Ten years since an amendment to the Civil Code introduced equal rights between men and women in passing on their surname to their children, the paternal name remains largely dominant, according to data from Belgium's Ministry of Justice.
Since 1 June 2014, parents can choose for their children to take the surname of the father, mother or co-parent, or both parents’ surnames in any order. The only condition is that all siblings must share the same surname without variation between children.
Despite these changes, the father’s surname continues to prevail. Though double-barrelled names are gradually gaining ground, they typically comprise the father’s surname followed by the mother’s. From 2019 to 2023, the percentage of children who took only their father’s surname decreased from 84.3% to 81.3%. During the same period, double-barrelled names, composed of either the father’s and mother’s surname or mother’s and co-parent’s in any order, rose from 5.1% to 7.01% of all births.
When a double-barrelled name was chosen in 2019, the father’s name was placed first in 79.8% of cases, followed by the mother’s. Four years later, this figure dropped slightly to 78.3%. Additionally, surnames combining the mother’s and father’s names represented 16.8% of double-barrelled names in 2019, compared to 17.3% in 2023.
Parents of 7,490 children born before 1 June 2014 changed their offspring’s surname, with the law permitting such actions for children born before the amendment through mutual consent.
The number of babies that take only their mother's surname are a small minority: 5.7% in 2019 and 7.4% in 2023. But the Ministry of Justice noted that these figures did not reveal if the children had both a mother and a father. Common reasons for a child to take only the mother’s name are when she is the sole parent, though it is not to say that the father hasn’t subsequently recognised the child, nor that paternal lineage hasn’t been established.
