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More Chinese children are being given their mother’s surname

越来越多的中国孩子开始随母姓

It’s not just about feminism

这不仅仅是女权主义

As China emerged from lockdown,a woman wrote a post on Weibo,a microblog,that has echoed through the long,hot summer.She was divorcing her husband,she said,because he would not allow her to change the surname of her child to her own.

随着中国走出疫情，一女子在微博上发布的一条博文在漫长而又炎热的夏季引发了人们广泛的关注。据该女子称，她和丈夫离了婚，起因是丈夫不允许她给孩子改名为随她姓。Details of the case were scant,but that did not stop it lighting up the internet,shining a new spotlight on the question of how far Chinese women have come.Phoenix Weekly,a magazine,launched an online poll that drew47,000respondents.Almost two-thirds said that a surname could come from either parent.

有关这一事件的细节并不多，但该事件还是在网上引发了人们的热议，并使人们重新审视女性成长的步伐。据《凤凰周刊》发起的一项有4.7万名受访者参与的在线调查显示，近三分之二的人认为，孩子的姓氏可以随父母中的任何一方。

As in most traditional societies,Chinese parents have long preferred sons, and the usual practice of handing down the father’s surname remains a powerful symbol of that(though women have always retained their surname at marriage).But with social mores changing rapidly,more

parents have started to give babies the mother’s surname,especially in wealthy urban areas.

和大多数传统社会一样，长久以来，中国父母更偏爱儿子，而随父姓的传统惯例更是可以证明这一点（尽管女性在结婚后仍会保留自己的姓氏）。但随着社会习俗的剧变，越来越多的父母在给孩子起名时开始随母姓，尤其是在富裕的城市地区。

A paper last month in the Journal of Population Economics found that Chinese children with young,educated mothers from areas with normal sex ratios at birth were more likely than average to be given her surname, and such offspring were healthier and better educated than average. Almost one in ten newborns in Shanghai were given their mother’s name in2018.

据上月发表在《人口经济学》杂志上的一篇论文显示，在中国，那些来自出生性别比例正常地区、年轻且受过良好教育的女性的子女更有可能随母姓，而这些子女的健康水平和受教育程度也更高。2018年，上海近10%的新生儿是随母姓的。

Some young couples have compromised and use both surnames in combination,somewhat like Westerners creating double-barrelled surnames(though only one of those names can be legally recognised in China).According to a survey in2019,the surnames of more than1.1m Chinese people now form such a combination,a ten-fold increase on 1990.

一些年轻的夫妻选择相互妥协，将双方的姓氏结合使用，这有点类似于西方人发明的双重姓氏（尽管在中国，仅有一个姓氏是受法律认可的）。据2019年的一项调查显示，现有超过110万的中国人采用了双重姓氏，相比1990年增长了10倍。

Government support for matronymics has been around since the mid-1990s.Giving the mother’s surname to offspring was encouraged within the one-child policy(which was relaxed in2016),to persuade people to be content with an only daughter.To win them over,officials dug up Chinese texts about ancient matrilineal societies.

自20世纪90年代中期以来，政府开始支持孩子随母姓。在独生子女政策（已于2016年放宽）下，政府鼓励孩子随母姓，以说服独生女家庭不再生育。为了赢得人们的支持，官员们甚至还翻出了一些有关中国古代母系社会的文献资料。

Some wonder,however,whether all of this is more to do with genealogy than with feminism.Qi Xiaoying of the Australian Catholic University says that grandfathers are urging their daughters to give their surname to one of their grandchildren now that families can have more than one,because it assures the continuation of the grandparents’line.然而，有些人感到疑惑，这一切是否在更大程度上与宗谱而非女权主义有关。澳大利亚天主教大学的齐晓莹说，随着独生子女政策的放宽，祖父母们正在敦促他们的女儿让一个外孙随母姓，以保证外祖父姓氏的延续。

Ms Qi calls this“veiled patriarchy”.In-laws now fight over whose name will go to the son.She says matronymics are more popular in Chinese cities not because of an assertion of women’s rights,but because a generation of maternal grandparents has more wealth to hand down, especially if they are richer than their son-in-law’s parents.

齐晓莹将其称为“隐性父权制”。双方的父母们正在为孙子跟谁姓而争吵不休。她说，随母姓现象之所以在中国的城市更为普遍，并非是由于女权主义，而是因为外祖父母拥有更多财产由下一辈继承，尤其是当他们比女婿家更富有时。