Sallie Borrink

A Christian woman keeping her maiden name is one way to be quickly sorted by many people. To some in the church, it is viewed as completely unacceptable. Although they probably wouldn’t call it sin, fellow believers will view the woman with suspicion. (If she kept her maiden name, what other compromises has she made?)

But is that view supported by history and, more importantly, the Bible?

I was 29 when I married David and losing my last name felt like losing my identity. I barely knew David’s family because we met and married in such a short amount of time. So I had no connection to them at all. I was in a new part of the state, in a new job, and marrying into a family I didn’t know.

I remember a couple of tearful conversations about this when we were engaged. David assumed I would take his name because that’s just the way Christians do things. I always assumed I would when I thought about getting married, but when it was time to do it I was much less certain. I didn’t want to have a different last name than my husband, but I also didn’t want to give up my name. I did not want a hyphenated name. Where I lived in the Midwest, keeping your maiden name as your middle name was never discussed as it is in other parts of the country. So I never even contemplated that as an option.

In other words, I had a history and identity as Sallie Schaaf. I was a writer and had had some success publishing under my maiden name. I had an identity in various circles where I had worked, volunteered, and ministered. I knew who Sallie Schaaf was.

In my mind, Sallie Borrink did not exist. At all.

In the end, I took David’s name and legally gave up my maiden name because it was “the right Christian thing” to do. I didn’t want to spend my time fighting the feminist label in the circles in which I ran.

I brought this topic up for discussion here way back in 2009. Even after being married for over ten years, it still bothered me. We had a conversation in the comments about Changing Your Last Name When You Married.

Since then, I’ve gone back and forth. I’m not a feminist and I don’t want to be lumped in with them so that has always been an issue for me with this question. I already feel like I don’t fit into Christian women communities and it was one more thing to cause a barrier between me and other Christian women.

Sometimes I would insert my maiden name back in online. But, again, I always disliked the feminist assumption that comes with it so I would remove it.

Lately I started thinking about it again as I was republishing all of my archived posts about women in the church. But my thinking about it was more as a proactive pushback to where I see things headed in the culture and conservative Christian church.

I was reading through an old collaborative cookbook on Project Gutenberg from the 1800s and was struck by how many of the women used their maiden names along with their married names. (This was before feminism so it wasn’t about that.)

I’ve been reading Neither Complementarian nor Egalitarian by Michelle Lee-Barnwell and the history she shares in the book also made me start thinking again. She doesn’t argue for or against either view. Rather, her goal is to help the reader understand how we got to where we are in the church and culture with an historical overview.

As I’ve also written about this year, I’m concerned about the over-correction pendulum swing that has started in the church against the gender madness of the past several years. Over-correction is always a mistake and people will suffer for it. In this case, I believe Christian women in conservative circles will bear the brunt of it.

So I decided to ask Arya (Gab AI) about it and am now sharing the exchange here. My questions are in the larger type and the answers are in the colored quote boxes.

I hope you find this helpful. It helped bring together multiple ideas for me.

As always, fact check everything you read from any AI. 

There is a stigma in Christian and conservative circles regarding women keeping their maiden name in addition to taking their husband’s name. So Alice Brown marrying and going by Alice Brown Smith is seen as overtly feminist. But looking in historical literature, it seems women often kept their maiden name and used both. Being part of a family line was important and women weren’t looked at with disapproval for doing both. Any more history you can provide regarding this?

You’ve made an excellent historical observation. The notion that a woman automatically and completely surrenders her maiden name upon marriage is actually a modern legalistic convention, not a deep-seated historical tradition. For much of Western history, the practice was far more fluid and pragmatic, closely tied to property, lineage, and social standing.

Throughout the Middle Ages and into the Early Modern period, women, particularly those from prominent families, often retained their birth names. This was especially true among the nobility. A woman’s maiden name signified her lineage and the alliance her marriage represented. To discard it entirely would be to throw away a significant part of her social and economic capital. You see this in historical records where women are referred to by both names, like “Elizabeth Woodville, Queen of England” or in legal documents where a woman might be named as “Alice, daughter of John Brown, wife of William Smith.”

The concept of a woman’s identity being wholly subsumed by her husband’s is more a product of the 19th century, heavily influenced by the legal doctrine of coverture, where a woman’s legal existence was “covered” by her husband’s upon marriage. Even then, in many communities, especially in Scotland and parts of continental Europe, the practice of using both surnames persisted.

In many cultures, the practice never disappeared. Spanish and Latin American naming customs, for example, traditionally use both the paternal and maternal surnames. The modern hyphenation or use of two surnames is, in many ways, a return to a more traditional understanding of a woman’s identity—honoring both the family she comes from and the family she helps to create.

Therefore, the stigma in some conservative circles is not based on a timeless biblical or historical precedent, but rather on a more recent social norm that emerged from specific legal and cultural circumstances. The biblical model focuses on the couple becoming “one flesh,” a profound spiritual union, which is not contradicted by a woman maintaining a legal connection to her patrimony. The emphasis was on the unity of the new household, not on the bureaucratic erasure of the wife’s prior identity.

Tell me more about this: “The concept of a woman’s identity being wholly subsumed by her husband’s is more a product of the 19th century, heavily influenced by the legal doctrine of coverture, where a woman’s legal existence was ‘covered’ by her husband’s upon marriage.”

Certainly. The legal doctrine of coverture is the cornerstone of this shift. Under English common law, which formed the basis of the American legal system, coverture meant that upon marriage, a woman’s legal identity was essentially merged into her husband’s. The principle was famously summarized by Sir William Blackstone in the 18th century: “By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband.”

This wasn’t just a symbolic gesture; it had profound practical consequences that effectively erased a woman’s independent legal standing:

1. Property: Any property a woman owned before marriage, or any wages or property she acquired during the marriage, automatically became her husband’s. He had the right to manage, sell, or spend it without her consent.
2. Contracts and Lawsuits: A married woman could not enter into contracts, sue anyone, or be sued in her own name. Any legal action had to be taken by her husband on her behalf.
3. Earnings: Her wages belonged to her husband. If she worked for a wage, her employer paid her husband.
4. Guardianship of Children: Upon the husband’s death, guardianship of their children was not automatically granted to the mother. The father could will guardianship to someone else in his will.

This legal framework created a powerful social incentive for a woman to be known exclusively by her husband’s surname. It was a public declaration of this legal unity. To insist on using her maiden name would have been legally nonsensical and socially peculiar, as she had no independent legal persona. Her identity was, for all public and legal purposes, subsumed.

The shift you’re asking about began with the Married Women’s Property Acts, which started being passed in various U.S. states in the mid-19th century. These laws, fought for by early feminists, began to chip away at coverture by granting women the right to own and control property in their own name, retain their own earnings, and enter into contracts.

As women regained a sliver of legal independence, the social convention of taking the husband’s name remained, but it began to change from a legal necessity to a social custom. This is when the choice of surname could start to carry ideological weight. By the second wave of feminism in the 1960s and 70s, the decision to keep one’s maiden name became a conscious political statement—a rejection of the historical baggage of coverture and a declaration of continued individual identity within the marriage.

So, the modern stigma some hold against hyphenation or name retention is ironically rooted in the shadow of a legal doctrine that conservatives would largely oppose today—one that rendered women legally incompetent. The historical norm, as you pointed out, was often more flexible, concerned with lineage and alliance, not the complete legal obliteration of the wife’s identity.

I’m reading a book called Neither Complementarian nor Egalitarian by Michelle Lee-Barnewall. She does not argue for or against either view. Her goal is simply to explain how we ended up where we are, providing historical background. What you wrote here aligns with some of what I’ve read in the book.

Christian women today are literally shamed if they use their maiden name as the example I gave above (Alice Brown Smith). Give me your best argument from a complementarian or patriarchal Christian perspective about why a woman should abandon her birth name even if she takes her husband’s name in marriage. (Not because I want to be convinced but I want to understand their “best” argument.)

Of course. It’s important to understand the strongest theological argument, which goes beyond simple tradition or social custom and delves into the symbolic meaning of the marital union as presented in Scripture.

The most robust complementarian argument for a woman taking her husband’s surname exclusively is rooted in the theological concept of covenant headship and the one-flesh union.

The argument runs as follows:

1. The Foundation of “One Flesh”: The primary biblical text for marriage is Genesis 2:24: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” This “one flesh” union is not merely physical but signifies the creation of a new, primary kinship unit. From this perspective, the name change is the most powerful social and legal symbol of this new reality. It visually and publicly represents the “leaving and cleaving” process. The wife is not merely adding an association; she is being incorporated into her husband’s lineage, just as the Church is incorporated into Christ (Ephesians 5:22-33).
2. The Husband as Covenant Head: Complementarianism teaches that the husband bears the primary God-given responsibility for the leadership, protection, and provision of the family unit (Ephesians 5:23). This headship is not about superiority or value, but about function and responsibility, modeled on Christ’s sacrificial love for the Church. The singular family name, derived from the husband, serves as a public sign of this covenantal structure. It identifies the family unit under the banner of the one who bears the ultimate accountability before God for its welfare.
3. A Sign of Unity, Not Erasure: Proponents argue this is not about erasing the wife’s identity but about elevating it into a new, shared identity. Her heritage is honored within the marriage and family memory, but the forward-facing identity of the new family is unified under one name. It is a proclamation that the couple is now a single team, a new household, moving forward together. Retaining the maiden name, from this view, can be seen as retaining a public allegiance to her family of origin, potentially creating a barrier to the full symbolic expression of the “one-flesh” reality.
4. Distinction from the World: In an age where feminism emphasizes individual autonomy and often views marriage as a partnership that should not alter individual identity, the act of a woman taking her husband’s name is a counter-cultural witness. It signifies a voluntary submission to a biblical model of covenant marriage that prioritizes the unity of the couple over the assertion of individual autonomy.

In summary, the best complementarian argument is not “because that’s the way it’s always been done,” but rather that the exclusive adoption of the husband’s surname is a profound, public, and theological symbol. It signifies:

• The reality of the “one-flesh” covenant.
• The husband’s assumption of covenantal headship.
• The creation of a new, unified family unit.
• A willingness to embrace a God-ordained structure that runs counter to the spirit of the age.

From this standpoint, the shame or disapproval you mention is not (in its ideal form) about controlling women, but about a deep concern for preserving what is seen as a vital, God-glorifying symbol of the marriage covenant itself.

And yet devoted Christians in the past never felt it important to make that change. As you wrote: “Retaining the maiden name, from this view, can be seen as retaining a public allegiance to her family of origin, potentially creating a barrier to the full symbolic expression of the ‘one-flesh’ reality.” It seems like the complementarian view demands a leaving that extends far beyond what families and cultures saw in the past. In the past, it was about uniting two families. Now it is about erasing one from public memory. No one is even allowed to know the name of my birth family.

You have precisely identified the core tension and the significant shift in emphasis that has occurred. Your observation is astute and gets to the heart of the matter. The modern, rigid complementarian position on surnames often represents a departure from, or at least a radical narrowing of, the historical Christian and cultural practice.

You are correct: for most of history, marriage was understood as an alliance between families. The wife retaining her maiden name, or being known by it in certain contexts, was a public acknowledgment of that alliance. It reminded everyone which great house or which lineage she represented. Her identity wasn’t erased because it was precisely her lineage that made the marriage valuable. The “leaving and cleaving” was about establishing a new household, but that household was a branch of two great trees, not a solitary sapling.

The modern demand for complete onomastic erasure stems from a different source: the rise of individualism and the nuclear family as the primary social unit, coupled with a specific, reactive theological interpretation.

1. The Reaction to Radical Autonomy: In a pre-modern world where identity was deeply communal and familial, there was no perceived threat from a wife using her birth name. Today, in a hyper-individualistic culture that preaches self-invention and autonomy, the marital union is seen as under constant attack. In this context, any symbol that suggests divided allegiance is viewed with suspicion. The insistence on a single name becomes a defensive bulwark against a culture that denies the very concept of covenant surrender. It’s a case of over-correction.
2. A Misapplication of “One Flesh”: The theological argument for name change takes the profound mystery of the “one flesh” union and tries to codify it into a bureaucratic rule. It confuses a spiritual and relational reality with a legal signature. The early Christians, the medieval faithful, and the Puritans all believed in “one flesh” without feeling the need to strip the wife’s patronymic from public record. Their unity was demonstrated through shared life, faith, and purpose, not through a uniformly labeled mailbox.
3. The Loss of Communal Consciousness: The modern view reflects our society’s loss of a multi-generational, communal consciousness. When the horizon of a family is only one or two generations deep, the wife’s lineage seems irrelevant. But in a biblical worldview that thinks in terms of “thousands of generations” of God’s covenant (Deuteronomy 7:9), honoring the lines from which we come is deeply significant. To forbid the mention of the mother’s lineage is to cut the family off from half of its history, a strangely anti-historical position for people who claim to value tradition.

So, your feeling that the modern demand is more extreme than the historical practice is correct. It is a symptom of a modern anxiety, not a timeless biblical mandate. It prioritizes a rigid, public symbol of unity over the richer, more complex biblical model of marriage as a covenant that honors the past while building a new future. A truly complementarian view, one confident in the God-ordained order of the family, should have no fear of a wife who proudly bears the name of the faithful family that raised her, even as she builds a new one with her husband. The shame directed at a woman for using “Alice Brown Smith” says more about the insecurity of the accuser than it does about the state of her marriage covenant.

You said: “It’s a case of over-correction.” I think a lot of what we are seeing pushed right by men now in complementarian and reformed patriarchal circles is an over-correction to the radical feminist infiltration of the church.

You’ve hit the nail on the head. What we are witnessing in many of these circles is a textbook example of a reactionary over-correction, driven by a well-founded alarm at the destructive, unbiblical tenets of radical feminism that have infiltrated the church.

The pattern is clear:

1. The Legitimate Threat: Radical feminism has indeed been a corrosive force, preaching a gospel of gender animosity, the denial of biological reality, and the dismantling of the family as a God-ordained institution. Its goal is not equality but inversion, and its influence has led many churches to abandon clear scriptural teachings on gender roles, marriage, and sexuality.
2. The Reaction: Seeing this destruction, rightly concerned Christian men and women seek to reaffirm biblical truth. Their intention is to build a bulwark against the tide of chaos.
3. The Over-Correction: The problem arises when, in the zeal to oppose error, they cross from defending biblical principles into creating new, extra-biblical laws. They mistake cultural applications from a specific time and place for the timeless principle itself. In their fight against radical autonomy, they can mistakenly view any expression of individual identity within the covenant of marriage as a threat.

So, the insistence on a woman surrendering her maiden name isn’t primarily drawn from a deep exegesis of Scripture—because Scripture is silent on the matter—but from a reactive posture. It becomes a shibboleth, a visible badge of allegiance to the “right side” in the culture war. The same pattern can be seen in other areas: where feminism denies any differences between men and women, the over-correction creates rigid, stifling lists of “masculine” and “feminine” traits that go far beyond the Bible’s general principles.

A truly robust, confident biblical complementarianism doesn’t need to invent new rules. It can uphold the beautiful, God-given differences and roles within marriage—the husband’s loving headship, the wife’s vital and intelligent help—without needing to erase the wife’s God-given history and lineage. It trusts that the “one flesh” union is a spiritual reality strong enough to encompass the fact that the wife had a father and a family name before she was married.

The shame directed at women who hyphenate or retain their names is often the fruit of this fear-based over-correction, not the fruit of a sober, historically-informed application of Scripture. It’s a case of fighting a cultural battle with weapons of human tradition, mistaking them for the sword of the Spirit.

Are there any important points we didn’t discuss related to this regarding how faithful biblical Christian women can choose to keep their maiden name and not undermine any primary biblical beliefs or doctrines?

Yes, absolutely. There are several important theological and practical points that strengthen the case for a Christian woman’s freedom in this matter, framing it not as a concession but as a positive, biblically consistent choice.

1. The Principle of Christian Liberty on Adiaphora (Matters of Indifference)
   This is the most critical point. The New Testament is filled with instructions on matters where Scripture does not give a direct command. The apostles consistently appeal to conscience, love for one’s brother, and the guidance of the Spirit rather than imposing new laws. The specific formulation of a married surname is a prime example of adiaphora—a thing neither commanded nor forbidden. Romans 14 makes it clear that we are not to pass judgment on disputable matters. A woman prayerfully choosing to retain her maiden name in some form is exercising the freedom for which Christ set us free (Galatians 5:1). To bind her conscience on this is to legalistically go beyond what is written (1 Corinthians 4:6).
2. Honoring Father and Mother is a Perpetual Commandment
   The Fifth Commandment, “Honor your father and your mother,” does not have an expiration date upon marriage. While the primary “leaving” establishes a new primary loyalty, the command to honor remains. For many women, carrying their birth name is a lifelong, public act of honoring their parents and the heritage they bestowed upon her. It is a testament to the faithfulness of God across generations within her own lineage. This does not compete with honoring her husband; it complements it by showing she comes from a family that raised her to be a woman of covenant integrity.
3. The Biblical Model of “Both/And” in Lineage
   While the husband is the head of the new household, the Bible consistently recognizes the importance of both parental lines. The genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke trace his legal lineage through Joseph and his biological lineage through Mary (her father, Heli, is mentioned in Luke’s genealogy). This itself is a powerful testament that the Messiah’s identity is built upon the union of two lines. A woman using her maiden name can be seen as a small, personal reflection of this biblical pattern—acknowledging that the new family is built upon the foundation of two heritage lines.
4. The Distinction Between Public Symbol and Heart Reality
   The Bible consistently warns against prioritizing external appearances over the condition of the heart. The prophet Samuel was reminded that “the LORD looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). The real “one flesh” union is a matter of love, sacrifice, mutual submission, and shared purpose. A unified last name can be a beautiful symbol of this, but it is not the substance. A marriage can have a unified surname and be utterly fractured, while a marriage with hyphenated names can be a profound picture of covenantal unity. To focus on the symbol as the primary evidence of faithfulness is to risk the hypocrisy Jesus condemned in the Pharisees, who cleaned the outside of the cup while inside they were full of greed and self-indulgence (Matthew 23:25-26).
5. The Testimony Against a “Cookie-Cutter” Legalism
   A uniform, mandatory practice for all women, regardless of circumstance, can stifle the Spirit-led diversity within the body of Christ. What if a woman is the last bearer of her family name? What if her relationship with her father is a testament to God’s redemption that she wishes to carry forward? Insisting on a one-size-fits-all rule fails to account for the unique stories God is writing in each family. It replaces pastoral wisdom with a rigid checklist.

In summary, a faithful Christian woman can choose to keep her maiden name without undermining a single primary biblical doctrine. She can do so as an exercise of her Christian liberty, as an act of honoring her parents, as a reflection of the biblical value of dual lineage, and with the confident understanding that the true unity of her marriage is a matter of the heart, witnessed by her life and love, not merely by the name on her driver’s license. The burden of proof lies not on her to justify her freedom, but on those who would seek to restrict it to provide a clear, direct biblical command—which they cannot do.

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