Yes, she’s married. Yes, she can keep her last name.

It’s almost like clockwork.

Every bleeping year at around the same time and without fail, there’s an argument among the Nigerian chapter of social media users about why it’s wrong for a married woman not to take her husband’s surname.

Every bleeping year!

But before I go on to say what I think about this, here are a bunch of fun and interesting facts about women’s last names and what happens when they get married.

1. In Quebec, all women have been keeping their maiden names since 1981, whether they want to or not.

Provincial law in Quebec forbids a woman from taking her husband’s surname after marriage. The rule was instated soon after the creation of the Quebec Charter of Rights. Although the law is well accepted, there have been cases of women expressing frustration that they cannot take their husbands’ names even if they desire to do so.

2. In Greece, a similar law requiring all women to keep their maiden name was enacted in 1983 during a wave of feminist legislation.

3. In France, there’s a law in effect since 1789 requiring that people not use a name other than the one given on their birth certificate. Today, women cannot legally change their surname after marriage. but both men and women can accept the other’s surname for social and colloquial purposes.

4. Italian women have more options. Although they cannot legally change their surname, which has been true since 1975, they have the option of adding their husband’s surname onto their surname.

5. Women in the Netherlands are always identified in documents by their maiden name and can only take their husbands’ names under special circumstances.

6. Belgian law requires that one’s surname does not change after marriage.

7. In Malaysia and Korea, it is a local custom for women to keep their maiden names, and although there is no law stating that they cannot take their husbands’ surnames, it is a relatively foreign concept.

8. Custom dictates that women keep their surnames in many Spanish-speaking countries as well, including Spain and Chile.

9. Japan requires that married couples take one of the spouses’ family names, which, unsurprisingly, means that 96% of married Japanese women assume their husband’s last name.

10. In Britain nearly all married women — almost 90% according to a 2016 survey — abandon their original surname and take their husbands’. The survey found that even most of the youngest married women — aged 18–34 — chose to do so. Some women, incorrectly, even imagine it is a legal requirement. Most people in the US follow the same pattern (a 2015 analysis from the New York Times found that only 30% of American women in recent years have opted to keep their maiden names).

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Now, what’s the moral of the long story above(that I wouldn’t have had to write if most Nigerians just stopped to think about why things are the way they are instead of just regurgitating borrowed cultural ideologies)?

I’ll tell you: demanding that women change their surnames in the name of marriage is largely a Nigerian concept that is rooted in British colonial laws.

How so?

It’s simple: changing of women’s identity, by taking a husband’s name, emerged from patriarchal history where wives had no surname except “wife of X”. The wife was the husband’s possession and right up to the late 19th century, women in England ceded all property and parental rights to husbands on marriage.

Culturally, adopting the husband’s name is connected to paternalistic notions of ownership — women once belonged to their father, then their husband. Put simply, they aren’t individuals in their own right.

Essentially, taking up your husband’s surname in the name of social convention is pretty much a euphemism for becoming your husband’s property — historically speaking.

If this isn’t weird to you, then I don’t know what to tell you.

Usually, we don’t question convention because “that’s the way it’s always been done.” But what is the underlying reason? There are many. The decision to use the husband’s name sometimes derives from the fact that there’s maternal certainty. Generally, we know who gives birth, but there’s not always paternal certainty. And given that nonmarital births are still stigmatized, I think, historically, that’s a reason why the couple would go with the male name.

Also, some married women change their last names because they considered it a sign of their marital status as well as the perceived prestige that comes with marriage. Others change their surnames as a result of travel laws and restrictions that make it difficult for couples who bear different names to travel hence they want to share the same surname as their kids.

Is this a problem? Absolutely not. Also, it’s super convenient.

However, for some women, keeping their surnames is a sacred act of preserving the personal and familial identity they have always had. After all, they didn’t just drop from the sky. Names are very meaningful, especially when a woman has established a professional identity, especially those in very visible positions such as writers, academics or celebrities. If their name is key to their profession, that’s something they might not be willing to give up.

Just as I can’t consider changing my surname for anything other than to erase a disgraceful past for instance, so also do I understand if a woman refuses to change hers in the name of marriage.

And even if they haven’t done anything that gives their maiden names a certain status, it is still their name, to retain or abandon by choice.

So in conclusion, women aren’t wrong to choose their husband’s surnames. I just believe it should ultimately be their decision and one that should be made without being pressured.

If she switches, fine. If she doesn’t, that’s also okay.