‘From the cradle to the grave I am my father’s daughter!’ Women and their married names in Transylvania in the second half of 19th century

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the common perception, the surname of a woman is a changing value of her personality as, at least in theory and customarily, she will take her husband name at marriage. For a traditional and patriarchal society like the Romanian one in the second half of the 19th Century, the common, empirical knowledge and the ancestral believes alike tempted one to argue that the woman left behind her maiden name and, from the day of her marriage till the end of her life (presumably lived with the same man), she assumed his family name and a new combined identity. When the information gathered in the Historical Population database of Transylvania was quantitatively important enough to allow some preliminary conclusions on this segment of population, it became evident, even at a first sight, that we have a wrong perception about the wife’s name after marriage: more than half of the married women were registered in different moments of their lives, in different circumstances, with their maiden name. The preliminary results entitle us to consider that a marriage contract is not automatically followed by a name change and the married woman is recognized by her own name in the subsequent papers. The Civil Code of 1853 states that the wife will take the name of the husband at marriage and, in this respect, our preliminary findings contradict the norm and raise specific research questions: what are the reasons for which the women preserve their maiden name in such a great extent, despite of legislation? Is this a personal choice related to the personal identity or a customary practice of the communities maintained with the only purpose of preserving the link between families, probably for issues concerning the property transmission and the lineage?