A storm of indignation and protest was created recently by the ruling of the U.S. Register of Copyrights that a married woman must register her claim to copyright in her husband's surname. A brief prepared by the National Woman's Party asking that the rule be abolished covers the law in relation to the matter in a most interesting as well as satisfactory and thorough manner. I am sorry space permits only a brief summary of its contents. It is a subject of wide interest about which there is much confusion as to the law in the average mind.

A name is a word or words by which an individual is designated and distinguished from other individuals. It is a settled rule of the common law that a person may have any name he or she chooses, and usage makes it his or her legal name as effectually as if it had been conferred by an Act of the legislature or by judicial decree.

The common law is an ancient institution long antedating the use of surnames. Therefore, under the old English rule husband and wife, each with a given name, had no surname at all because there was no surname to bear. Not until the time of Edward I did surnames come into use in England, nor did they come to be of controlling importance even as late as the time of Elizabeth. The insufficiency of the Christian name to distinguish the particular individual, where there were many bearing the same name, led to the giving of surnames. Thus surnames "grew into general use without any law commanding their adoption."

The custom of a wife's taking her husband's surname crept in relatively late and as a sort of temporary convenience. No statute law deals with the matter. It was a custom from which any person might depart. The adoption of the husband's name was a matter of personal preference and individual choice, a custom as honored in the breach as in the keeping, as many historical examples attest. In other words, the custom was subject to the immemorial rule of the common law that a person may take any name he or she chooses.

In Jones v. Kohler, 137 Indiana 528, the court speaks of a woman "changing her name by assuming that of a - - - husband." If the woman’s name is changed by assuming that of a husband, then manifestly, if the wife does not assume the husband's name, no change in name takes place, and her maiden name remains her legal name and should be recognized as such whenever used for the purpose of identification.

In an early English case where a woman had married twice first a man named Browne and then a man named Rigg. While the: wife of Browne, she retained her maiden name, Ann Lovick, and when she contract dethe second marriage, it was not as Ann Browne, but as “Ann Lovick, widow." The question was whether the second marriage was valid under a statute making a marriage void where the banns were not published under the true Christian and surnames of the parties.

The court said in part, "It has been asserted in the argument, that a married woman cannot legally bear any other name than that which she has acquired in wedlock; but the fact is not so; a married woman may legally bear a different name from her husband, and very many instances might be quoted in proof of the fact."

It is a very common practice in England for peeresses (not being peeresses in their own right) after marrying commoners to retain the name and title of the 'first husband and not to accept that of the second husband. In a case involving this right, Lord Lindley, of the House of Lords, said, "The controversy between the parties is reduced to a dispute about the use of a name. Speaking generally, the law of this country allows any person to assume and use any name, provided its use is not calculated to deceive and to inflict pecuniary loss."

The case of Maria Jeritza, the opera singer, decided by the United States District court, for the Southern District of New York, on May 24, 1926, sustains the right of a married woman to use her maiden name.

Madame Jeritza sued to enjoin the use of her name by the defendants for advertising and trade purposes. The defendants contended that the name "Jeritza" was not the true name of the plaintiff since she was married to a man by the name of Popper de Podhragy.

Justice Thacher in holding that Jeritza was the legal name, of the plaintiff, in answer to the argument that a woman upon her marriage assumes the name of her husband and cannot legally call herself by any other name said: "No authority for this has been cited, and I find none which requires a married woman to assume the name of her husband, although she is certainly entitled to do so and the relations of the average home ordinarily present very practical reasons why she should."

Another instance of the recognition of the right of a married woman to retain her maiden name comes from Wisconsin. On November 4, 1924, a married woman was elected to the office of County Clerk in her maiden name. The question was raised as to whether she should be permitted to serve under her maiden name. The Attorney General held that she was so entitled to serve. He said, in part: 'While a married woman generally takes and uses her husband's surname, there is nothing in the laws of this state that affirmatively requires it, although the general rule of such custom is recognized in the divorce laws.”

In a recent case in Wisconsin, it was held that the use of her maiden name by a school teacher in signing the pay roll of the district even in violation of a rule of the board of the school directors requiring that a married woman should sign in the name of her husband, was not such misconduct as to warrant her suspension from the service.

Emma Wold, the author of the excellent brief on the right of a woman to choose her own name, or for that matter for a man to choose his own name, since the law makes it optional for either to do so, says:

"In the absence of statutes making it mandatory for a woman to assume her husband’s surname, her common law right to use her own name must prevail. A review of the laws of the individual states of the United States shows no statute denying this right. Statutes by which a change of name is authorized by judicial decree do not affect the common law rule that a person may adopt any name he or she wishes."

And she says: "To insist that the use by a married woman of her maiden name is an infringement of social usage and a violation of uniformity is to set up in the field of law a social standard and not a legal one."

In confirmation of this point of view, she cites the fact that recently the State Department of the United States has recognized the absence of a legal basis for a rule requiring that a married woman should secure a passport in her husband's family name. The Department now recognizes the right of a wife to apply for a passport in her maiden name where she is accustomed to use that name.

Miss Wold concludes her able legal argument, submitted for the National Woman's Party thus: "The rule requiring a woman to register a claim to a copyright in her husband's surname should be abolished because it is an infringement upon a woman's right to her maiden name—a right established by the common law and denied by no statute. It should be abolished because no authority has been granted to government officials to require a woman to relinquish her legal name. As the wife's maiden name does not identify her husband unless he has assumed it, so the husband's name does not identify the wife where her maiden name is her legal name or her professional name.