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Does a woman have to take the surname of her husband?
Does a woman have to attach her husband's name to her own or can she retain her
own identity?
Why do we (men or women) attach a second name to our own
name? When we are young, we have achieved very little to merit any
attention from anyone. No one knows who we are or what we are capable of.
So, we borrow the achievements and glories of our ancestors and attach their
names to our. Our surname gives people a clue as to what ancestors did or
achieved. Our immediate ancestor is our father. By adding our
father's name, we tell the world, this is the son of xyz. People hope and
assume the child will be like the father. વડ તેવા ટેટા ને બાપ તેવા બેટા
After marriage, the wife starts a new identity as the spouse
of ***. As the wive of ***, she is declaring this who I am with and you
have to give me the same respect as him. She gets to bask in the reflected
glory of his achievements (professional, financial, social, political etc)
Now, if a wife has achieved things of her own accord and is famous or independently wealthy, she would want to be known as her own person. There is nothing wrong or unusual about that. This has scriptural support too. For example, Parvati retained her name associated with her father despite her actual name being Gauri. Same with Vaidehi (Sita) and Panchali (Draupadi).
Infact, in our scriptures, name of the wife comes before the
name of the husband - Pruthuvi Pati, Lakshmi Narayan, Sita Rama, Radha Krushna
etc !!!!! Tell me how many men will be willing to be as 'modern' as our
ancient Gods ?
© Bhagwat Shah
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