Wedding picture of Henk Hoitink and Mien Woordes
Quick tip: maiden names
10 July 2013 by 1 Comment
About Yvette HoitinkYvette Hoitink, MLitt, CG®, QG™ is a professional genealogist, writer, and lecturer in the Netherlands. She has a Master of Letters in Family and Local History from the University of Dundee, and holds the Certification of Genealogist and Qualified Genealogist credentials. Yvette served on the Board of Directors of the Association of Professional Genealogists and won excellence awards for her articles in the National Genealogical Society Quarterly and the Association of Professional Genealogists Quarterly. Yvette has been doing genealogy for over 30 years. She helps people from across the world find their ancestors from the Netherlands and its former colonies, including New Netherland. Read about Yvette's professional genealogy services.
In fact, as I understand it, a woman’s surname does not legally change upon marriage, which might explain why one finds the maiden name in all sorts of records. In fact, yesterday I even found a marriage registration that included not only the bride’s parents full names (including maiden names), but all four of her grandparents as well.
This makes Dutch genealogy much much easier than cultures in which the woman takes on the husband’s surname at marriage. Even worse is the tradition of referring to the woman by her husband’s full name (e.g. “Mrs. John Smith”). Not only is that inherently sexist, it makes identifying the female line terribly difficult. I have lengthy detailed obituaries of female relatives in which they are named only by their husband’s name yet, ironically, give detailed information about everyone else’s names (i.e. full and maiden names of the deceased’s daughters, sisters, mother, etc.).
The only major disparity I’ve noticed in Dutch records is that in birth records, they’ll give the father’s age as of the date of the birth of a child, but not the mother’s.