What last name did these couples go by when they got married?
In the 1970's, there was a fad of giving children both parents' last name. What happened when these kids got married to each other?
I.e., When John Flugelhaven-Beelzebub married Barabara Dovetonsil-Crashcourse, did the newly-married couple go by the last name, Flugelhaven-Beelzebub-Dovetonsil-Crashcourse?They picked the last names that suited them best; all four, any two, any one, or - gasp - they kept there own because they rather liked them.
It wasn’t a fad of the 1970’s. It may have started to be common enough that you noticed it, but it hasn’t decreased any lately. It may be more common lately. There are at least six ways now that people choose last names for children:
Father’s surname
Mother’s surname
Hyphenation, or a double-barrelled surname (without a hyphen)
Alternating the two parents’ surnames between siblings
Combining the two surnames into a portmanteau or blended surname
Making up a completely new surname
In English, there is no hard rule whether the name before the hyphen is the father’s or the mother’s. Both occur. Exceptions include Spanish and some related languages/cultures, where the father’s name comes first, so Mariano Rajoy Brey’s mother was surnamed Brey.
As for the children of two hyphenated people, the most common is probably to take both grandfathers’ names but there is again no rule.
My kids have a double-barrelled last name. We put my name first (I’m the father) because we thought it flowed better.
Just to get an idea of the range of choices:
My wife kept her name, double-barrelled kids
Her brother’s wife kept her name, the kids have his name
Her sister changed her name, the kids have his name
I have a client with a double-barrelled name who just got married, she now goes by a triple-barrelled name. Whatever works!
This could create a problem whereby in another couple of generations, credit cards will need to have a fold-out flap to accommodate the name.
I have a friend with a hyphenated last name. Both of his parents also used the hyphenated form, which (in their case) went mother’s-father’s. Nowadays, he mostly just goes by his father’s last name, because that’s the name he prefers, except in contexts where he interacts with his mother, who’s still alive, because he doesn’t want her to feel slighted by that. He got married a few years ago, and his bride, so far as I know, goes by the same version as him: His father’s, except where his mother is involved, in which case his full hyphenated.
just to note, double barreled names have been around for quite some time
heres one from 1867!! Frank Lloyd Wright - Wikipedia
“Introducing the new Chicago Cubs right fielder … number 34 … John Smith-Jones-Wright-Baxter-Walker-Gore-McDonald-Paterson” … yeesh … the future will be verbose …
<<Frank Lloyd Wright was born Frank Lincoln Wright in the farming town of Richland Center, Wisconsin, United States, in 1867. His father, William Cary Wright (1825–1904),[2] was an orator, music teacher, occasional lawyer, and itinerant minister. Frank Lloyd Wright’s mother, Anna Lloyd Jones>>
So he had his father’s last name and took a family name as his middle name. Not quite the same as a hyphenated last name…?
In the factory where I worked, there were enough periodic layoffs and rehiring to make some folks want to get an advantage by changing surnames. A couple I knew had names that started with B and T. When they got married, they took the hyphen, with the bride’s name first. So, instead of being the Taylors, they became the Bivalve-Taylors. It delayed their layoffs by a couple months. One clever guy even went to court to become Aaron Aaronson. That kept him working nearly a year longer than his old name would have.
I’ve never heard of a company doing layoffs alphabetically. Is that really a thing?
Well I submit then his mother
That’s the best you could do?
The primary filter was seniority, hire date. However, if you hired in with 160 other people, and they only need to lay off half that many, it went alphabetically within that hire day. The layoff number order came from on high, but the remaining workers were offered a lot of overtime during layoffs. The extra pay was enough to justify the name change.
Or it simply becomes customary to take 1 element of one’s surname from each parent, which Iberian peoples have been doing for centuries.
What an odd way of handling that. I was hired at my company along with about 20 others. We drew numbers to determine ‘seniority.’
John Fitzgerald Kennedy? Taking the mother’s maiden name as a middle name seems to be a not-uncommon thing.
At a certain point, enough is enough. My wife took my name because it was simpler and more common than hers rather than retain her maiden name… Some people don’t have a deep and abiding attachment to their maiden / family name.
Maybe I’m in a social backwater, but the last time I ran across such a hyphenated name was 20 years ago.
Agreed, I’ve never seen anything like that. Very bizarre.
Regards,
Shodan