Abstract EN:

A woman’s name in France differs from that of a man’s in that her name traditionally changes when she marries. A woman’s name has long been non-transmissible to children within marriage, once the only honorable framework for procreation, and remains today seldom transmitted. What do these specificities represent and how have these representations evolved over the last two centuries? These questions form the basis of this thesis. This study focuses on the meaning given to the marital name and to the transmission of the mother’s name by the governing rules and customs that framed them, as well as by the women themselves.The thesis thus highlights how marital name changed. Referring, beyond the marital power, to the honor of the husband's family at the beginning of the 19th century, the marital name gradually became the emblem of the marital family. The study also shows how the transmission of the mother's name, a stigmatizing mark of an illegitimate birth, could, in parallel with the rise of questions about paternity, then be presented as a threat to the children's psychological balance. This outdated conception was followed by a questioning of the modalities of expression of equality within the parental couple.A survey carried out among women belonging to three successive generations sheds light on the relationship of women to the name, seeking to understand their practices and the reasons including their constraints guiding their choices regarding the name they bear and the name they give to their children. A monolithic practice has given way to a diversity of opinions and of ways of doing things. Women's current naming choices often prove to be little dissociable from their personal histories. Emphasizing the family relationship, the name can also be perceived as a vector of equality or become a mark of affection. Situated at the crossroads of alliance, descent and parenthood, the name, for women, proves to be a bearer of a plurality of issues and charged with multiple meanings.