I should add that I don’t have a problem with anyone changing his or her name to whatever. I just personally have no desire to change my name. I like my name. Plus I’d either have to use my not-legal name on publications or have continuity issues since new papers would have a different name than old papers.
But yeah, making fun of the guy is dumb.
Count me in with the keeping your own names crowd.
First ex still uses my name and I remember it (probably irrationally) pissed me off for years afterwards.
To each his own—or in this case, *her *own—but at first glance, a man assuming his wife’s name does suggest the archetypical right-wing parody of the effete, pussified “liberal.”
I think the new tradition should be for each partner to contribute an equal number of letters from his or her surname, run them through an anagram maker, and draw a result at random (or by popular vote of the wedding party) from the pronounceable results.
Although I took my husband’s name (primarily to get rid of a last name I didn’t much like) the main harm was in updating or using outdated online IDs, and that problem’s only getting worse. So the change was not “harmless” or “costless,” but I thought it was worth it.
The true harm of this custom to women, if this is not obvious, is that their lineage is largely obscured to history. In my personal case I was willing to bet that this a) was going to happen anyway and b) was more than likely a good thing.
Methinks the laddie doth protest too much, having looked at the site. It’s not really about names, it’s about who does what. But the hatred for women coming out directed at him is appalling. Ironically I think a lot of it comes from years of feminist dogma that everything too feminine for men is too inferior for women as well, so the end result is greater hostility for all things assumed feminine, especially in men, greater misogyny, not less.
Most of the backlash against this guy is just macho bullshit; in other cases I think guys feel this guy is calling them sexist by drawing attention to what he did. Which is just oversensitive. The story comes off as a little new age and precious, but so what?
Here’s a Salon article discussing the hybrid last name thing. It happens once in a while but columnists have dubbed it a “trend,” which appears to be overstating the case. It does turn out that the mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, acquired his interesting last name this way.
I said “I prefer it” not it should be required. Some women will be inconvenienced by the name change but others won’t. For instance were I to be married (a perpestrous hypothetical) I would ask my wife to change her last name but if she gives a good reason like you not just “It’s oppressive” I’ll shut up.
That’s probably the most incovenient thing to do. Both spouses will lose any of their family name and heritage without getting a new one.
Slight hijack: I find this situation intriguing. Of course I don’t expect you to “out” yourself, but I’m interested to know more. How did this come about? Is it a common name in another country? Is it an odd spelling of an otherwise common name?
Mr. S is the only living person I’ve been able to find with his first and last name; someone else who had it died in 1915 or thereabouts, and the first and last name are both somewhat unusual but have plenty of people who use them (the surname with several variants), just not together.
They would lose their family name, but not their heritage.
Um. Is it really surprising that people would make fun of this guy?
I don’t care what century it is. Men are still required to do certain things that lesser men and women consider “macho bullshit”.
It’s like when I was sitting around with my three pals drinking Cosmos and talking about how hard it was to find a nice, smart, successful woman who actually wanted to be in a committed relationship. Sure we are all successful, but we just can’t seem to find a woman who’s at or above our level. I don’t think my girlfriend, a wealthy investment banker, is ever going to let me put a ring on her finger and I’m starting to question how serious she is about the relationship at all.
I’m so upset, I’m going to go fix myself a bubble bath and each a carton of Rocky Road ice cream right after I take a quick sit-down pee.
Is there another kind?
No, it’s not surprising at all, and anybody who is surprised is being naive. But that doesn’t mean he deserves to be made fun of.
Expected, yes. How do you figure a guy is required to keep his last name? From the response you’re giving, you’d think the columnist said he cut his balls off and wanted you to do the same.
Ever try to find a woman who you only knew in her youth, some years later?
I went to an all-girls high school. I cannot find the vast majority of my classmates now for love or money. The chances are that most of them live within 5 miles of where they lived 20 years ago when we were in school but there’s no way to know, because roughly 90% have disappeared off of the planet. No one by the only name I know of them exists on Facebook, MySpace, even Googling produces no proper results.
No harm? No oppression? Garbage.
Required by whom? You?
WTF?
Thanks bump. Also, what msmith said. I generally like this board, but sometimes I have to wonder about the androgynous expectations some people have, as if men and women are exactly the same and should behave exactly the same and be held to the same standards in every conceivable situation. Case in point with the OP: do you really have to ask? I don’t care if it’s 2009 or 3009, men and women will always be different - we’re fighting biology not to acknowledge that.
I wouldn’t force a woman to change her name but I sure as hell ain’t changing mine. And I would expect my kids to have my name.
That’s completely true, but this is a cultural issue, not a biological one. There’s no biological basis for names.
Yea, so… I don’t get what biology has to do with one’s last name.
And I would like a good reason why the kids should have the dad’s last name instead of the mom’s. If anything, you can always be sure the baby came out of the mom, and is the mom’s genetic lineage (rare abnormalities aside), whereas you cannot always tell who the dad is. 
Keep in mind, I, like many other Latin Americans, carry one last name from the dad and one from the mom. And even I find it a bit arrogant that it is always the dad’s last name. In my case, my first last name is rare enough that I wish to pass it on to my kids first (instead of my partner’s first).
And since there are millions of people out there in the world, who, for generations, have dealt and worked and survived and thrived with carrying two legal last names, the idea that it is just preposterous and silly to do does not fly with me. 
Well, the lineage has to go through one or the other parent. If it goes through both for many generations, you are eventually going to have people with a lot of hyphens in their names. Either that or you need to start dropping off names, and how do you decide which ones are you going to continue with? It’s the same problem.
A patrilineal succession is male-oriented and comes from a tradition of male dominance. Some people seem to think of that as a horrible thing that must change. I don’t feel that way.
It’s still cultural and not biological at all.
I think there are two kinds of circles in this circular definition. Yes, our naming traditions are patrilineal. This proves what?
And you’re welcome to your opinion, but it proves nothing.
I remember the “Flaherman” case, but since I almost never read the NY Times Styles section I’d assumed there was something similar every week or so. I do remember that when Brown (or Braun, or Braunstein) married Gold (or Goldman, or Goldberg) they announced that the children they planned to have would be given the name “Siena”, explaining that it sounded better than “Umber” or “Ochre”. It is always nice when the kids are thought of.
Women looking to have sex with men. Men who aren’t 25+ year old virgins. Those sort of people.
Well, if your idea of “oppression” is not being able to contact someone who you haven’t talked to in 20 years, I don’t think I’m going to run out and call Amnesty International.