MAIDEN NAME

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does maiden name mean? 

• MAIDEN NAME (noun)
  The noun MAIDEN NAME has 1 sense:

1. a woman's surname before marriage

  Familiarity information: MAIDEN NAME used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MAIDEN NAME (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A woman's surname before marriage

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Hypernyms ("maiden name" is a kind of...):

cognomen; family name; last name; surname (the name used to identify the members of a family (as distinguished from each member's given name))

 Context examples 

Colonel Barclay had married at the time when he was a sergeant, and his wife, whose maiden name was Miss Nancy Devoy, was the daughter of a former colour-sergeant in the same corps.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

She asked her, at different times, how many sisters she had, whether they were older or younger than herself, whether any of them were likely to be married, whether they were handsome, where they had been educated, what carriage her father kept, and what had been her mother's maiden name?

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

How they affected my aunt, nobody knew; for immediately upon the separation, she took her maiden name again, bought a cottage in a hamlet on the sea-coast a long way off, established herself there as a single woman with one servant, and was understood to live secluded, ever afterwards, in an inflexible retirement.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)