Can I move my iCloud email address to a new Apple ID?

You can't transfer your iCloud email account to another ID. You could create a new iCloud account and still add your existing iCloud account as a secondary account on your phone (in Settings>Mail,Contacts,Calendars>Add Account>iCloud) but the email on that account would be restricted to fetch. (Push email is only supported in the primary account). If you want to maintain your curent iCloud email account as push, you might want to keep the current iCloud account for yourself and just set up a new iCloud account for your wife.

There are apps that allow you to manage contact groups on your phone (such as ABContacts and Speed Names) if you want to go that route.

If you do want to migrate yourself or your wife to a new iCloud account, start by saving your photo stream photos to your camera roll (tap Edit, tap the photos, tap Share, tap Save to Camera Roll), then go to Settings>iCloud, tap Delete Account and choose Keep on My iPhone. Then sign in with a different ID to create the new account, and choose Merge to upload the data to the new account.

I thought you currently had an iCloud email account and wanted to transfer that email account to another iCloud account, which can't be done. If this is a non-iCloud email account that is associated with your iTunes ID, and you want to transfer it to another ID that you want to use for iCloud, you should be able to go to https://appleid.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/MyAppleId.woa/ to manage your ID, then tap Edit next to your primary email account (the one you want to move) and enter a different primary account for this ID. Once disassociated with that ID, you should then be able to associated that email address with your other ID.

You have got it right. Once an @icloud.com primary or alias address has been created it is tied forever to the account which created it. Even deleting an alias will not release it. This is made quite clear in Apple's documention, http://help.apple.com/icloud/#mm6b1a490a

I have a similiar problem and just to make sure I understood the above, are you saying that - no, let me start again. I have an iCloud account and also I set up two email accounts as ' sub accounts' for my husband to use. He didn't want to have his own apple ID because he did not want to put a credit card online. So he has been using 'his' email iCloud accounts although I obviously have access to see them and their contents. That's fine. But now he wants - hallelujah !! - to have his 'own' account and email addresses. I have told him that I believe he cannot transfer his email addresses and has to have other, newly named email accounts. Which means he has to change stationary, inform a lot of people and generally is pretty miffed about it. Have I got it right please?

Many thanks RW - husband is going to be really pleased :-( - especially since, inadvertently, I synced his iPhone with mine and in a moment of madness I deleted what I thought were some duplicate/ uknown telephone numbers on my phone, not realising at the time I would be deleting them from his phone ! So beware any one reading this!

You're welcome.