Interestingly, tonight was our second consecutive evening of trilingual entertainment. Last night we attended the “avant-premiere” of the film The Oxford Murders, featuring a question-and-answer session with star Elijah Wood and director Álex de la Iglesia. Elijah speaks only English, while Álex is Spanish and speaks just a bit of English (and no French). So there was a French translator, but sometimes the director couldn’t figure out how to say something in English and slipped automatically into Spanish. After asking for linguistic help from the audience, a young woman came down to translate from Spanish into French, but the result was a hilarious mixture of three languages (often in the same sentence) and lots of staggered laughter as various segments of the audience got the gist of some joke. The movie itself, I’m sorry to say, was merely so-so, but it was great to see Elijah Wood in person, and the overall event was tremendous fun.

But back to my birthday…what truly made today magical was returning home to find that one of the two elevators in our building was suddenly back in service! Both of the elevators have been en panne for about three and a half weeks, and that has been a major drag since we live on the 10th floor (meaning, because of the way floors are numbered here, that we have to walk up/down 11 flights of stairs). When we saw a handwritten sign saying the one elevator was working, we were in shock. Our neighbor from across the hall happened to be arriving home at the same time and was equally surprised. I mentioned that today was my birthday, and he agreed that it was a fantastic birthday gift.

I can’t say exactly when it was I decided that if I got married I wouldn’t change my last name, but I know that by the time I got to college the idea was pretty much confirmed in my mind. I knew a lot of people at that time who were finding creative ways to combine both last names of the couple getting married: hyphenation, a double last name for both, or a combination of two names into one word. There were even some couples who chose a completely different last name to share. While I applauded the creativity of these folks, I knew it wasn’t for me.

So when Joe and I got married, I stuck to the plan and didn’t change my name (for the record, neither did he). Since then, we’ve opened joint bank accounts, signed leases together, filed joint tax returns; all the things that married couples do, and for the most part we had no problems because of our different surnames. Of course, we laughed about the insurance agent who kept sending personalized return address labels to “Elizabeth Kissell” (Elizabeth is my hardly-used first name) and even more hilariously, someone named “Liz Kissell.” Nothing about that name was mine, it was like an entirely new identity I could choose to assume if I ever needed one.

While it’s by no means a universal practice in North America, a married couple having different last names is common enough that large institutions usually know how to handle the situation. As we’ve been finding out, it’s not so simple in France.

To start off with, the French language itself is a bit biased as to how male and female individuals are referred to. Unlike English, French doesn’t have a gender-neutral way of identifying a group of people; instead of “they” or “them,” the group is identified by whether it contains male or female members. If a group is solely male, “they” is rendered “ils,” for an all-female group it is “elles.” However, if there is even one male in a mostly female group, they are all “ils.”

It makes me wonder if that language quirk has any effect on how married couples are identified, because it’s been my experience here that institutions keep wanting to lump us together under one name. For example, our bank here issued me a bank card for our joint account with my correct name on it, but all our bank statements are addressed to “Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Kissell.” I noticed another example of this when we received our Cartes de Séjour; my card not only listed my first and last names, but also my “Nom Marital,” while Joe’s card had no such addendum about the name of his spouse.

I don’t mean to imply that there’s anything malicious about this, just that it chafes a bit to have a choice I’ve made undermined by social custom. And it puzzles me that a country so devoted to the cause of equality, and so dedicated to women’s welfare and rights in other areas, still clings to this convention. I think language does matter, and it may be that this practice is just the tip of the iceberg on attitudes about men and women’s roles in society. Or maybe not. I don’t know enough yet to say whether it’s just an annoying fact of life, or a sign of something systemic. And I’m very curious to know what French women themselves make of it. Is there some way to maintain a separate identity that I haven’t learned about, or is it just accepted? Perhaps there are bigger battles to fight.