When Temi Otedola signed her wedding papers and changed her name to Temi Ajibade, it felt like more than a change of status. A name that had long been tied to wealth, power and entertainment quietly shifted, and suddenly everyone had an opinion. For some, it was simply a daughter taking her husband’s name, as generations of women have done. For others, it raised the old question that refuses to die: why do some women change their surnames after marriage, and why do others refuse?
Part of the answer lies in an old shadow that still stretches across modern life. In English common law, marriage once folded a woman’s legal identity into her husband’s, a doctrine called coverture. You can hear its logic in the language: a wife “covered” by the husband, her property and legal voice absorbed into his, her official name expected to follow. Mary Johnson became Mrs. Robert Johnson, Elizabeth Clarke became Mrs. Thomas Clarke. Even after reforms peeled back the law, the habit stuck; custom often lags behind the statute book. Coverture is no longer the law, but it is still the ancestor of the Western convention that a wife takes her husband’s name.
But names obey different rules depending on the map you’re looking at. In Québec, the revolution was administrative: since 1981, the law says spouses keep the names they were born with. So Marie Tremblay does not become Marie Gagnon after marrying Jacques Gagnon; legally, she remains Tremblay. France takes a similar line: Sophie Dubois may use her husband’s name, Martin, but in official records she is always Dubois. Spain goes another way entirely, with two surnames – one from each parent – so a child might be registered as García López or López García, depending on parental choice. In Japan, the law still requires a single family name for each married couple; almost all take the husband’s, so a bride named Aiko Tanaka would almost always become Aiko Suzuki. These are not mere quirks; they are philosophies about kinship and the individual, printed on passports.
Go east and the ground shifts again. In China, a woman named Li Hua typically keeps “Li” after marrying someone like Wang Wei; their children would carry “Wang,” but she remains Li. In Korea, too, Kim Ji-yeon keeps her surname “Kim” even after marrying Park Min-soo. Northern Europe offers other experiments; think of Iceland’s patronymics and matronymics, where last names point to a parent’s first name: Jónsson (son of Jón) or Katrínardóttir (daughter of Katrín). The global picture refuses a single script.
So how did Nigeria come to treat the husband’s surname as the default? Through the front doors of the courthouse and the church. British rule brought English common-law ideas about the household, plus an appetite for ledgers: baptismal rolls, marriage registers, court filings, tax records. Mission schools and colonial bureaucracies slowly standardized “surnames” in places that already had rich naming traditions: Yorùbá oríkì and lineage names like Adeyemi or Ogunbanjo, Igbo theophoric names like Okonkwo or Nnamani, and Hausa-Islamic naming anchored in lineage such as Bello or Abubakar. In that convergence, the Western-style family name – and the wife taking the husband’s – presented itself as “modern,” respectable, documented. But it was never the only Nigerian practice: Islamic tradition in the North generally expects a woman to retain her own family name; many scholars even discourage replacing it.
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The law here, crucially, does not command a woman to change her name. Nigeria’s statutes don’t make marital name change compulsory; women (and men) change names by usage or by deed poll and gazette – a bureaucratic, not moral, procedure. That’s why your aunt could remain the professional “Adeniran” in the office while being “Mrs. Ogunleye” at church, and why a double-barrel like “Okafor-Adeyemi” can thread two lineages into one signature without anyone going to jail. The point is choice, not compliance.
If the law mostly shrugs, society still has opinions. Women change their surnames for many reasons – because they want the whole family under one label; because the paperwork is easier for visas, schools and banks; because they like the sound of the new name; because it signals a new chapter. Others keep theirs – because a name is a career, a brand, a history; because the patriarchal baggage is too heavy; because in their faith or culture, it would be a category error to swap a father’s lineage for a spouse’s. Plenty compromise: the Lagos boardroom has no shortage of double-barrels – Balogun-Okeke, Hassan-Bello, Eze-Udoh – and the hyphen has done more quiet diplomacy in marriages than many counselors ever will.
What, then, does Temi’s choice mean? Perhaps nothing more – and nothing less – than one woman deciding how she wants to be read in the world. “Ajibade” doesn’t erase “Otedola”; it adds a sentence to the story. And there’s a deeper note here for all of us who love to litigate women’s decisions: a name change is not a referendum on feminism or fidelity. It’s a line of personal typography shaped by law, culture, faith, class, and the occasionally stubborn demands of the bank app.
If we want a healthier conversation, we can start with three simple truths. First: the tradition of wives taking husbands’ surnames is not universal, not timeless, and not inevitable; it is one tradition among many. Second: the state’s role should be administrative – make every option easy, accurate and affordable – and then step aside. Third: the only “right” answer is the one the woman arrives at without pressure, whether that is keeping the name she built, choosing the one she wants to build with, or joining them together in a small act of syntax.
The rest of us can practice a little reading comprehension. When you see “Temi Otedola Ajibade,” don’t rush to grade it. See it as what names have always been at their best in this country: a bridge between past and future, between the house you come from and the one you are building.
