<<I thought it was clear that I was referring to the nuclear family unit. My fiancee and I have decided that sharing a common name will be one way for she, I, and our children to feel connected to each other. Grandparents don’t enter into our decision about what to name our children one way or the other.>>
So, say you have a child. You give the child the name you’ve carefully chosen. Your child grows up, gets married/picks a life partner/takes a new religion, and changes their name. Are they not connected to you anymore? Or not in the same way?
Mind you, I have no children. My ex and I, before we were married, had cats. We took our cats in to be fixed and thought it was hilarious that his cat had his last name and my cat had mine on the vet records, even though the two were brothers.
I’ve also been holding out one final piece of information. My username here is one I’ve used for three years now (in various places), and it’s my mother’s family’s last name. What that says about my wanting to be tied to my family by name, I couldn’t tell you.
I heard a comedian say this once, and I’m sorry, I heard it over ten years ago and though I have been wracking my brain and I can’t remember her name (or even her face), nor could I find the quote in a Google search. And so I paraphrase:
*They name buildings after men. They name bridges after men. They name just about everything after men, because it’s mostly men who build stuff. Can you think of anything, then, that deserves less to be named after a man than a *baby?
If I lug the damn thing around in my womb for nine months and then go through hell to expel it, I am not going to be particularly sympathetic to my husband’s “right” to pass on his surname. Mr. Fries, unfortunately does not agree.
I hope to solve this conundrum by not having any children.
I don’t particularly like hyphenation either–clunky, particularly with long names (like mine), and causes problems at the 2nd generation level–but I like much less the assumption that of course the baby will take the father’s name.
My mom, a teacher, doesn’t like new-fangled naming schemes because she finds it harder to suss out the relationships at parent-teacher conferences. Are the parents divorced? Who’s this guy? Husband? Boyfriend? Is the mother the kid’s biological mother or a stepmom? I say, too frelling bad. If it’s relevant, then you may inquire politely. Otherwise, it’s none of your business.
For whatever bureaucratic reason, the VA thinks my last name is hyphenated. (It’s not, and never has been.)
Because of this, I have experienced a lot of hassle associated with this practice. When I go pick stuff up, I have to wait for the clerk to check under “M” and “R” because no one’s sure which initial I fall under. It’s a minor inconvience, but when I’m pressed for time, it seems worse than it is.
FTR, I know what iampunha’s last name is, and I think it sounds great.
Wow! Thanks for all of the input. Turns out that she and I talked a lot about some of our ideas as well as some of the ideas that we read up here. We came up with the idea about the children taking her last name as a middle name and my last name as a last name. The biggest problem I was having with the last name thing is that it almost felt like she didn’t want to have any type of association with me. She is going to keep her last name and then she was concerned about the children having my last name. After talking with her about this it appears that this is not the case and I have a very overactive imagination. Still, I come from a very conservative, very old fashioned family. I think that maybe that is my biggest problem. It is going to be hard enough to see how the family reacts to her being non-catholic with me and everyone else in my family being catholic. I just may be rattling up the ole bee hive here.
Deo Gratias I was born in a culture where we compound our family names. Not hyphenate, we just use them both. However when faced with the uninominal system in US college applications and the US Army enlistment contract, neither I nor my mother had any conflict absolutely about using only my patrilineal name. It’s my decision.
Thus I prefer a reasonable compound name system that IS referential to the ancestral family lines (rather than “invent” a new family identity). By reasonable I mean I draw the line at quadruple surnames, I’m not the bloody Duke of Alba…
Heck if I know if Opal uses a hyphen
What is described is not what is prescribed. If an accurate description of the prevailing state of affairs shows it to be “arbitrary poop,” then just don’t abide by it.
That said, I vastly prefer women retain their own or preferred surname throughout their entire adult life. If they wish to add a secondary designator upon marriage, fine. But her primary identity, I hope, did not go away just because she married me.
You can call yourself and your children “Grand Slam Breakfast” and it’s none of my business, people should pick out whatever works best for themselves * – and the children should be free to then do otherwise when they become able to voice a preference (say, if they decide that they do want Dad’s name only after all), but…
6.** With all due respect, this is one of those things you should get clearly and firmly settled, with informed consent of all parties, BEFORE getting that marriage license (or initiating a planned nontraditional family)**
jrd
I said that sharing a common name is one way for us to feel connected as a family. It is not the only one, nor the most important one. A close family can certainly be formed without sharing a common name, and I have not said one word of criticism of such families. Given the choice of keeping her maiden name or taking my name, the future Mrs. Six strongly prefers the latter, and I respect her right to make that choice. Since we will be sharing a surname, it makes logical sense for our children to share that name also. It also feels right.
Will we be connected if they find a life mate or new religion and change their name? Of course. In the same way? No, but I think that’s a good thing. Children need to find their own identity as they grow older and gradually separate from their parents. This is normal and healthy. If that process includes choosing a new name, that’s fine with me. But choosing a new name is a symbol or result of a change in relationship, not the cause of that change. Mrs. Six has chosen to take my name–a symbolic change–as an adjunct to marrying me–a life choice. It is her choice to marry me that has changed, drastically, her relationship with her parents. The name change is relatively minor compared to that.
I’ve actually spent more time discussing surnames here than with the future Mrs. Six. For us, it’s not a big deal.
I have a oft-overlooked but compelling reason why hyphenated surnames are a really good idea.
Names don’t always last. When I was about eleven, someone with my name gained noteriety due to her sexual exploits. Her name was all over the news. As a kid, this translated into merciless teasing. As an adult, it means that I get a funny look every single time I tell someone my name. I fear the first day of classes more than anything else, because I know that the teacher is going to comment on my name (in front of hundreds of people) when he or she calls roll. And, because I am an artist, I am going to need to change my name eventually so that no one mixes up my work with…uhhh…her. It sucks.
This would all have been averted if I had a hyphenated name. I could move from one name to the other. My first name would be planned to be harmonious with both of them. A hyphenated name could have saved myself a lot of greif.
When I got married I hyphenated my name. (Let’s just say it’s Jeannie Smith-Jones for the sake of this post). I didn’t want to give up the Smith, since I got it from my parents (yes, yes, it was technically just my dad. Whatever.) And I wanted to take Jones because I wanted to take my husband’s name and honor him as well. At work I generally just use Smith, since that’s what they’re used to. In my personal life, I prettymuch go by Jones, since the whole name is bulky. Basically, the hyphenated stuff just comes into play on legal documents.
When we have kids, they will have my husband’s last name. My maiden name will be used as a second middle name. So it’ll be something like Michael Patrick Smith Jones. The “Smith” part of it will hardly ever be used, I imagine. But it’ll be there. I’ll know it’s there, my kids will know it’s there. And if they want to use it (as an initial or to give themselves a hyphenated name or whatever) they can. If they want to ignore it completely and never use it, that’s fine too.
I like Abby’s explanation of the “backdoor test.” If you have two surnames that can be melodiously hyphenated, then by all means use it. Hell, people use hyphenated first names all the time.
However, if you’ve got a pair of odd names, maybe hyphenation isn’t such a good idea. For example, when my cousin (who shares my extremely unusual Polish surname) got married, his wife (who had an extremely unusual German maiden name) decided to go by the hyphenated combination. The result was not pretty, and caused her numerous minor headaches trying to get people to correctly use/spell/say her name. Nothing major, but the small aggravations eventually made her give it up as a bad idea and revert to the maiden-name-as-middle-name strategy.
Since my mom is a doctor and had a great deal of material and professional ties involving her maiden name, she didn’t firmly decide to change it until I came along. She says she asked me one day when I was a toddler, “What’s my name?” and I said, “Mommy McLauchlin!” and that’s when she decided.
I think the idea of naming kids after the mother, for a change, is hella cool, and it would have made my life a lot easier (my mom’s maiden name is a lot easier to spell than McLauchlin, let me tell you). Of course, now that I’m McLauchlin and have been for some time, I use it proudly and am a total ball-breaking attack faggot to anyone who dares spell it wrong.
(Of course, when I get married, I’m keeping my own name…)
Well, my girlfriend and I were talking about the name situation this morning and we said she’d love to take my name. And ya know what? I’m happy about it.
That’s George Carlin’s take on the whole hyphenated affection. I’m inclined to agree. I can understand some people don’t like the current patrilineal line of descent inherent to western culture. But one name is enough. It just looks a little too whiny.
The way I see it, the names I hand out are just ways of tracing who signed me up for junk mail.
I routinely use my wife’s last name appended to mine in some things, or just use her last name. Sometimes I’ll plop down a middle name. I figure any kids we have will end up with both our last names (hyphenated) so as to maximize the confusion.
Fella bilong missus flodnak and I both kept our own names when we married. Norwegian naming law doesn’t allow for hyphenated surnames, so we knew that when we had children we would give them one of our surnames for a last name and the other as a middle name. But neither of us was too concerned about it. When our first child was well on the way, I proposed the solution: if it was a girl, she (and any future siblings) would have my last name; if a boy, he (and any future siblings) would have fbmf’s last name. This wasn’t because of any sense of “fairness” - I simply thought the boy’s name we’d picked out (Kenneth) sounded better with fbmf’s last name, and the girl’s name (Tanja) with mine.
We now have two sons. Both with the name pattern Firstname Mylastname Dad’slastname. If they want to change their names when they grow up, and take my name instead, it will be a very simple process.
Looking back, I wish we’d given them my last name, for a practical reason. Fbmf’s last name is reasonably common, and alphabetically falls smack between two of the most common surnames in Norway, which means it’s happened that the children’s clinic has misfiled their papers etc. My name is very uncommon, in fact unique in the country. But it isn’t that big a deal, and since Kenneth is now 7 there’s no point in changing it.
<Dutch uncle> It sounds like it’s very important to your wife-to-be that her name be passed on to the children in some way. Could a compromise be reached that would make you both happy? Could they have one of your family names as a middle name, for instance? If you’re hesitant to have the kids bear their mother’s name in any form, it’s really time for some soul searching. This is definitely an issue you want to have worked out before sperm meets egg if either of you has any strong feelings about it. </Dutch uncle>
No, I don’t see any logical problems. Simply put, our society does not treat both parents equally. Mothers are generally considered both more important in rearing the child, and due to them having to carry the child and such, having more of a stake in her offspring. Witness the preference of ‘family courts’ toward awarding custody to mothers over fathers. (I find this practice appalling, personally).
Now, to summarize: Men are not inherently superior to women. Women are not inherently superior to men. However, just as a father has the right to pass on his surname, a mother gains preferential treatment in society’s eyes and the courts. Its a trade.
