"Your name at the Facebook hasn't been changed, so I am guessing you are not married yet." Was the line dropped by a long-lost acquaintance at my Facebook wall. For some reason, it bugged the heck out of me. Hence today's post.
Why the heck does she think that the first thing I would do after getting married would be changing my surname at my Facebook profile? And I am telling you it's not a feminist getting her hackles rasied here. It's a simple question of "Why"?! What's the need to change your name at your Facebook profile, Google account, National Identity Card or anywhere else for that matter?
First of all, it's just a Western tradition that we people, along with many other traditions, have adopted. Nowhere in Quran or Hadith, there's any mention of a wife taking her husband's name after marriage. Infact, going by some of the research I did at Google,
some of the scholars call it Kufr, citing that Hadith about 'calling adoptive sons by the name of their own fathers'. While some of the scholars, while still maintaing that
taking up husband's name, is wrong;
there's nothing wrong if a woman is referred to as someone's wife. So what the West's feminists are today chanting about 'belonging to no one and keeping my own name', my religion Islam gave me that right 1400 years ago :)
Now let's come to other reasons of why I don't like girls changing their names at Facebook profiles and Google accounts, and this refers to our Desi culture. I don't know if some other Desi girl has felt like this but I always felt that all those girls racing to their Facebook or Google accounts to change their names after signing Nikkah papers are somehow showing off. You know, that typical catty (or call it bitchy!) Desi girl thing of looking down their noses at other unmarried girls and showing off that they got married while they are still single, which roughly translates into that they are STILL not likeable enough in the eyes of the daughter-in-law-hunting-mothers-of-the-guy. Which is a purely pathetic and sick thing to do to your fellow sister. Period.
Another reason behind their changing their names can be that they are trying to inflate the guy's male ego by showing him that he now totally and completely 'owns' them. I guess, a better way of telling him that he owns you would be by telling him that he owns your heart, your love, your devotion, your loyalty and your faithfulness.
Another thing some of you might have noticed that this trend of taking up your husband's name is a bit recent in our side of the world. Can you honestly remember any of your Nani's or Dadi's changing her name? Her name would end at Bibi or Begum or Banu or Khanum and it would remain the same even after she was married! Never heard of an Aziz Begum or Naseeran Bibi or Kaneez Banu changing her name! :D Okay, that was a lame joke, I admit, but it just popped up in my mind from nowhere and spewed out of my fingers and on to the screen! :D
Okay, getting serious, it's brings me to my own experience with changing names after marriage.
My husband's NIC (National Identity Card) had expired and he had to renew it. And one weekend, while all of us were sitting in the living room, my father-in-law told my husband that he had talked with the guy he knew at NADRA office and we both can go and while he's getting his new NIC, I can also get my name changed. Hellloooo?! Has anyone bothered to ask me whether I want it changed or not in the first place?! But being a good daughter-in-law, I didn't say anything but my husband knew something was off with me. Later, when he asked what was bothering me, I told him that I didn't think it was all necessary.
"But we do need to get your NIC updated, don't we?"
"But I don't want to change my name!" I wailed.
"Ok. Then don't." was his swift reply.
"Then why are we going to NADRA's office?"
To which that lovely and wonderful, wonderful man explained to me, "Name isn't the only thing that gets updated in NADRA's database, you know. We also have to show that we two are married to each other and we'll be given a new Khandaan number (family number) and that little box that showed that your relation to the head of the family was of a daughter will now show the word wife because I am becoming the head of the new family here, babes!" At this, he gave that typically Desi I-am-the-he-man look which had me LOLing. "Besides, I am guessing you earned a degree or two since the time they last entered your information."
So while my new NIC is in the process of issuing, the only thing I have issues with is: why can't they take a better picture for that NIC?! I look like I lost my gaiy or something! Not the English guy but the Urdu gaiy which used to fire off a cannon in one of our ever-green advertisments! ;)
