Some lists put my surname in the top 20, so it could have easily come up (but didn’t), and as an amateur genealogist I’m pretty confident I could satisfy myself that we weren’t related.
Maybe I have a high tolerance for taboo, but even if I knew she was a second- or third-cousin it wouldn’t bother me. That’s not a terribly close relative.
This is the attitude I don’t get. There are probably thousands of people with whom you share at least one “great-great-great-etc-grandad”, most of whom wouldn’t have your surname.
First cousins - a little squicky, but even then there’s no real genetic reason no to marry. A second cousin, epecially one I did not grow up close to? No problem. In fact I used to have a crush on one of my second cousins, a beautiful redhead. Different last name though.
The number of people in the world with my surname just about breaks into three figures, I believe, so I’d have to decline.
Never mind being a distant relative, I’d be extremely weirded out to date someone that even looked anything like me. But the name thing wouldn’t bother me at all. It would be a really big coincidence though. My name doesn’t sound like it would be rare, but I’ve never met or heard of anyone I’m not related to that has it.
My last name is one of the most common surnames in the English language, so it’s really bot a big deal. Indeed, I have been part-time lusting after a woman with my surname for a few years now, but she isn’t interested.
Ha! Yes, for the purposes of this poll, if someone’s divorced, dating their ex doesn’t count. Dating their ex’s siblings (or, shudder, parents!) would.
And what, there’s no one who’ll admit to having had a thing for incest? I’d have thought the board that came up with the pan-fried semen thread would have been more unconventional that this 
Yea, I’m kind of surprised by the number of people here that it would bother because of the possibility of it being a distant relative. Even if I knew it was a distant relative I don’t think I would be bothered. I know all my first cousins, so there’s no possibility of my dating one of them unawares, and I’m don’t really care if my romantic partner is related more distantly then that. For me the “ick” factor ends at second cousin or greater.
No and it wouldn’t bother me to date a distant cousin either. My last name is not my birth name anyway and most people with my last name are not remotely related to me. And the only person I ever met with my birth name spelled it differently.
Not really. My last name isn’t terribly common, but anyone else around my age with it would be at least a second cousin, probably much more distant.
I’m from Virginia, so that explains my answer. 
I haven’t met anyone with it though…yet.
I grew up knowing my first cousins, but having a ton of second-cousins (which my culture considers too close) that I hadn’t met. There was this incident when I was in high school, when I met one out-of-towner who had my same quirky sense of humor and love of discussion for discussion’s sake (both family traits, both common in my father’s culture)…
and then I got introduced to him again the next day :smack: Yep, one of those second cousins, on our fathers’ sides. We’d both been thinking along the lines of “ok, how can I get his/her contact info, preferably in a way that won’t have all my friends a-twitter” but once we knew we were related, it was an automatic no-no. Plus, given that our first lastname is absolutely horrid, saddling any kids with a double shot of it ought’a be illegal 
My last name is not exactly common but not rare. One site I saw had it outside of the top 300. But thats still a ton of people not related to me. And thats not counting the alternate spellings. It wouldn’t bother me at all.
One thing I found freaky was a guy I worked with named Chris. He married a woman named Chris.
Actually, I know all my first cousins, which for me is too close. But would it really matter after that? I mean, cousins get married in many cultures. Not in mine, but I think if I met a super fabulous guy who turned out to be an unknown second cousin, to be honest, I’m not sure if I would ditch him for that. Cue rednecks jokes…
Not unless she was my sister or daughter, or some other appreciably close relative.
How close do you have to be, blood-wise, before incest can successfully be invoked under the law? (I ask this purely out of curiosity.)
It all breaks down to how common the name is. For me, my name isn’t all that common, but we did actually have a family in the neighborhood with the same last name for a number of years to whom we weren’t related that we knew of, though wouldn’t have surprised me if we were 6th cousins or something. Other than that, I’ve never met anyone else who had the same last name and I wasn’t related to. Still, other than maybe just double checking that we’re not related, I don’t see why it would bother me. Hell, someone could have a completely different name and just be a second cousin I never knew about, which would be much worse to find out after certain things had happened than before.
As usual, it depends on location. In Spain it’s legal for first-cousins to marry; one of my mother’s first-cousins is the daughter of first-cousins and married another first-cousin - but my father is from a different part of the country and looking at the over-cousined part of the family tree gives me the willies. At the same time, in Catalonia, where the overcousins are from, marrying your sister-in-law (after the first wife had been decorously deceased, not after a divorce) would be considered scandalous, but that’s what my father’s paternal grandfather did… it’s perfectly legal under civil law but they did have to ask for a dispensation for the RCC part of it.
Well, I don’t have any first or second cousins with my last name, so I wouldn’t worry about them being family. I would be surprised, though. I have never met anyone outside of family with my last name.
In more than half the states it is legal to marry your 1st cousin. And its not all the stereotypical states you might think. Incest itself is not illegal in every state as long as both involved are adults.
Wouldn’t bother me; might be a plus!
There was a friend whose first name was the same as my last name, and we always joked that we should get married so he could take my last name, just to be dorky.
It wouldn’t bother me but it would surprise the hell out of me. My family name is so unusual that it would almost have to be a relative (distant, since all of the close ones with that name are dead).
Roddy