Now that they’ve cut up, will Sophie Grégoire Trudeau drop the 'Trudeau'?

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As Justin Trudeau and spouse Sophie Grégoire Trudeau separate, it stays to be seen whether or not Sophie will retain the “Trudeau” surname.

In a podcast interview final 12 months, wherein she mentioned a pool celebration with Prince Harry and his spouse Meghan Markle, Sophie stated her authorized identify was Sophie Grégoire, however she retains the Trudeau due to her affiliation with the prime minister.

“I get known as ‘madam’ due to protocol fairly often,” Grégoire Trudeau stated. “And it simply — my ears screech each time, I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m not a madam.’”

Her use of the Trudeau identify was not with out controversy. The couple married in Quebec, the place since 1981, the province has forbidden ladies from taking the final identify of their spouses, as a nod in the direction of gender equality.

After Trudeau turned prime minister in 2015, the Prime Minister’s Workplace introduced that Grégoire’s most popular full identify was Sophie Grégoire-Trudeau, making her the primary spouse of a main minister with a hyphenated final identify, and apart from Joe Clark’s spouse Maureen McTeer, the one prime ministerial partner whose final identify differed from that of her associate. (After Grégoire and Trudeau married in 2005, she was largely referred to by her maiden identify, though the hyphenated surname grew in reputation as Trudeau turned extra concerned in politics.)

In McTeer’s day it was a scandal that she had refused to take her husband’s final identify. In 2015, it was a main ministerial scandal for the exact reverse cause.

“She ought to be known as by her circle of relatives identify. Didn’t her husband say ‘It’s 2015?’” stated Louise Langevin, a feminist authorized theorist at Laval College in Quebec Metropolis informed the Globe and Mail. “To take the identify of your husband is a patriarchal custom. From a authorized standpoint, you’ll be able to’t do it in Quebec, and symbolically, it’s a step backward. This can be a actual anachronism.”

Certainly, some commentators went as far as to name it a sop to English Canada: Denyse Côté, a gender research professor on the College of Quebec in Gatineau, stated Grégoire’s transfer “units her other than Quebec customs” and theorized that Grégoire had made the selection alongside the PMO.

The mini-controversy didn’t finish there. In truth, after formally noting that Sophie Grégoire-Trudeau was the popular nomenclature, the Liberal celebration, someday in 2016, dropped the hyphen. The New York Instances even added a correction to a narrative concerning the couple, explaining “The article additionally rendered the identify of his spouse incorrectly. She is Sophie Grégoire Trudeau — not Grégoire-Trudeau.”

But, when Maclean’s journal put the query to her which she most popular, it was, apparently, the hyphenated model.

“What’s left unanswered is why? Was the unique hyphen an error? Did she attempt it out for some time and never prefer it? Why was it un-hyphenated so quietly?” asks Patricia Treble, writing for the journal.