Why do surnames change

We found that patriarchal power has not gone away. In England, for example, some husbands made marriage conditional on their wives taking their name.

Mandy gives a striking example:. More often, male preeminence in names was just taken for granted. We found though that such views were much less common in Norway — where most women keep their own name as a secondary, middle, surname to preserve their own identity. The flip side of patriarchal power was that some women were resistant to losing their identity.

As Rebecca explained:. Another argument is that feminism is ultimately about giving women free choice. How prevalent the male name-taking tradition will remain in the future is hotly debated by researchers. There is little predictive academic research, although there are signs that - despite the slow progress to date - both women and men are becoming increasingly open to alternatives. This practice was traditionally the preserve of upper-class British families, but gender equality is emerging as a motivator within couples with more diverse backgrounds.

In the US, growing numbers of women are also opting for unhyphenated double surnames due to the need to remain searchable online for professional reasons.

America Nazar says changing her name would have caused an awful lot of unnecessary admin. With women tending to marry later — the average age is now 35 or older in European countries including the UK, Italy and Spain, and around 28 in the US — this may also have an impact on future name choices. Research from Norway and the US suggests that older, more educated and economically independent women are more likely to keep their birth names, while the practice is less popular with younger, lower-paid women and within the African-American community.

I had a degree, my car, all different things. Other researchers point to the influence of the LGBTQIA community, where there already tends to be more flexibility around name changing.

As the concept of family evolves, more people will make decisions that work for them, some experts say. In London, psychotherapist Burke also believes that more diverse naming conventions will start to bleed into society.

Go for it. In these newer reforms names get usually exempt but in some languages that changed quite drastically even as late as the midth century: Czech for instance had an orthography reform around creating the modern form of Czech names then. Categories All categories The Tree House Why do surnames change in spelling in time? Speaking of this could it be that it was mispelled or was it a phonetic spelling.

Please log in or register to add a comment. Please log in or register to answer this question. Just a guess but perhaps due to migration to foreign locale or to maybe distinguish between different relatives? Just a guess though hope it gets your wheels turning. Thanks so much for those valid points that have been raised. Eduction as in grammar was not standard and immigration issues and the like food for thought.

My family line has several spelling changes. A Gould family Bible includes a note that the spelling was changed to "Goold" for one family line. Descendants of the Boutilier family believe that Henry Butler Gould's real middle name was "Boutilier", but it was written the way it sounded when the family relocated from Nova Scotia to New Hampshire.

Allowing for the confusion can be challenging! Thanks for your reply it sounds on par with mine. I have a family Bible also but only through my Heritage I have discovered these changes.

Boutilier is a name one of my discovered names I am familiar with.