South Africa’s top court says men can take wives’ last name

South Africa’s Constitutional Court has ruled that husbands can take their wives’ family name, overturning a law that banned them from doing so.

Thursday’s decision upheld a ruling made last year by a lower court, with Justice Loena Theron saying the existing law discriminated “on the grounds of gender” and was a “colonial import.”

The law, which only allows a woman to change her family name when her marital status changes, was introduced during the apartheid years of white-minority rule.

The court suspended the current legislation and gave the government two years to amend the Births and Deaths Registration Act.

The case was brought by two couples who sued the Department of Home Affairs for gender discrimination.

One couple wanted both to have their family names hyphenated, while a second couple wanted the husband to take his wife’s family name.

Court says women taking men’s names a ‘colonial import’

The current legislation infringes on the right to equality enshrined in South Africa’s constitution, introduced in 1994 after the end of apartheid, the court found.

The Constitutional Court ruling noted that “in many African cultures, women retained their birth names after marriage, and children often took their mother’s clan name.”

“With the arrival of the European colonisers and Christian missionaries, and the imposition of Western values, the tradition of women taking their husband’s surname was introduced,” it said.

Social media in an uproar over the ruling

The Constitutional Court decision was met with mixed reactions and often heated comments on social media.

Some welcomed it as a progressive step for South Africa, while many other, mainly male, users slammed it as going against the country’s culture and tradition.

“Why are men panicking in the comments, the ruling isn’t enforcing that you take the wife’s surname, it is optional? Calm down wow,” one South African woman wrote on X.