I can't help but wonder if they got some sort of a screwed up sample. Government naming rules? When did I move to Germany?Laura Hamilton, a sociology researcher at Indiana University and one of the study authors, says that while gender-neutral terms such as "chairperson" have become commonplace, the same logic hasn't carried over to name change.
"One of the most interesting things is that a lot of people assume that because language in general is gender-neutral, that name change would also be one of those things in which attitudes would be shifting towards being much more liberal," she says.
But she says some studies have found that younger women are as likely or more likely to change their name when they marry as their baby boom counterparts. "It's not a straight age trend."
Respondents who said that women should change their names tended to view it as important for establishing a marital and family identity, she says, while those who thought women should keep their own names focused on the importance of a woman establishing a professional or individual identity.
Hamilton says that about half of respondents went so far as to say that the government should mandate women to change their names when they marry . . .
As a practical matter, I suspect that name changing will endure, because hyphenation is not a stable equilibrium, and it's really quite useful for everyone in the family to have the same last name. But it's hardly a moral obligation, and in fact, some of the connotations around it are quite odious. So I'm awfully glad that the government doesn't mandate such a ridiculous thing, because if they did, I'd have to refuse to change my name in outraged protest.
BTW, what is your plan. Change or no change? Or change it but keep using your maiden name for professional purposes?
Another possibility is for both partners to pick a different name. I know a couple that did that. Megan and Peter could pick "Galt", perhaps (though I always wondered why Megan used "Jane Galt" instead of "Jane Taggart"). I think a great last name for Megan would be "Atlantic" though: "Megan Atlantic". How's that for "superhero mystique"?
I always figured that Jane Galt was the public super hero persona since the most famous instances of the classic scheme gave the alliterative name to the secret identity.
I nominate "Incredible" for the new name.
I'm going to change my answer and go for "Megan The Fact That", since Megan keeps using that phrase. It sounds clunky in blog posts too.
And you can't blame this on those DFH's. I would be $100 that Conservatives/Republicans make up a large share of those that think the government should make the woman change their name.
Proof?
Considering your batting average for the Camel Nose thread, you might want to keep that $100 a little closer to your vest.
Possibly, which is why it is important to have a libertarian(ish) wing within the conservative coalition to remind those folks that petty government regulation is not a conservative value.
A lesser known fact: The University of Utah finding also specifies the name that people want married women to take. In Utah it is:
Jane Wife #1
Jane Wife #2
Jane Wife #2
Etc.
;)
I don't know where they took the survey, but if they took it in Utah I'd bet that's right. I live in Utah. The conservatives in Utah are just as statist as any California liberal; they just want the state to impose a different set of values. One time they tried to pass a law penalizing ISPs that unwittingly stored porn on their servers. That's the kind of stuff we get from our legislature on a regular basis. (Although they did do something good recently: our liquor laws are now less strict than those in Islamic countries.)
"When did I move to Germany?"
January 20, 2009
@movertyperguy
That's a *really* intriguing notion. What is about G.W. Bush leaving office that makes you think that the U.S. has turned into current-day Germany?
Bush = Hitler.
Hitler was ruler of Nazi Germany
After Hitler, Nazi Germany became modern Germany.
Therefore, the USA is now modern Germany.
I don't see how anyone could claim otherwise.
Semi-correct. The US .gov is currently acting like postwar Germany, which is to say schizophrenic to the extreme.
It's exactly like post-war Germany, which is why I've been watering down my black market antibiotics.
Nah, it's more like pre-war Germany. Print, print, print...
What was the geographical distribution of those surveyed? How were they chosen? The article doesn't say. Also, how was the question asked about "government mandating women change their names?" This just isn't passing the smell test, at least, if you try to treat it as representative of the country.
I won't pay for my daughter's wedding if she changes her name. If it's so convenient to have everyone in the family have the same last name -- and having different last names hasn't been problematic for us over the past eight years (to the day!) -- then her husband can change his name.
To be honest, I'm surprised this one doesn't happen more often. Why are the alternatives women-change, nobody-change, and hyphenation? Not that I'm eager to change my name when I marry, but it's just unexpected.
Because if a woman changes her name, she's viewed as traditional. If a guy changes his name, he's a pansy.
I’m sure your daughter is ever-grateful that you’re not some sort of maniacal control freak.
I'm curious. You nor your wife took the other's name? What last name did you daughter take?
Yeah Joe, don't let society coerce your daughter in her decision making. Not when you can coerce her with money.
Coming from a country where women do not change their names, I find this a really, really strange custom. It feels the same way, to me, as if women would routinely change their first names to their husbands' first names as well. As if the woman does not exist anymore after marriage, other than as part of her husband.
It's not about the husband, it's about the children.
Though (unless women's names are passed matrilineally) they're going to carry a man's name either way. The only question is whether it'll be her husband's or her father's. (And the answer should be the individual woman's, of course. The idea of mandating either...)
Traditionally women did take their husband's full name. You'll still see "Mrs. George Smith" in formal settings sometimes, though it's alienating to enough women that it's gotten pretty uncommon. ("Mrs. Jane Smith" was technically incorrect-- she might be "Jane" to a small number of intimates and "Mrs. Smith" to everyone else, but the title went with the married name, and her husband's name would be the one she was introduced by.)
A related pet peeve of mine: Ms. was invented as a marriage-neutral title. But I've seen invitation lists that used "Mrs." for married women and "Ms." for single women, effectively recasting "Ms." as a latter-day "Miss", and defeating the entire point, at least until we invent yet another neutral title. (Again, given that "Miss" and "Mrs." both derive from the marriage-neutral "Mistress".)
I don't know if this practice is common or a local aberration; I hope it hasn't spread.
Michael S-
I haven't observed the use of Ms. you describe. It seems like Ms. or professional titles(i.e. Dr. or military rank) is pretty standard for women in professional settings. Weddings always introduce the couple as Mr. and Mrs. I think this reflects the fact that gender matters a lot more in marriage than it does in the rest of the world. Another thing is that the US is so informal that titles really don't matter that much. Outside of a few conservative companies and the military, we tend to call everyone by his or her first name.
Not my wedding. Mr and Ms.
The point is not that woman always have a man's name. When you are born, you need a last name, and for better or for worse, the custom is that children get their father's name. It becomes their name as well, and it doesn't really matter where it comes from.
The point is that women are expected to change their name once they are married, and more specifically, change their name to conform to their husband's. Why?
Because she's marrying into his family.
Indeed, when reading Chinese history or fiction, I sometimes find that all the wives having separate last names rubs it in that a wife was not really part of the family in the same way that her husband was.
You just answered that: custom. There's no inherent need for surnames; they're a fairly recent innovation in the West, historically speaking, and the reason governments encouraged/forced them in recent centuries has been largely superseded by ID numbers. The way they're inherited and adopted are customs contingent on historical circumstances, and the historical reasons for patrilineal descent of names and for women changing their names on marriage are pretty closely related-- both stem from men being legally and socially the heads of families at the time the customs were developing.
That doesn't mean that people can't change those customs, and some do. A large minority of women don't change their names on marriage, and a fairly large number of children have their mother's surname (mostly children of single moms, but certainly including some couples who've made a deliberate choice to go that way).
But the custom is still there, and once it's in place it creates certain defaults that make it convenient to follow, and like any cultural practice it will inspire loyalty in some of the people who follow it. In 2009, a woman who primarily feels that trading her father's (or in some cases mother's) name for her husband's is an act of self-abnegation probably won't do so. One who primarily considers it a symbol of her new union probably will.
(And neither needs anyone else's permission or approval-- though in our current happy state no matter what she does, someone will disapprove.)
And a couple equally drawn to both ideas may do something less common, like hyphenating, making up a new surname, or having the husband take the wife's surname. But the more uncommon the choice, the more time and effort will have to be spent sorting out paperwork and clearing up misunderstandings based on customary expectations.
So whether one is traditionalist, romantic, or just lazy, there can be advantages to sticking with the defaults. On the other hand, laziness can work the other way: people with an established professional presence under a name (writers, academics, entertainers, etc.) may find that the inconvenience of changing the name-- risking that searchers will miss publications in one's CV or films in one's IMDB entry due to not associating Jane Smith with Jane S. Jones-- far outweighs the convenience of sharing a name with one's nuclear family.
Traditionally women did take their husband's full name.
That depends on the tradition.
My mom's side of the family is Portuguese. When they came to the U.S. approximately 100 years ago, not only did they have a strong tradition of women not changing their last name, they came from a society where children took mother's or father's or sometimes even grandparents' last names, whichever they liked. When the kids enrolled in school, the school had trouble with the fact that these brothers and sisters all had different last names. Since then the family's gone with the American style, though traces still remain. When my brother went through a rebellious phase, he took our mother's maiden name as his surname.
It's a pretty good tradition, if you ask me. It sure makes genealogy a hell of a lot easier.
I thought "Ms." was pretty much dead. I haven't actually heard anyone use it in years.
Have you heard people use "Miss", or is the absence of "Ms." you observe part of honorifics in general declining in favor of going straight to first-name basis for everyone? (Or something else?)
AFAIK it is largely a derived Judeo-Christian custom, as inheritance was passed through the male lineage and women were not expected to be principal wage earners. So a woman carried her father's family name while still part of his household (and therefore under his care and protection), then took her husband's family name when transferring to his care and protection.
snort
Amazing Christians, managing to make the Romans derive customs from them before they even existed
Hence the phrase, "Judeo-Christian". You do know that the Joooooos came along a good a good couple thousand years before the earliest elements of the Roman kingdom, right?
It should be pointed out that primogenitor was a principally English custom, whereas the notion of wills and adoptions were Roman and had to be imported into the common law by statute.
ROFLOL.
It was the Christians who went to Rome. The Jews were sitting around another part of the world. They didn't even have contact with Rome until after Alexander the Great.
Okay. But what's your point?
I don't want to speak for anyone else, but I don't have a point.
It's certainly not universal in Judeo-Christian culture. Hispanic cultures (Spanish, Portuguese) have a strong history of not changing a woman's last name at marriage, or at least they did up to about 100 years ago. Children took any one of an assortment of last names. Just to take one example from my genealogy, my ancestor Paulo Homen Silveira was the son of Manuel Leal Alveraz and Maria Gularte. Homen and Silveira were the surnames of his maternal grandfather and grandmother, respectively. Paulo's brother Sebastiao took the surname Rodrigues Homem, which is the full surname of his maternal grandfather, while his brother Domingos took Homem Gularte Leal (maternal grandfather, mother, and paternal grandfather).
Hispanic people still do this do this today, like Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen.
Well yes, but in Christianized Europe that tradition seems to have been somewhat peculiar to the Iberian peninsula, and all of Latin America inherited it by that route.
Hispanic people still do this do this today, like Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen.
That's a little different, though; Sheen is not a family name, but rather the stage name taken by father Martin Sheen (born Ramon Estevez).
I won't pay for my daughter's wedding if she changes her name.
Because nothing says "I'm a strong, independent woman worthy of respect in my own right!" like doing what daddy says to get his money.
So true
Another "liberal" abuse of the power of the purse in the name of "equality".
I'm not sure this counts as "liberal." Where's the anti-patriarchy value in demanding a woman obey her father rather than her husband? If anything, that entrenches the power of older patriarchs at the expense of younger men.
It's only illiberal if they dislike the results. Coercion is moot. As is freedom.
Of course, unless the woman's parents were way ahead of their times, the woman's name is just her father's name. Why is it better to go through life with your father's name rather than your husband's name?
I think this is the crux of the matter-one of the surnames doesn't carry to the next generation. So if a woman doesn't change her name-but the children end up with the fathers name anyway, what's the difference. Now we could go to Scandinavian customs, but that gets real complicated.
But by that logic a husband's name isn't his name at all either, it's his father's name too. Why should I take my father-in-law's name? After all, I'm not marrying him.
You only get one father, but can have many husbands?
I've actually run into some ill-informed feminists who thought it was the law-or at least that a woman had to get some kind of special exemption to keep her name. It's funny when they realize it would actually be less work for the woman to keep her name.
When my brother and his wife got married, they both changed their name to a third name. One unrelated to either side of the family.
I came up with a hyphenation scheme that is sustainable...
Men start out with their father's surname-mother's surname.
Women start out with the mother's surname-father's surname.
When a couple marries, the couple adopts the husband's father's surname and the wife's mother's surname with the husband having his father's surname first and the wife having her mother's surname first.
Then their children get the same names in the same order depending on gender.
When they marry, sons keep their father's surname and combine it with their wife's mother's surname while daughters keep their mother's surname and combine it with their husband's father's surname.
Same sex couples would use the same plan but they'd both be husbands or wives depending.
Personally, I was glad that my (now ex) wife took my last name but I wouldn't have insisted. If she hadn't... then what last name would the children get?
I know couples who have adopted a new surname when they got married.
Sounds like a more complex version of Hispanic naming customs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_naming_customs
It does preserve the utility of surnames in an important way, however, unlike the third name idea. That is, they are a quick and dirty way to tell who might be related to who(Unless your last name is Smith.)
When I married my wife, Mary Jobs, she kept her own name and we decided to use a hyphenated last name - my last name and Mary's last name - for the kids. It's been great.
One thing I can't understand is why my kids keep getting in fights at school.
Yours truly, Ed Hand
Kids can be so cruel.
Sincerely, Asswipe Johnson.
Then there's my friend Michael Hawk:)
Don't know him, but do know a Michael Hunt.
I actually had a girlfriend called Jenny Taylor.
Schoolmate by the name of Justin Case.
I went to college with Robyn Banks. (And her middle initial was M, which worked well here in the South: "Robbin' 'em banks.")
Believe it or not, the macho, patriarchal, conservative, Catholic countries of Iberia and Latin America have a MUCH better naming system than the Anglosphere.
Nobody ever changes their names. You receive three names at birth: your given name, your father's family name, and then your mother's family name. (It's still a bit patriarchal, because when you have kids, you and your spouse generally pass on your paternal names. But at least there's none of the personal identity-loss that goes with the woman changing her name upon marriage.)
As an alternative, we could go back to the medieval system. Among the tradespeople, your name marked your profession -- Baker, Cooper, Miller, Smith. (Today, we would have "Frank Insuranceanalyst," "Maria Softwareengineer," and "Megan Econoblogger." Or we could do the Nordic system of patrinyms, which indicate your father's first name, like Johnson, Peterson, Donaldson. (The Icelanders also did this with daughters, KnutSON, but also GunnarsDOTTIR.)
Incidentally, the Hispanic world also had medieval patrinymics. Fernandez, Martinez, and Rodriguez simply mean, respectively, son of Fernando, son of Martin, and son of Rodrigo.
/history lesson
Sincerely, P. Graduatestudent
We could also do, like the nobles, the land of your inherited patrimony. "John of Kentucky," "Sarah of Lincoln County," and "Megan of West 70th St."
I love the idea of using a profession for a name. You could hyphenate for every new job one takes...
Ken Tech-Engineer of 16th St
"Incidentally, the Hispanic world also had medieval patrinymics. Fernandez, Martinez, and Rodriguez simply mean, respectively, son of Fernando, son of Martin, and son of Rodrigo."
Thanks for that. I never knew. Now, what about Gomez?
Earlier, Michael S pointed out that last names are a fairly recent invention. While this is true, it's also true that there were fewer people, and towns were smaller, back then. So a village could have a William, and he'd be the only one. Eventually, the next village over got a William, and so one of them came to be either William Fletcher or William of Noddingborough.
In today's England, nobility use their first names: Prince Charles, &c.
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned the Russian system: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin: Vladimir son of Vladimir; Svetlana Iosifovna Stalina; &c.
Another idea would be to borrow the custom of a few "primitive" societies: you get a name at birth. When you turn 18, you take a formal name. Then when you get to be king or Pope, you take on yet another name.
In 20+ years of marriage I can't think of any time we were inconvenienced by having different last names, as long as you don't count the very occasional stranger who addresses me by her name or her by mine.
Ditto, although it's only been three years. If women want to change their names, fine, but own your decision instead of claiming that endless bureaucratic hassles will ensue if you don't.
I think it's too late to change the custom. There's just too much software hard coded to the old scheme.
It's like the Chinese. Four thousand years of bureacracy has them all putting family name first, given name last. They'll never change. It would mess up too many files.
The Chinese problem is that they don't have enough names:
"... the top 19 names covered 55.6%, and the top 100 names covered 87% of the sample. Other data suggest that the top 50 names comprise 70% of the population."[/wiki/Chinese_surname]
Maybe they should require a couple to adopt the less-common of their parent's surnames....
Are people allowed to have 2 legal names? One professional name that they could sign contracts and be payed under and one family name that they use for everything else... birth certificates, marriage certificates, passports, etc...?
I think those are called aliases. If you can have too many. Also, it's awkward when you come up with the wrong ID in the wrong circumstance.
It's bad enough getting checks written to my nickname.
I just looked it up. I assume it varies by state, but in California there's a special form for getting a legal "stage name" that you can work under while still retaining your "real" name for everything else.
You're entitled to assert your copyright under your pen name.
Why not patronymics?
Because that would make me Paul Clarenceson and my father Clarence Clarenceson, that's why.
Perhaps a system wherein two people, upon marrying, adopt a unique common surname, which their children would bear until they marry.
For an amusing bit of personal name confusion, try
http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2007/03/05/my-name-is-not-really-penelope/
At least she didn't end up with an unpronounceable symbol. So she could be only referred to as "The writer formerly known as..."
Wow, that was surreal.
When Mrs. Holdfast and I married, I was fairly indifferent. I thought it would be kind of nice if she took my name, but it was not a big deal, and I figured that as a professional, with a couple of degrees on the wall, she's want to keep working and living under the same name. As it turned out, she not only insisted that she take my name, she was actually hurt that I didn't really care.
My first wife was a 70s feminist, and could find no reason to the her husband's (my)name. She found it more enlightened to keep her father's name.
At some point, I would imagine that the name she was given by her parents became hers alone. She identified herself to a large degree as Mary Jones (or whatever), without any regard to where that name came from. So, to her, maybe it was -her- last name and not her father's. Why should she or any woman adjust her personal identification?
Why, indeed ? She only married me for my health insurance, anyway.
Though, in all fairness, women do get the mitochondrial DNA passed on, what's wrong in letting the guys get the surname? ;-)
Only applies to the daughters - sons are even, because the Y chromosome passes unchanged. So daughters need to have their father's names, but sons should be hyphenated? Unsustainable, but amusing.
Can't see any role for government or anyone else but the couple in this decision. What's it to ya?
Woman keeping same name makes it easier post-divorce, a non-trivial possibility. Can get confusing when there are kids and most esp. when the kids come from more than one marriage father.
Kids seem to adapt. My wife kept her name, I kep mine. One of our kids has her surname, two have mine, two are hyphenated because nurse at hospital screwed up and made my wife's surname part of the [hyphenated] last name instead of just another middle name as I intended (to my wife's great annoyance). The two hyphenated just use their motrher's name except for offical things like passports.
The one HUGE drawback is when people refer to me as Mr. {wife's surname} That's when I start to think that I really do need to grow a pair.
An especially non-trivial if you are already considering it before you get married. If so, you should skip the fun and games and just not get married. Same result, with nothing to pay the lawyers.
When my first husband decided to leave, I joined the my-own-name bandwagon. Didn't want to keep his surname, also didn't want to return to my father's surname. So in the surname part of the divorce proceedings I adopted a new surname that I chose for myself.
When my second husband and I married, I kept my surname. So now we are Mr. John Smythe and Ms. Jane Doe. We have a comfortable agreement that both of us will answer readily to either name; so people occasionally call him John Doe and call me Jane Smythe, and we don't make a stink about it. Collectively, we call ourselves "the SmyDoe household".
It works great for us. Of course, it is simplified by the fact that we don't (yet) have any children. If some come along, we'll probably use a similar system as Gene -- girls might be Does and boys Smythes.
All sorts of ways to do it; and the only right one is the one that works well for a given family unit!
Mrs. J. Doe = Maitresse de Jean Doe
Possessive form, guys; I like it. :)
msully has PART of the solution, but is omitting the y chromosome.
If everybody has a patronym and a matronym, and everybody takes the mom's matronym; boys take the dad's patronym and girls take his matronym, the last names will track the same DNA that was tracked to determine genetic Adam & Eve: Y-DNA haplotypes and mitochondrial DNA.
Personally, I'm with Nylund. We should just choose a new name when married. It would drive genealogists nuts, but would affirm our civilized refusal to identify ourselves by blood.
My partner chose to take my name, with which I've never been entirely comfortable, but also changed her middle name to her father's: Karen Elaine Jones becomes Karen Jones Smith. As it turns out, that works, in formal circumstances, such as we can refer to ourselves as Karen Jones and Robert Smith. Our children are Smiths, but they're not blood anyway, so they're with Nylund, too.
France has naming rules for children. The law originated after the French Revolution. Parents were naming their children 'cabbage' or 'potato' to show their contempt for the new government(s). Today, if you propose a name not on the approved list, the official at the Mairie will just refuse to write it down.
Are you trying to tell me that France is full of bureaucratic nonsense? No, I simply refuse to believe it!
When I got married, I decided my wife would take my family name. And she decided I would take her family name. It's just a matter of who gets in first as to what people know us by. Given that she is the social one...
I really like the way icelanders do it- as I understand it, boys take [dad's first name]-son as their last name, and girls take [mom's first name]-dottir as their last name, so if Sven and (forgive me) Bjork have two kids named Jan and Katya, the kids will be Jan Svenson and Katya Bjorksdottir. The fact that you then wind up with a family of four with four different last names isn't really an issue when you understand how the system works. It does make it a little silly if you have the same first name as your same sex parent- Jennifer jennifersdottir, for example, is goofy.
How does that square with SSM? If there was a lesbian couple, which partner would give a baby girl the first part of her name? Or if they had a son, where would he get a name at all? The converse would apply to two gay men.
Actually, when I looked it up, I was wrong: kids of both genders usually take [dad's first name]-son or [dad's first name]-dottir as their last name, so the kids in my example above would be "Jan Svenson" and "Katya Svensdottir." But the parents get to pick and for various reasons sometimes they use the mom's first name instead, making the kids "Jan Bjorkson" and "Katya Bjorksdottir." I don't know what they would do in the case of a same sex couple. I know Iceland is very socially liberal so I imagine it has come up- it's probably just however the parents want to do it.
It's not really a fixed custom yet, but some people have names from both parents, such as Dagur Bergþóruson Eggertsson.
But it's hardly a moral obligation, and in fact, some of the connotations around it are quite odious.
I agree there is certainly no moral imperative, but I think the whole "evil oppressive patriarchy" thing can be overstated; much of the earlier repression that is often blamed on male dominance has more to do the generally repressive nature of those times than with male/female relations per se.
There might arguably be a biological/psychological imperative for patronyms, though. As a species, we are evolved for male dominance. Overall men are bigger, stronger, faster and more driven (hence the skewing on math skills). Male dominance is also reflected in our psychology: women tend to choose powerful men (of whatever kind of power) despite social conditioning. One aspect of power is the lineage naming convention.
My wife kept her last name (Thiel), I kept mine (Meighan), and a hyphenated version of them both (Meighan-Thiel) has been given to our daughter (age 4), and will also be given to our son (who's on the way).
Sure, it raises the issue of what they'll someday do with *their* kids' names (should they someday have kids to name). But, frankly, that's their problem, not mine. For all I care, my daughter can give my future grandkid either of her two last names, or the last name of her future partner, or she can just make up something completely different from scratch. Whatever. Her (future) call. All that really matters to me, at this juncture, is that my daughter have a last name that reflects *all* of what she is. Giving her my last name only, at the expense of my wife's (or vice versa), only tells half of her story.
Patrick Meighan
Culver City, CA
Actually, they can expect more pressing problems in law that will dwarf their marriage concerns, starting at least with the DMV. Hyphenated names wreack all kinds of havoc on legal documents and computer systems that weren't explicitly set up to tolerate either hyphenated surnames or four given names.
You'd figure anyone who was that stupid in setting up a system for last names(given that most would have been written in the 1980s at the absolute earliest) would have had some difficulty selling their software.
Two words: Government procurement.
Three more words: Immutability of bureaucracy.
No problems so far. My daughter (hyphenated last name and all) got her Social Security number from the SSA and her birth certificate from the L.A. County Department of Records without any trouble whatsoever, and nary a hint of havoc wreaked on their legal documents and computer systems. And the SSA and L.A. County both would have to count as large bureaucracies, I'd say.
Maybe things'll be okay.
As for WASPy, I don't know what to tell you. I'm a public school product who grew up in a trailer park in Utah. My wife is also a public school product, born to blue-collar parents, neither of whom have any education beyond their high school diplomas. Also, we both come from Catholic families. So if we're WASPs, I'm not really sure who *isn't* one (except maybe for black people, I suppose).
Parick Meighan
Culver City, CA
Good to hear. I imagine some of it varies by state or country, as I've heard of some problems occurring with it (but not in California specifically).
My friends' daughter has had this problem given to her. His name was hyphenated for many generations, they couldn't settle on whose surname to give her, so she has both. As in, Jane Smith-Jones-Doe... although it's actually much longer than that.
Welp, if that's the worst problem we give my daughter, I suppose she'll be alright.
Patrick Meighan
Culver City, CA
I'm all for the patriarchy, but, as a software engineer working on search, this name-changing business presents some SEO problems. Thankfully, Peter's last name is "Suderman" rather than "Fox", so I doubt that it will affect you much.
That said, am I the only one who think hyphenation is repellingly WASPy?
I too think hyphenation is repellingly WASPy. I am also all for the patriarchy. It has its drawbacks, but I live two blocks from a matriarchal neighborhood and I wouldn't trade our dysfunctions for theirs any day.
My wife had an Irish first and last name very close to "Megan McArdle" that she changed when she married me. I was and remain grateful. It's nice to share a name with each other and with our kids. It's also nice to receive gifts that celebrate that fact: like a "The [Magaracs]" plaque given as a wedding gift or a "La Casa de [Magarac]" sign that a brother had made while living in South America. I don't knock people for keeping their names, but I think they miss out on some nice advantages of a shared name.
I don't think the study result is all that surprising. The two sets of respondents accurately summarize the two prevailing attitudes toward marriage. The difference is between those whose view of marriage is that it is a relationship based on equality and those who think it is based on complementarity.
Is it any worse to conform to a patriarchal naming convention than it is to conform to the engagement ring convention? If the former odiously implies that a woman's identity is defined by who she marries, the latter seems to imply that she's willing to be bought. I don't mean any ill will towards engagement ring wearers (or buyers!), it just seems to me that stones can just as easily be thrown at other marital customs (that many progressive feminists happily accept) as at name-changing.
I'm all for spouses changing their name after being wed, but as I see it, a 50/50 bride/groom split would be advantageous.
Criterion: who has the more aesthetically pleasing last name? That's the name both spouses change to.
...As time passes, under this system, the quality of names across the entire populace skyrockets. SKYROCKETS.
You are assuming that the entire populace has good taste in names. I vehemently disagree. Exhibit A: one of my kids was baptized along with a baby girl named "Dakota Skye."
Funny you should bring this up as I have a female friend that was delightfully eager to Marry and change her name. Why was she so eager? Her maiden name - Cox.
My wife was eager to change her name as well. Her maiden name was a male first name - and you wouldn't believe how many letters she got that were addressed to Mr. (last name) (first name). So, now, she has two gender-appropriate names, while I am still stuck with my feminine last name and get letters addressed to Ms. At least it'll all even out when I publish my book. I'm publishing under a pen name - my first name and her mother's (gender neutral) maiden name.
If I'm not mistaken, in Quebec, the government has mandated that married couples have to keep their own surnames.
I offered to take my wife's name when we got married for a very practical reason. I have a very common surname. Have you ever been in doctor's office when they ask for Mr. Smith? You get 3-5 people standing up. It also makes it very hard for people to find your information in databases.
We discovered that as a male I don't have an opportunity to change my name when I get married and I would have to go thru the courts to change my name.
Re: the Germany comment. Germany actually has strict governmental naming rules that require names to be approved by a registrar. (There was an article in, I think, the WSJ a few years ago about someone in Germany wanting to name their kid "Satan", but it was refused.)
(FWIW, I agree with Megan that, although my wife took my oddly-spelled last name when we married, I'd fight like hell a requirement that she do so.)
Are we allowed to suggest names for the soon-to-be-married couple? How about McSudleman?
Ahh, the Germans. Prostitution is legal but funny names aren't.
Well, if I had to choose between the two...
My wife and I were married in the 70's. People assumed she kept her last name intact for feminist/political reasons, but she had a much better reason: pure laziness. New driver's license? Banking accounts? Credit cards? Blah blah blah.
She asked me if I minded and I had what I think was the correct response: Honey, do you think I'd ask you to perform a day or two of pointless irritating bureaucratic chores just as we are beginning our married life? Not really a good way to start off...
although you've got a point on the naming rules, which i find it difficult to have a major problem with (i mean come on, do you think it's a bad thing that morons can't name their kids "satan" or "dickface?"), the irony is that in Germany it is perfectly normal for the groom to take on his wife's surname. people basically go by what sounds better.
"people basically go by what sounds better"
Are there German names that sound better? :)
There are german names that sound worse.
After all, there are entire families called Goerring, Hitler, Himler...
I think its great for the woman to take her husband's name... but government mandate? thats absurd.
Seriously, folks, this is where government mandates end up taking you:... to
Sweden, where Michael was rejected by the state as a girl's name because its a 'boy's name.' That is absurd and annoying totalitarianism.
Most women I know who change their last names after marriage keep their maiden names in some form, usually as their primary middle name (the one they use in three-letter monograms). This strikes me as more flexible than hyphenation -- you can use it when you want to and omit it when you don't. In many cases, the mother's maiden name also makes a perfectly good middle name for some of the children. Family names of the grandmothers also work for this. Using the entire collection of family names this way is an old custom, and it's not necessarily odd to have a middle name that's the same as your cousin's last name.
But I'm fine with having everyone keep their birth names throughout life. As far as I'm concerned, a woman who established her professional reputation under her first husband's name can even keep that name when she is married to husband #2. If changing (whether to go back to her maiden name or take the name of husband #2) would cause major career difficulties, that consideration may trump.
Crap! I was going down this thread, feeling all sophisticated and progressive regarding my wife who kept her maiden name for professional and historical reasons while using (my) married name for social reasons, like at church, etc.
Never thought about that second husband though. Of course! She's gonna change churches and other social venues if that happens, but not her job or historic family relations. Thank goodness for blogs. You really do learn a lot.
I hope nobody is planning anything of the sort, of course.
But suppose another woman married young, took her husband's name for both professional and social purposes, and went on to establish a career as a brilliant scientist under that name. Many publications (and 1/3 of a Nobel Prize) later, her husband meets an untimely end. If this woman marries again, and assuming she is still professionally active, which name should be on her CV?
The same considerations might also apply to a judge. Actors and writers can continue to work under stage/pen names while using a different name for legal purposes, but not every profession that tracks people by name presents that option.
Dorothy Parker did just that . . .
Wait a second...kept her first husband's name to make a clean break with her second? But she did remarry the dude, didn't she? I confess I'm a bit confused. But I'm pretty sure she remarried the guy. So, you know, worst case scenario there's still hope.
I don't doubt that probably represents the country more or less. There are far, far more traditionalists left than is widely recognized, because they are so under-represented in the cultural and political and academic/media elites. The culture war is far more pervasive, and far less tractable, than most opinion polls suggest. The young (those under 40) are often more socially conservative than their parents, even as they mouth the accepted social-lib pieties when interviewed.
Further, the trends are running toward the traditionalist POV, for reasons of fertility and cyclic cultural change.
I think this is true. There are a whole lot of Catholics, for instance, who never met a government program they didn't like but are vehemently against gay marriage and abortion.
In the two states where I have served as a pastor, and thus had the responsibility of signing marriage licenses as the officiant, the license application asks of each party -- What will your name be after marriage?
MN and CA at least give the parties the opportunity upon marriage to change their legal name. Upon inquiry in MN, I was told by a county official that marriage is one of the few opportunities when a person can change their name without court involvement. Becoming a naturalized US citizen is another.
I actually encourage couples to think about what they want their married name to be. In general, they are incredulous that I would even ask. Most couples took the man's surname.
One man did take her surname because she was an only child while he had a brother who already had children. He wanted her family name to continue when they had children. Her parents adored him!
I agree that the government should stay out of telling people what their names will be. However, I am always bemused by women who refuse their husband's name as a strike against the Patriarchy and opt instead to use their daddy's name.
I keep hearing that it's useful for everyone in the family to have the same last name, but I don't really see how. I grew up in a family where my father and I had one last name, and my mother had another, and it has never caused any problem.
I can understand people enjoying having the same name, but what's so useful about it?
If I ever get married, I'll let my husband worry about whether he wants to take my name or not, but I won't expect him to.
I prefer women to change their names so I can tell whether they're married or just shacking up, but I suppose I'm hopelessly old-fashioned for thinking that matters.
In my own case, I would have changed regardless because my maiden name was a long polish name with two zs, and my husband's had five letters, one syllable, sounded how it looked, and was waspy--a definite step up.
One of Martha Stewart's brothers changed his name to their mom's maiden name because he hated dad. So there are lots of personal reasons for variation.
Just because you've done something for a long time doesn't mean it's not stupid. Name changing....STUPID. Just ask a DBA or Network Admin what a clusterf*@! this is.
-rufusmcbufus