Temi Otedola, Surnames, and the History We Keep Forgetting

As Temi Otedola got married yesterday, she quietly edited her Instagram bio. Out went “Otedola,” the billionaire surname that has defined her for years. In came “Ajibade,” the surname of her husband, singer Oluwatosin Ajibade, better known as Mr Eazi. It didn’t matter that the change was small, a few eyeballs on it and an online storm erupted. An old debate was reignited: should women change their surnames after marriage?

In the frenzy, one argument keeps resurfacing on my timeline. Critics of the practice insist that African women did not historically take their husband’s names, claiming it is a colonial relic. This is partly true, but it is also incomplete. Pre-colonial Africa had naming systems that looked nothing like what we use today. Surnames, in the sense of fixed hereditary family names, were foreign to most African societies until the pressures of colonial administration and literacy made them widespread.

In Yoruba culture, identity was built through parentage. A child might be known as Tosin omo Adeoti, literally Tosin the child of Adeoti. If the mother carried more social weight, her name could be used instead. Babatunde omo Iyalode would signal a child tied to a woman of high standing. Names were descriptive and relational. They shifted depending on who was being addressed and in what context.

I once spoke with an old Igbo man who told me that Igbo women often carried the identities of their trade and civic roles. A woman might be called by the market day she dominated, like Nwanyị Afọr, or by her guild. Senior women in town meetings could carry titles that replaced lineage names altogether. In Hausa societies, praise names were central. A woman might be remembered as Hajiya Gimbiya for her pilgrimage and noble bearing. Another might be known for her skill or the village she married into. These were not surnames in the modern sense, but markers of place, family, achievement, and role.

To Europeans arriving on the coast in the fifteenth century and later formalizing colonies in the nineteenth, this fluidity was bewildering. Bureaucracy thrives on permanence. There was no need for context. So fixed surnames were imposed to create trackable family units. School registers, census counts, tax rolls, and church marriage records hardened names into forms they had never taken before.

It is important to remember that Africa was not unique here. Many societies moved from patronymics (identifying people by who their father was) into family names as administration demanded it. Iceland still keeps the old patronymic system, where a man called Eirik might have a son labelled Jon Eiriksson and a daughter called Anna Eiriksdóttir. In Russia, Ivan Ivanovich literally means Ivan, son of Ivan. In Arabic societies, ibn or bin still means “son of.” Names that today feel fixed once described shifting relationships.

Even in Europe, surnames like MacGregor or Petrovic are reminders of this transition. “Mac” marked descent in Gaelic, while “-vic” means son in Slavic tongues. So when Yoruba children were once known as omo Adeoti or omo Ifareti, they were not unusual. They were part of a wider human tendency to anchor identity in fathers’ names. The difference is that Africa’s shift to fixed surnames was hurried by colonialism, while elsewhere it evolved more gradually with literacy and land records. In other words, it would like still have happened like it happened elsewhere. There is no such thing as the African exceptionalism.

Where the Patriarchy Really Hides

There is something people are not paying attention to in this discussion, and it is that the patriarchy in naming does not lie mainly in women changing names at marriage. It lies in the deeper fact that surnames are in themselves patrilineal. Family names are designed so that every member of a household shares one label. In practice, this means children inherit their father’s name. The design itself was patriarchal from inception.

Imagine a household of five where the father, mother, and three children are recorded. If the woman keeps her birth surname while everyone else carries the father’s, the bureaucracy labels her the odd one out. That is not because she lacks identity, but because the system assumes her role is auxiliary. It is worth asking harder questions. Why do children still automatically inherit their grandfather’s name, not their grandmother’s? Why do double-barrelled names, which seem progressive, usually collapse back into male inheritance after a few generations?

In case you don’t understand the last line, here it is: Even if a woman refuses to change her surname, she still holds on to her father’s name, not mother’s name. If she choose her mother’s name, she is still bearing her grandfather’s name. Do you get it?

This is the real site of patriarchy in naming. Yet it is the least discussed, because debates on Instagram bios and wedding certificates are easier to shout about.

How Other Cultures Handle It

Elsewhere, naming has taken many routes. In China, women never change their names after marriage. A woman born Li remains Li all her life, even if she marries a Wang. In Spain, women traditionally keep their maiden names and pass them to children, often alongside the father’s. In Poland, names were historically feminized, so Kowalski became Kowalska for women. In Ethiopia, children are named after their father’s first name, not a family surname, which means surnames do not really exist at all.

The variety shows that there is nothing natural about one approach. It also shows that the Pan-Africanist claim that refusing a husband’s surname equals liberation is shaky. Women in North Africa and the Middle East have long kept their maiden names. Yet those regions are not exactly famous for producing radical female voices like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie or Buchi Emecheta. Naming customs and women’s freedoms do not move in neat alignment.

Surnames spread for a reason: administration. As societies recorded land ownership and tax liability, they needed fixed family identifiers. In England, hereditary surnames became common around the fourteenth century. In much of Africa, they became widespread in the twentieth century with schools and the census. Without pen and paper, our ancestors had little need for them.

Today, though, technology can identify people through biometrics and digital databases. In Nigeria, the BVN and NIN already serve this role. This raises an unsettling thought. Do surnames still serve their original purpose? Or are they cultural relics carried forward without reflection?

Back to Temi

This brings us back to Temi Otedola. Her decision to take Ajibade is not proof that she has betrayed feminism, nor is it evidence of rebellion against it. It is a personal choice in a system already steeped in patriarchy. Some women find strength in keeping their maiden names, others in sharing their husband’s. Both are valid. What is not valid is mocking others for their choice, or pretending that the surname debate is the frontline of gender justice.

If keeping your name helps you preserve identity, then keep it. If sharing a name makes you feel bonded to a partner or children, then take it. What matters is the agency to decide, not the symbol itself. The more serious question is whether our children will continue to inherit family names from their grandfathers while their grandmothers’ legacies fade from record.

Temi’s Instagram bio is a reminder of how symbols shape debate. Yet the deeper history shows that surnames themselves are not ancient African tradition. They are administrative and patriarchal in their design. As I already established earlier, pre-colonial Africa had far more flexible systems: patronymics in Yoruba, market identities in Igbo, praise titles in Hausa. The fixation on fixed surnames came later, with registers.

The debate should not be whether Temi Ajibade made the right choice. It should be whether the surname system we all inherited still makes sense. Why must identity be tied to one grandfather’s line when technology can identify us in more accurate ways? Why should women be asked to perform their belonging through renaming, while men rarely face that demand?

The truth is that the surname system itself is patriarchal, and that is where the focus should lie. Everything else is noise.