician

“Adopting a man’s name is a past practice where men treated us like their personal property. Today, we work, decide our lives and even when we marry, we have an equal say in everything as anyone else. So, unless a man is also willing to adopt the woman’s name, there is no reason a woman should adopt his. ”
Ronah Tumukunde, Businesswoman.

Which women are not changing their names?
Eddie Muwuma, the head of the Marrieds’ League at Grace Christian Ministries, says; “Most women retaining their maiden names are the corporate type, most of whom are married to men from the same educated/corporate/upper ranks of society. While on the other hand most of the less educated women (most of them working in the informal business sector) are still adopting their husbands’ names, and most of them are also married to men from the same less educated ranks (most of them also working in the informal business sector).”

“More educated people are always more liberal and less attached to the traditional ways of doing things,” Muwuma says. He adds, “So, it is generally them who are increasingly adopting their own perspective and approach to marriage different from that of yesteryear. It is primarily among them that both the young men and women think every one should retain a large measure of independence and live their own way despite being married, the independence extending even to every one keeping their own identity.”

Musaalo adds that it has also got to do with the women from the higher and more educated social strata often having considerable reputations associated with their own names. “Say when a woman comes from an affluent family, she will not want to relinquish the prestige accruing from her family name, so she will want to at least keep it as a middle name. While on the side of education, professional women will want to keep their names because the names are the identity of their entire careers. Also educated, professional women tend to be more independent-minded and conscious of their individuality, and perhaps here we can’t ignore the role the women’s emancipation movement has played.”

How to do it

Mercy Adong, a lawyer, says most married people simply adopt their husbands’ names by use and repute, whereby a person who wants to be known by their marital name just uses this name and gets people to call her by it.

Adong says this is enough for one to change their name if they have a marriage certificate from a certified marriage conductor –say court or a church licensed to conduct marriages. However, Adong says some people feel a need to officially change their names in court, in most cases to make their change of name more sure in circumstances such as property wrangles, business transactions and professional identity change.

In this case, as a person changing your name, you have to sign what is called a deed poll for change of name, which is a signed declaration that you are abandoning the use of your old name and that from the date of signing you will use your new name at all times and that you require everyone to use your new name. She says to make the deed poll, one only has to find a legal practitioner/attorney at law who will conduct the process with the registrar of oaths.