A listener in Reno, Nevada, wants to know: If one member of a long-term, unmarried couple dies, what’s a good term for the surviving partner, considering that the usual terms widow and widower aren’t exactly correct? This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Name for a Surviving Partner”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, my name is Holly, and I’m from Reno, Nevada.
Hi, Holly, how you doing?
Hey, Holly.
Well, we’ve had actually quite a few friends who have lost their significant others lately to death, and they were not married, but they’ve been together 12, 15, one case, 20 years.
And we were wondering about titles because I know that widow or widower is a legal definition, but these people lived as married.
They just weren’t legally married.
And I was just wondering about what to call them, what they would call themselves.
Have you heard what they call themselves?
No, mostly my partner has died.
They don’t really have a name for themselves, a title for themselves either.
Yeah, this is a new dimension of a question that we get fairly frequently is what you call a life partner that you’re not married to when girlfriend or boyfriend seems so childish.
Yeah, and it seems so semi-permanent.
I mean, because these were permanent relationships.
They had been together for a long time.
Yeah, and partner has the problem of it’s not always clear whether or not it’s a business partner or professional partner versus a romantic or life partner.
Yeah.
The new layer here then at Holly is that that person is passed on.
And so now you’ve got that.
There’s no widow or widower term to use here, is there?
No.
And, of course, I went to the good friend Google to look it up, and it says there is nothing for that.
No word for it.
I mean, I can think of, like, losing one’s companion.
But you’re right.
I mean, there is a hole in the language here, and I think not having a word for that adds another layer of anguish to grief.
Well, the best that we can offer, because neither one of us has a term for you, is just to throw this out to our community and see if people have a term that they’ve come up with for this situation where a life partner or a life companion has died.
How do they refer to that person?
That’s what we want to know, right, Holly?
Right, right.
So we want the name or the reference.
What are we calling those people who passed without naming them by name?
Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or tell us an email, words@waywordradio.org.
Holly, we’re going to collect these if they come in, and we’ll talk about them on a future show, all right?
Okay. Thank you very much.
We’ll see how it goes.
Thank you.
Bye.
