If the answer is obvious, please give me the reaming I deserve. There are
several football players (all that I have noticed are black, if its relevant to answer the question) who have hyphenated last names, and I can’t figure out why this would be?
Probably because their parents have hyphenated last names.
Two reasons I can think of, although I don’t know football players, so this may not be their reasons.
John Smith marries Mary Jones. They choose to keep both names, becoming John Smith-Jones and Mary Smith-Jones, or Mr. John Smith-Jones and Mary Jones-Smith.
Mary Smith-Jones has a child, and names him William Smith-Jones.
Just don’t ask me what happens when William Smith-Jones marries Sarah Gold-Black. I haven’t gotten that far yet.
I know a male who has a hyphenated last name because his parents are gay. Also it happen when a mother keeps her maiden name and the boy carries both the mom and dad’s last name.
Their last name could be of the format Mother’sName-Father’sName, but I have never heard that this is traditional among African-Americans. I guess it’s a possibility though.
Or they got married, and decided to share names with their spouse.
Hey, it’s the 00’s, baby!
Ohsnap! Quadrosimulpost!
One reason is if the guy’s mother’s name has some prestige attached to it. I’m not sure if William Kennedy-Smith hyphenates, but it would be that sort of situation.
Not intending to sound flip, but what happens when a hypothetical Sue Adams-Zotti marries John Rolls-Royce?
What will the children’s last name be? Adams-Zotti-Rolls-Royce?
ETA: yikes… big ol’ simulpost!
Although he now plays for the 49ers, this bio for linebacker Tully Banta-Cain is from the Patriot’s website:
“Tully Banta-Cain was born the son of Adam Cain and Joya Banta on Aug. 28, 1980 in Mountain View, California…” (Link)
So in this case his parents have different last names, and he has them both, hyphenated.
Then there’s the fast food tycoon, Jack In-The-Box.
I think it would be Zotti-Royce (the grandfathers’ names), but it can be anything the parents want it to be, really.
There are a few cultures where it is traditional to give children both parents’ names. I think Spaniards do it, for instance, and as in my above suggestion, the names the child ends up with is his or her grandfathers’ names. They don’t use hyphens though. A lot of people my age (25) and a few years older or younger here in Quebec also have hyphenated last names, with this same format. It was probably due to a surge of support for symbols of male-female equality at the time (around the same time, it stopped becoming automatic for married women to take their husband’s name), but it’s kind of fallen out of favour due to hyphenated last names being somewhat cumbersome, and because of gotpasswords’s worry.
If the parents have different names (married or not) it can cause lots of problems when the kid needs parental consent and the consenting parent has a different last name. I know of one unmarried couple that got married and changed kid’s and mom’s name when she became school aged for this reason…I’m sure there was more to it, but the straw that broke the camel’s back was a rejected field-trip permission slip that dad had signed, even though school records had him a leagle gaurdian.
Hyphenating the kids might help in some such cases.
Wow, that wasn’t a simulpost so much as a postorgy!
Was it good for y’all?
We should all get past this name stuff and marriage.
When two people get married, they switch last names!
Kids last names decided by a coin flip.
Well, what if someone offers to bequeath to you big wad of dough if you add on their family name with a hyphen?
This happened in the case of an early 20th century British prime minister. He was born Henry Campbell, then as a condition of inheriting his uncle’s estate he became Henry Campbell-Bannerman (there was also a knighthood or something in there at one point, so he was Sir Henry).
The story goes that he later regretted having changed his name for the money.
Hard to see that it mattered much, as most people who knew him called him “CB”.
When Mr Pine married Miss Coffin, they became the Pine-Coffins.
My sister was contemplating the hypenation pile-up back in the late eighties. She decided that the best way to do things was for girls to take their mother’s last names and boys to take their father’s. When she finally got married, however, she went traditional and just changed her name.
Mr and Mrs. Barracuda Motorcade did the following:
Mr. Barracuda and Miss Motorcade got married = Mr Barracuda-Motorcade and Mrs. Barracuda-Motorcade. We chose the order because the real names just flow better the one way than the other, really. Our children will have last names Barracuda-Motorcade until they turn 18 and can change it themselves, at which point they can rename themselves Binky The Clown for all I will care.
I’ve known Americans who have hyphenated last names because they are from a culture where a person who has two last names, but being in America they are forced to hyphenate the last names because we’re not used to that kind of thing around here.
For example, the current Prime Minister of Spain is José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Rodríguez is his father’s last name and Zapatero is his mother’s last name. If you were to look him up in a Spanish phone book, you would look him up under Rodríguez Zapatero, not just Rodriguez. However, in America we would insist on calling him just José Luis Rodríguez, because that’s what we’re used to. If he felt strongly about his two names, he’d probably end up hypenating it.
I know nothing about baseball, but I’m pretty sure the name Garciaparra is the result of cramming two last names together without a hyphen.