Abstract

DEERE, Carmen Diana  and  LEON, Magdalena. The Identity of Married Women: The Use of the “de” in their Surnames in Colombia. rev.estud.soc. [online]. 2023, n.84, pp.19-39.  Epub Mar 27, 2023. ISSN 0123-885X.  https://doi.org/10.7440/res84.2023.02.

It is not well known that women’s use of the preposition “de” [belonging to] before their husbands’ last names was one of the socio-cultural changes associated with the Republican period in Colombia. Primary data shows that during the colonial period women kept their paternal and maternal last names after marriage. This article offers a historical overview of the norms and social practices regarding married women’s last names and an analysis of their relation to the changing identity of married women. Secondary sources illustrate how, by the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, using the particle “de” became generalized in concert with the ideological construction of the wife as “queen of the home.” The change in 1934 from the addition of “de” as a customary right to that of a legal obligation drew hardly any comment. However, it served to reinforce the legal concept of potestad marital [the husband’s power over the person and property of his wife] at a time when a liberal government had just strengthened married women’s property rights. In 1970, the use of the particle “de” became optional and by the end of the 20th century, this practice was disappearing. The transition in this usage is explored through interviews with a small, intentional sample of urban, middle- and upper-class women. This transition captures, in a manner paralleling socio-economic structural transformations, the historical changes in married women’s identity from one based on their domesticity and maternal role, to that of a partner in a relationship in which she no longer belongs to anyone.

Keywords : feminism; marital power; marriage; social history; surnames.

        · abstract in Spanish | Portuguese     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )