The making of selfhood: naming decisions on marriage

This article outlines the ways in which British women make sense of and reconcile facets of their identities at the point of marriage through the naming decisions they make. Both name changing and name retaining are considered. The dialectic between self and others is considered, using Mead’s theories, as well the creation of gendered identity, using empirical evidence from a survey of 102 British women and 16 in-depth interviews with a smaller sample of this group.