That our surnames, be it maiden or matrimonial, are already patriarchal, is a fact many people don't realize. I currently am unmarried, and like the most people in our society, I also was not given a choice of surnames after I grow up, but my father's family name was tagged after my name. Even now, I bear that name, but I don't like the patriarchal and sexist nature of the surname system at all. Where is my mother's identity in my name? My mom gave birth to me, and hence everyone somehow sees me and know who my mother is? That's a silly argument, right?

So, I was very eager to change my last name to my mother’s name, wanted to go to the completely opposite extreme of this patriarchal and casteist surname system. But till now, I have not been able to do it legally, because one, in my country, paperwork is a big hassle, and two, it costs a good amount of money and I don’t want to pay for my basic rights, and three, there are some very judgmental and sexist people sitting in the name-change offices and I don’t want to face more judgments just now, and four, by now, my surname is provided already in so many places, like my school and college certificates, identification cards, to my employers, banks etc., it’ll be a big headache to check for each and everything and change. So, now, I just use my name mostly, discarding the surname, but still, some very unpleasant incidents happen. E.g., that day I went for an X-ray, and the woman at the counter asked for my father’s name, I found it odd, but was too tired after an entire day at office so didn’t confront. When the test result came, I saw she wrote my name by adding my father’s entire name after my first name, I was furious, I should have provided my mother’s name, I thought. Another day, I went to buy a laptop and the service guy was creating a new outlook email ID for me. When I told him my choice of ID where there’s my name, and my mother’s name as surname, he said, you have to use your actual surname, and I don’t know why I listened to him, I now want to give him an earful :)

Another incident is a rather recent one. It has been around 2 years since I joined my workplace. One day, towards the beginning, when we were just chatting a bit, a male colleague suddenly asked me if I knew the surname of one of my female colleagues (she was sitting there). So I saw her name in the employee log, and I said it’s “Kumar”. Now, Kumar might be a real surname, idk, but in my language, it also can be appended after the name of a guy, it’s like saying “Mr.” so and so. He laughed out loud as if he proved a very funny point to that female colleague and then told me, “She is a bit of a feminist, you see. She even had problems providing her actual surname to the system, so, it appended Kumar after her name.” I again was tongue-tied. Dude, are you mocking her in front of me? I am also that kind of girl, you see, just not yet that courageous or out like her, now you are mocking her, after some years, if I also change my name and only keep my first name, you would mock me too. And the system is also sexist bro. “Kumar” is for guys, “Kumari” is for girls. Why is it functioned like it would automatically assume the employee is a male? (out of context here, but, funny how many systems like this, e.g., my healthcare app, or my taxpaying app, automatically assumes I am a guy, and all their documents, avatars etc. are of guys’, so here the system is calling me a man, right? Then why do the creators of these systems, i.e. the patriarchal polices of our society say we are trying to be men or acting like men whenever we demand our basic rights or do something “feminist”? Do they want us to “be men” or not? 😂😂)

Currently my thought is that I'll change my name someday, probably would just keep my first name only, or, will actually take mom's name as last name, but that day is yet to come.

Lastly, I also don’t find the system of kids' taking their fathers' surname only as an unbiased system too. Taking both father and mother’s surname has two problems. First, mother, mostly has no matrilineal surname, even if she has a different surname than her husband, it’s most probably just her father’s surname, or, maternal grandfather’s, etc. And secondly, the kids will have two surnames, the grandkids will have four and the great-grandkids eight, ... This is insane, and not practical. So, I think the default system should be something like this, for one entire generation, women should create a bunch of new surnames and choose one from those, and from the next generations, either, daughters would get mothers' surname, sons fathers’, or, daughters would get fathers' surnames and sons mothers’. That would be a good and unbiased system, scientific too, more scientifically efficient that the current patrilineal system. Now, given that default, people would have the liberty to choose anything else as suits them.