From Outsider to Insider: Women's Marital Names and Family Identity in Nineteenth-Century Taiwan

Abstract

This article explores the naming customs of married women in Taiwan during the nineteenth century. By attempting to unveil the factors that caused women to prefix the husband's surname, it shows that the practice likely developed from legal and property documents. It also elaborates the convention's relationship with women's family identity, arguing that women were “dual outsiders” in both the natal and affinal family. However, this study finally demonstrates that prefixing the husband's surname did not connote their passivity or subjugation as married women, especially widows who could rely on it to call upon their rights within the family and society.