What’s in a name? That is the question, asked long ago by Shakespeare, that is still under considerable debate today.
The reason why we ask is because recently married Bollywood celebrity and Esquire Middle East‘s International Man of the Year 2016, Ranveer Singh, was quoted as saying in an interview that he’d much rather take his wife and accomplished actress Deepika Padukone’s last name than keep his own.
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The two were married at Lake Como in Italy in November 2018.
The actor who is contemplating a name change, recently revealed on Famously Filmfare, “Since I have dropped my surname, I need a new one, so why not! It’s a legendary surname.”
Traditionally, the expectation since the dawn of time has been that women take the man’s last name. In a 2011 study, about 72 percent of adults said they believe a woman should give up her maiden name when she gets married. Of those, half said they believe that it should be a legal requirement. In 2016, a Japanese court ruled that a schoolteacher must use her married name at work.
If he goes through with it, Singh will join a handful of famous male celebrites who took on their partner’s last names.
John Lennon very famously became John Ono Lennon in 1969, Jay-Z has taken on wife Beyonce’s last name and is legally known as Shawn Knowles-Carter, and Zoe Saldana’s husband Marco Perego has changed his name as well.
