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Importance of a woman’s name

What a shock to find that Rebekah Wade — smasher of glass ceilings, ruler of men, first woman to edit the Sun and soon to become chief executive of News International — is really a fluffy at heart. Married a fortnight ago, she has decided to take her second husband’s surname. He is racehorse trainer-turned-writer Charlie Brooks. So it’s Rebekah Brooks now, everybody.

Remember that, because that’s what madam wants — at home and at work (she has already set up a News International email account in her married name). Stationery will need to be changed, she’ll have to send copies of her marriage certificate all over the place, and she’ll be letting down all those thousands of women, from 1850s Massachusetts suffragette Lucy Stone onwards, who have fought for women to retain their own names and independence. But there’s clearly no arguing with her. She will be Mrs Brooks.

Hang on, why didn’t she want to be Mrs Ross Kemp? Perhaps she felt that Kemp, her previous husband — TV soap star and documentary film maker — of nearly seven years, was more famous, and didn’t want to be overshadowed (or have her editorial integrity challenged) by his fame as a star of EastEnders. But now she is so fabulously grand herself that no amount of name changing can put her in the shade, so she can go ahead and be plain Mrs Brooks.

I’m trying to get over my dislike of her lifestyle, so that I can concentrate on the business of taking your husband’s name when you marry. But one has to contemplate her lifestyle, because it is relevant. It’s so full of grandeur: flying backwards and forwards across Europe for lunch, chumming up with prime ministers, trying to have news of her promotion delayed until after the general election because it’s so momentous (the promotion, not the general election). She’s the last sort of woman you’d expect to opt to take the back seat, yet here she is, giving up her own name like an ordinary little wife.

I think there’s something rather sad about the name of one family being obliterated, just because men are still more important than women. I never married and I have a daughter. That means, if my daughter marries and takes her husband’s name, there’ll be no more of us on record. All my family’s history will be more easily forgotten. Like many other families, they made a tremendous effort to get this far — escaping the Russian pogroms at the turn of the century, building up a new life, surviving two world wars, and then, pouff! It all evaporates because women’s names don’t matter.

Of course, it isn’t necessarily that simple if you have children. What are they to be called? If you join the parents’ names into a double-barrelled version, then the next generation could end up being quadruple-barrelled. If the children take the mother’s name, then the father may feel a bit of a weed. And if you’re American, because of the obsession with security since 9/11, anything other than taking your husband’s name means a bureaucratic bog of court orders, fees and long waiting periods. But that’s down here in the real world where it doesn’t really matter what we decide. A mammoth international organisation won’t have to change its letter headings and its habits, and no one will be influenced by what we do. Annoyingly, La Wade/Brooks is only following (and reinforcing) the recent trend. In the 70s, 80s and 90s, increasing numbers of women were hanging on to their own names when they married — but over the last 10 years, more women are apparently taking their husband’s again. What a pity that not even the powerful tabloid editor (soon to be powerful media executive) has the strength to go against the grain.

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