Mellom kjernefamilie og opphavsfamilie.: Etternamnsval i parforhold

Last names may indicate affiliation and group belonging. This presupposes that names are taken, given, and used, in ways that are recognizable. In 2014, «Liv» wrote about her last name choices to the tradition archive Norwegian ethnological research, as one out of around 450 respondents to a qualitative questionnaire on the topic. In her response Liv touches upon several themes that come across in the other responses as well. In this article, I discuss some of these themes, and I use «Liv»’s story to understand meanings of naming, family and gender across the 2014 responses as well as responses to a second questionnaire sent out in 2016 specifically to men who made name changes, and qualitative interviews I conducted between 2016 and 2024.

The ideal of name similarity in the nuclear family suggests that at least one person in the couple must change their surname. For most of the 20th century Norwegian women had to change their name to their husband’s, and still many women do. Expectations to follow patronymic practices can create feelings of inner conflict for many women and some men. Liv expressed thoughts about community and justice, and the different conditions that men and women experience when they want to pass on the surname from their childhood, while also highlighting how names work to bring people together and create identity
as a group.