Marital renaming, cultural actors and cultural onlookers – By Kehinde Yusuf
*Photo: Prof Kehinde Yusuf*
At the 54th Convocation Ceremonies of the University of Lagos, Akoka, Lagos, on Thursday, 18 January, 2024, Dr. Aminat Olawunmi Ige was the cynosure of all eyes and hers was the patent picture of an unmistakably and deservedly happy woman. As the Overall Best Ph.D Thesis Award winner for 2022, on account of her excellent Ph.D thesis in Mathematics, she had been chosen to speak on behalf of other Ph.D graduands. In the speech, she recounted: “on this Ph.D programme, I got divorced … and … while on the programme, I got married again.” This caught my attention, because this was a self-assured lady to whom “divorce” was not a dirty word. Just like her, the deputy governorship candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) for Lagos State in the 2023 elections who has just made a Nigerian film that has unprecedentedly netted over a billion naira, said, with respect to being divorced twice: “I don’t see it as a failure. … I just take it as it comes.”
The just-one-of-those-things attitude of both Dr. Aminat Ige and Ms. Funke Akindele to divorce brought to the fore for me a naming issue that I have been interested in since 1990. It concerns the question, “Should a woman drop her surname and adopt her husband’s when she marries?” The answer to this question has traditional African (specifically Yoruba), Islamic and Judeo-Christian/Western dimensions. This is understandable considering what the late iconic Kenyan intellectual, Professor Ali Mazrui, called “The Triple Heritage” – a coalescence of three divergent socio-cultural tendencies.
To begin with, let us examine naming practices in the traditional Yoruba society of southwestern Nigeria. Here, children are given only personal names which they use throughout their lives, irrespective of their marital status. In other words, children do not acquire surnames in traditional Yoruba society and Yoruba women do not change their names to their husbands’ when they marry. One category of Yoruba personal names which approximates what is called lastnames (not surnames) in Western societies is referred to as oríkì àbísọ. Oríkì àbísọ characteristically have three parts with respect to the way they are pronounced and two examples of this special category of names are Àsàbí (which is a feminine oríkì) and Àdìgún (which is a masculine oríkì). These names are necessarily terms of endearment or praise. While Àsàbí means ‘One who is specially-selected for birth’, Àdìgún means ‘One who is perfectly packaged.’
With respect to Islamic naming practices, reference is often made to the Qur’an, Chapter 33, Verse 5 which states as follows: “[As for your adopted children,] call them by their [real] fathers’ names: this is more equitable in the sight of God; and if you know not who their fathers were, [call them] your brethren in faith and your friends.” This is usually cited to justify giving children surnames and making married women to retain their maiden names when they marry. In other words, the Islamic practice of not adopting husbands’ surnames on marrying is consistent with the traditional Yoruba practice. However, questions remain about surnaming in Islam. Is the verse referred to above prescribing surnaming in general or is it only seeking to protect adopted children from being treated as chattels?
While this issue continues to be interrogated, it is important to note that the only two cases in which a child is named in relation to a parent in the Qur’an are related to Prophet Iysa (or Jesus). He is referred to as “Iysa ibnu Maryam” (‘Iysa, son of Maryam’) in Chapter 5, Verse 114 and his mother is referred to as “Maryam ibnata Imraan” (‘Maryam, daughter of Imraan’) in Chapter 66, Verse 12. With the exception of Prophet Iysa, all of the other Prophets mentioned in the Qur’an are referred to with their personal names, and are not labeled in relation to their mothers or fathers.
In Judeo-Christian/Western tradition, children are given surnames and women adopt husbands’ names on marrying. Moreover, while the names of unmarried women are prefixed with “Miss”, the names of married women are prefixed with “Mrs.” It has been argued that these two feminine tags reflect the belief that marriage is an essential characteristic of a woman’s being. It has also been argued that changing a woman’s surname to her husband’s on marrying, along with using the title “Mrs.”, is like writing your name on a book you have just bought. In contrast, the masculine tag “Mr.” does not distinguish between men who are married and those who are not. In addressing this double standard, the feminine tag “Ms.” has been created, and, like “Mr.”, does not reflect marital status. In other words, “Ms.” is the equivalent of the equitable Yoruba feminine title Arábìnrin which applies whether the woman in respect of which it is used is married or not.
Now back to Dr. Aminat Ige and Ms. Funke Akindele, how have their marriage and divorce affected their surnames? According to Dr. Ige, when she went into her first marriage, she changed her surname to her husband’s. In this regard, she said, “I initially did not want to, but I did for NYSC to redeploy me back to my state.” She also pointed out that upon her divorce, “I reverted back to my maiden name.” She further remarked as follows about her new husband: “I don’t have his surname on any of my papers, but I use his name unofficially.” I noted in confirmation of this claim that, in her convocation speech, she referred to herself once as “Dr. (Mrs.) Aminat Ige-Ariyibi”. Ariyibi is her husband’s surname.
In response to the question whether she supported the retention of women’s maiden names when they marry, Dr. Ige said: “Yes, I do. Islamically, it is the right thing to do. Aside from Islam, I think it’s not proper to lose the name of one’s parents completely.” On a general note, she counseled: “I will like to suggest to women to compound their maiden names and the last name of their husbands if it becomes totally necessary to adopt the man’s name. If not, each one to her father’s last name. The process of reverting names legally to one’s maiden name if need be in Nigeria is traumatic on its own.” In the case of Ms. Akindele, with respect to her second marriage, she adopted the hyphenated-surname Akindele-Bello when she married Abdulrasheed Bello. As the marriage came under stress, she reverted to her maiden name, Funke Akindele.
There is also a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN), Ms. Rofiat Temidayo Akibu, who on marrying kept her maiden name. Going the whole hog, in line with traditional Yoruba naming norms and as a cultural actor, her children, irrespective of their gender, have only personal names, and each has a personal oríkì àbísọ which they use as their lastname in official documents. In other words, none of her children has a surname. Ironically, some Westernised Yoruba persons have placed socio-psychological pressure on her to adopt the culturally retrogressive practice of adopting her husband’s name and giving the children surnames. She has effectively resisted the pressure.
The government institutions which also place retrogressive pressure on women who decide to adopt the gender-equitable Yoruba naming practices are antenatal and postnatal clinics and nursery or primary schools. When a pregnant woman is to be registered in an antenatal clinic, the registering officials who are, more often than not, female, typically ask for her husbands’ name. When she insists on registering with her maiden name, the registering officials begin to insinuate that the pregnancy had been rejected by the man responsible for it. Similarly, when such officials ask for the children’s names at postnatal clinics and the mother gives only the children’s personal names, these knowledge-challenged officials try to insinuate that their father is not willing to accept his paternity of the children. A similar kind of pressure is mounted in the process of registering children in nursery or primary schools where the officials’ patent question has been “What’s their father’s name?” Ms. Rofiat Akibu was able to successfully resist these deleterious institutional forms of socio-psychological pressure. Dr. Aminat Ige, as noted above, has also drawn attention to the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme as an institution that predisposes to retrogressive marital renaming.
The Westernised Yoruba media have also been promoting the inequitable marital renaming practice. In traditional Yoruba society, distinctive marital tags like “Miss” and “Mrs.” do not exist, and, even in changing times, the tag “Arabinrin” (the gender equitable equivalent of “Ms.”) has come to be used for a woman whether she is married or not. However, in some Yoruba media today, as vestiges of colonial socio-psychological conditioning, effort is being made to align equitable Yoruba female naming norms with inequitable Westernised naming practices. So, you can sometimes find a woman described as, for example, “Omidan Adeyemi” (for “Miss Adeyemi”) and “Ìyá Àfin Olayemi” (for “Mrs. Olayemi”). It is important to note that “Àpọ́n” (‘bachelor’) which is the antonym of “Omidan” is not used as a masculine non-marital tag nor does Bàbá Àfin, which is like the antonym of Ìyá Àfin, exist as a masculine marital prefix by such Yoruba media.
It is ironical that, like cultural onlookers, it is ‘educated’ or Westernised Yoruba women who are fascinated by the Western female-disadvantaging naming system. A cursory observation shows that Yoruba women who do not have a high level of Western education and who do not work in formal sectors more noticeably use their personal names only, even when they are married. In this regard, in his 1989 book titled What’s in a Name?, Leonard R.N. Ashley makes this interesting point: “If it were not for custom, each person, male or female, whatever their marital status, ought best to go through life with one name of their own, producing a better sense of identity, independence, and an easier time with credit, banks, and all record-keeping generally.”
Incidentally, Malia Obama, the first daughter of former U.S. President Barrack Obama, has dropped her father’s name and, in her new movie premiered on Thursday, 18 January, 2024, she is credited as “Malia Ann”, using only her first and middle names. This indicates that the kind of social-cultural experimentation which Rofiat Akibu has embarked upon for three decades now has due resonance. And, you know who Rofiat’s husband is? Kehinde Yusuf.
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