| Résumé: | Abstract The surname constitutes the most public form of personal representation and identity. A name binds a person to a history, to a familial line, in legal, social, and emotional ways. Patrilineality presupposes the absolute primacy of the male lineage, denying any value to the mother’s ancestry by deeming it unworthy of ongoing symbolic representation; it exists as a logical outgrowth of patriarchy and of male priority and privilege. French feminists across the nineteenth century challenged the legal and customary maintenance of these hierarchies through their political appropriation of marriage and names. Activist women called for the abandonment of patrilineality and challenged married women’s subordinated legal status. As an alternative, they promoted matrilineality to perpetuate and valuate the female line, asserting matrilineality as undergirding a reconceptualized, more equitable legal and social status for women. Recognizing the power of naming and the import and consequences of being named, these politically heterogeneous feminists—including utopian socialist, revolutionary, republican, and liberal feminists—confronted multifaceted patriarchal systems by integrating nominal politics into their various feminist projects.
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