Views from the Abyss #13: Separate Names After Marriage

Q. Is Japan really considering allowing separate surnames after marriage, so it can finally catch up™ with the West?

A. Fuck, no.

The topic has been broached by a total of six people, because they believe their personal feelings are more important than the laws and traditions they were raised with, but no serious consideration is actually being given to anything of the sort.

Q. But, it's 2015™. Isn't it time Japan caught up™?

A. Fuck, no.

It's apples and oranges my friend, and advocating for a change in law to accommodate separate surnames after marriage is very much a case of putting the cart before the horse. And not even a cart that's particularly popular. In fact, out of all the carts that could reasonably be put before the horse, this is the one that is least likely to gain any kind of traction. It will more likely be burned to the ground by its detractors long before it's even given been a chance to try and budge.

It may help to speed an understanding of the whys, if we back up a little and view things from a broader and more global perspective.

In many Western countries, where upon marrying one may choose to adopt one's spouse's surname, or keep one's birth name, or use a combination of both names, it must be understood that there is no specific law that enables people to do this. There is no need for any such law to exist, because citizens' names are hollow vacuous entities, arbitrary, devoid of any meaning beyond what one may individually place upon them.

Within reason, any citizen may use any name that they wish, because the name they assign themselves or have assigned to themselves is only tenuously connected to their legal identity. Their "real name" is whatever they say it is, and they will be right.

In Japan, citizens' names are worth something. That is to say, they are so deeply entrenched in one's legal identity that formal usage of any kind of pseudonym is practically impossible. Your legal name is your real name is your only name, and there are very few situations under which it can be changed. Marriage is one such situation, and the rule applies to everybody. Death is another, but only in the Buddhist tradition.

So in the West, the very system that allows a wife (or husband) to retain their own "family identity" after they marry, is the very same system that makes that family identity absolutely worthless outside their own tiny bubble.

And whatever minuscule value they do find in it, they deny to their own children.

For equality™.

Q. But why should married people have to have the same surname in the first place?

A. Because that is the way it was decided it would be. It could also have been decided that all married couples keep their original family names like in some other Asian countries and Canada. But it wasn't.

Most likely, it was felt that children would develop a stronger "family identity" if their immediate family all shared the same surname. Doubtlessly, the value of building and preserving a family identity is lost on many Westerners.

Q. What about when women have a legitimate reason for keeping their maiden name, such as for consistency with a professional reputation they earned before marriage?

A. Such women should probably talk to their husbands before they marry, and look into the possibility of him changing his name instead. If he's unwilling to consider it, then he is probably not a suitable partner, and such women would do well to call the wedding off. They will be happier in the long run.

Or, they can simply do what everybody else already does in similar circumstances—use their maiden names at work. As long as personnel have details of their official legal identity on file, nobody cares, and if anything, it actually makes life easier for everybody involved.


In short, there is no problem here to solve, and the government should not be in the business of regulating "feelings".