Marriage's English word arrived from Old French around 1300
Wedlock, matrimony, marriage—the labels name a culturally and often legally recognized pairing of spouses that creates rights and obligations between them. Forms vary with religion and local expectation; anthropologists still argue over one definition that fits every society.
The English noun appeared around 1300 from Old French mariage, itself linked to Latin maritatus, married. Custom or law may ratify the bond; some definitions stress co-residence, sexual access, or legitimacy of children, and none captures every ethnographic case cleanly.
Recognition can come from governments, religious leaders, tribes, organizations, neighbourhood communities or simply peers, and the bond is often treated as a legal contract. Scholars have struggled to pin it down; Evan Gerstmann observed that even Western definitions have swung between extremes. Edvard Westermarck, in The History of Human Marriage of 1891, described a lasting male-female link that continued past the birth of offspring, then abandoned that wording in a 1936 book on marriage's future in Western civilization.
The 1951 handbook Notes and Queries tied marriage to children being recognized as the legitimate offspring of both partners. Kathleen Gough proposed changes after studying Nuer ghost marriage in Sudan, in which a woman may act as husband, and the Nayar of India, a polyandrous society where a non-resident social father and the woman's lovers split the husband's role and none held legal rights to her child. Economic anthropologist Duran Bell objected that some societies do not need marriage to make a child legitimate. Edmund Leach argued in a 1955 article in Man that no single definition fits every culture, listing ten rights marriage can create, such as naming a legal father, giving control over a spouse's labour or property, and setting up a joint fund for the couple's children.
Source: Marriage
