Naming Amy
Amy took the name Amy Williams by the time of Season Seven, or at least officially- she signs her divorce papers Amelia Williams, and of course she’s buried under that name. It’s a point that bugged me when I first saw it, bugged me quite a lot- especially since Rory has always been implied to take his wife’s last name. Heck, there’s even this interview with Arthur Darvill from SFX in 2011-
What would it say on Rory’s gravestone?
Rory Pond, bumbling hero.
So what we actually got on the grave is disappointing for those of us who really liked that here was a man taking his wife’s name. (In fact, Steven Moffat even specifically said in an interview, Rory has taken his wife’s name- why change that, why?)
Now, within the context of the show, I’ve got to work out why Amy ended up a Williams instead. Because in A Good Man Goes To War, it’s pretty obvious she hasn’t taken the name- she clearly states Melody is going to be a Pond and not a Williams. Sure, she might have just preferred the way the name sounded, but that sounds like a outright rejection of traditional naming conventions to me.
Perhaps her terrible experiences on Demon’s Run were what actually made her want to change her name: bad things happen to Pond girls but they may not happen to Williams girls. Or perhaps when she realised how many bad people were keen on acquiring Amy Pond, she changed it- Amy Williams, bearing a much more common name, would be harder to find.
There’s an awful lot of headcanon you can make to fill in the gap: perhaps Amy changed her name due to pressure from her elderly relatives (many women have been there); perhaps she even fell out with her parents and changed her name to spite them (Pond, after all, is not just her name, it was most likely originally her father’s). She might even have changed it because there was another woman called Pond in the modelling industry- I guess there could be any number of plausible reasons.
Anyway, there would be things to consider after being sent back in time by the Angel, too. Had Amy wished to shake things up considerably in whatever time period she landed in (and can you picture her doing anything else?) she may have been careful to refer to herself as ‘Williams’ from then because she knew there was no famous figure called Amy Pond- her younger self, growing up in Leadworth, would have noticed.
I suppose somewhere around here we’ve got to consider what Amy thinks of her own name- as a little girl, she was Amelia Pond -“like a name in a fairytale”. After becoming disillusioned by the Doctor, she started to call herself Amy Pond, a rejection of the Doctor’s fairytale world. Her name is sort of tied to the Doctor, always has been. And you know, I think Amy’s name on the gravestone is meant to be the ultimate, final rejection of the Doctor’s world (a world that took away her baby, don’t forget). She no longer wishes to ‘come along, Pond’.
Or I think that’s what we’re meant to take from it, anyway- Amy changed her name because Amelia Pond is the Doctor’s companion and Amelia Williams is not. I’d still have much, much rather both Amy and Rory were buried under the name Pond, but I guess I can appreciate what Moffat was trying to do- demonstrate that Amy no longer wished to be a character in a fairytale. After all, bad things tend to happen to them. And I like to think no more bad things ever happened to Amelia Williams.
October 10, 2012 @ 1:16 pm
Amy changed her name because Amelia Pond is the Doctor’s companion and Amelia Williams is not Yeah, I think that’s the gist of it. I don’t know that she doesn’t want to “Come along, Pond,” though–I think it just came down to a choice between staying in the TARDIS or staying with Rory, and none of them could really do anything to make that not a choice she would have to make, much as the Doctor wanted to think he could save everyone. So she went with Rory and she had her grown-up life, which was quite different from what she had been implying when she said at the end of “The Eleventh Hour” that she’d grown up and wasn’t interested in time machines anymore. When she really did leave, it wasn’t that she didn’t have fondness for the Doctor and what he’d meant to her, it was just that she had to live her own life, fairytale or not.
October 10, 2012 @ 4:14 pm
Oh yes, she definitely still has fondness for the Doctor. (Also, I just realised, The Angels Take Manhattan is the only episode she says flat-out, in her letter, that she loves him…) There’s so much to think about with regards to Doctor Who names, especially Amy’s…but I think it was probably intended to be less problematic than a lot of people thought. Or I hope so.
October 10, 2012 @ 4:48 pm
Is it? Awww. It’s probably Rory’s only time too, then, by proxy? Since she says “we.” Haha, I imagine it was probably not intended to be some kind of major statement on women and whether or not they should keep their names, no. Maybe there was good logic behind it or maybe not so much, but I’d rather assume the best and save my angry feminism energy for other things. :P
October 10, 2012 @ 8:21 pm
Also, in 1938 America, married women took their husband’s names. To not do so was outlandish, inappropriate, and scandalous. I also like to think that since Williams is a common surname and Pond is not, they would have blended in better as Mr. & Mrs. Williams; also, in 1938, Amelia would have been much more common than Amy.
October 10, 2012 @ 10:25 pm
I thought that Amy took Rory’s name due to the time period they’d ended up in, but didn’t consider that she would have also have done so not to blend in, but it does make sense.
October 10, 2012 @ 9:59 pm
User redknightalex referenced to your post from Wednesday, 10 October, 2012 saying: […] others.) (For additional news please visit ) Discussion and Miscellany asks about Amy’s last name […]
October 10, 2012 @ 11:29 pm
I always thought that while in the Tardis and in adventures they were the Ponds, because really, everything is around her, so evidently their daughter while outside regular world was named Melody Pond, because the baby was hers, in that lonely place. But in the regular world names in Britain or ex Britain empire like the US goes with the woman using the man’s surname or conserving her own, and men don’t changing it no? I had seen some Williams-Pond or Pond-Williams, but i’m not familiar enough with Britain law to know if it is possible change the name to the wife. Clearly Rory’s father see them as the Williams and he was very bafled when they were called the Ponds and the doctor attemted to call him Pond. So i think in Rl she is Williams or at least Williams-Pond I’m sure in home Amy will always call his husband Pond, because it is like that, but in official papers and stuff i’m afraid they are williams. About Moffat i also get the idea that Rory get the surname of Pond in the Whoworld and at home, but in irl he is Wiliams, and remember that when they married they forget all about their travels with the doctor so i don’t think they called themselves untraditional Pond. Less so if they went back in time where society is more complicated and men ruled more. In Japan the men take the surname of the wife if the wife or her family had more importance then himself. So not always is the wife who take the surname of the husband. And in Spain and it’s ex colonies, you never change your name at all when married, never had… But until 1940 it was common for women add to her full name the one of his husband at the end, but as a convention, it was never in the law. Ex Elsa Tapia Reyes marry Mario Ibarra Montero after the wedding both of them continue having their full names as before the wedding, but the wife could sign ‘Elsa Tapia Reyes de Ibarra.’ And their children had as a first surname Ibarra and as a second Tapia. Ex Rolando Ibarra Tapia… He is the son so he share one surname with both of them. And Amy is short for Amelia. The doctor call her Amelia several times, and when she present herself she says she is Amelia.
October 13, 2012 @ 5:20 pm
But in the regular world names in Britain or ex Britain empire like the US goes with the woman using the man’s surname or conserving her own, and men don’t changing it no? I had seen some Williams-Pond or Pond-Williams, but i’m not familiar enough with Britain law to know if it is possible change the name to the wife. It is- one of my friends did it. :)
October 11, 2012 @ 4:41 pm
/In Japan the men take the surname of the wife if the wife or her family had more importance then himself. So not always is the wife who take the surname of the husband./ I think that’s only in the case when the man married into the woman’s family, as opposite to the usual siutation when woman marry into the man’s family. The man will became the heir to the woman’s family, he changes into his wife’s name because his children will bear that name and will continue the wife’s family line.