zaccone@psuvax.UUCP (02/06/84)
A while back, there was some discussion about how some couples have
dealt with the issue of not changing the wife's name after marriage.
However, I don't remember there being any discussion about what names
the children take if the father and mother have different last names.
1. How have people dealt with this issue?
2. If the child gets the last name of just one of the parents, how does
one maintain a family identity? (Now there's one person with a
different name than the rest).
I've considered a number of different possibilities and none seem
acceptable. I'm interested in a solution that is not sexist and is
acceptable to individual family members, and the family as a unit.
--
Rick Zaccone
Penn State University
{akgua, allegra, burdvax, ihnp4}!psuvax!zacconesaquigley@watmath.UUCP (Sophie Quigley) (02/08/84)
I too, have been thinking about the issue of non-sexist last names for children for many years and have come up with many solutions, only one of which I find relatively satisfactory. For a while I considered using concatenation of the parents names. This is however ignoring the issue as the child will not be able to give both names to his/her children, so some names will have to be dropped along the way. Next, I considered assigning names by sex: let all girls take the mother's name and all boys the father's or vice versa. This has the problem that if one doesn't have an equal amount of children of each sex, then one parent is slighted. The next solution is to alternate. The problems with this are 1/ deciding which name to start with. 2/ inequalities caused by having an odd number of children, which will be exarcebated if the couple intends (like me) to have only one child. These last two solutions also have the problem that siblings will not have the same last name. The last solution I have thought of, and the one I hope to implement one day, is unfortunately the most complicated legally: make up a new last name for the children. This can be done either by somehow mixing the two last names of the parents, or creating a brand new name. This has the problem that children do not have the same name as their parents, but with the state of marriages nowadays, quite a few don't anyway. I think it is a nice solution because it gives children their own identity. It also gets rid of these silly attitudes we have about "blood" relationships, the importance of "carrying on the name", and so on. It makes us think of our children less as our posessions, but more as individuals who are more than mere extensions or replicas of ourselves. This will, of course, also greatly diversify the repertoire of names, eventually simplifying the task of looking up people in a phone book (assuming people have enough imagination) PS: I have read recently of a couple in the States who arrived at the same conclusion. They had to fight their case in court, but eventually won, so the precedent is made. Go for it! PS: In Sweden, they have had many problems for years with too many people having the same last names. Apparently, the concept of last names was introduced very late in that country, so almost everybody ended up with the very banal name of <put_a_name>sson, (i.e son of <put_a_name>), where the choice of <put_a_name>s is not very diversified: There are currently 4.9% of the population called Johansson, 4.7% Andersson, 4.2% Karlsson, 3.0% Nilsson, 2.3% Eriksson, other favorites are Larsson, Olsson, Persson, Svensson, Pettersson, Gustavsson, Jonsson, Jansson, Hansson capturing 14.0% of the market. (figures courtesy of my swedish boyfriend (a Karlsson) who is very interested in swedish trivia) The Swedish government, realising how this is the source of many bureaucratic confusions, have a program encouraging people to change their last names, hopefully inventing new ones. So if the Swedes do it, it must be right!
amigo2@ihuxq.UUCP (John Hobson) (02/08/84)
One solution that works fairly well (admittedly in a small population) to the probelm of what to do with last names of children is what they do in Iceland. Say that Lars and Olga have two children, a boy Nels nad a daughter Gertrud. Nels gets the name Nels Larsson and Gertrud is Gertrud Larssdottir. When Gertrud marries Jan Olafson, she retains the surname Larsdottir, and Jan and Gertud's children are either Janson or Jansdottir, depending on sex. Perhaps something could be set up so that you could pick the parent that you want to be son or daughter of. Except that then how do you deal with a newborn baby? One problem with hypenating last names is that in soon becomes unwieldy. There was an English admiral whose name was Sir Reginald Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax. John Hobson AT&T Bell Labs Naperville, IL (312) 979-0193 ihnp4!ihuxq!amigo2
wall@decwrl.UUCP (02/08/84)
From: wall (David Wall) One variation on Sophie's last suggestion would be to make up a new name for the kids, and then have both parents adopt it as well.
riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle) (02/09/84)
My girlfriend and I have had a few long, if somewhat hypothetical,
discussions on this topic. It began when she suggested that if we were
to get married, she should keep her last name. I agreed wholeheartedly
for several reasons, only one of which was to buck the sexist naming
tradition. For one thing, I l i k e her name; it suits her, it's
what I've always known her by, and neither one of us can think of any
good reason why she should change it. For another thing, her name is
particularly important to her as a symbol of her ethnic identity: she
is an American of East Indian descent, and although the American side
of her personality predominates, the fact that she is named "Pauravi
Rana" is a nice link with her cultural heritage.
Then we turned to the subject of the (hypothetical) children's names.
First and middle names were easy. Pau has a niece named "Mira
Michele", and both of us like the idea of that sort of mixed Indian/
Western name. There are, as much as it might surprise you, many Indian
names which are both pronounceable and pleasing to the American ear.
But the last name was more difficult. We considered all of Sophie's
possibilities. Giving different siblings different last names seemed
too confusing. "Rana-Riddle", "Riddle-Rana", and "Raniddle" (!) all
struck us as ludicrous; "Randall" would be a legitimate hybrid but
seemed too alien to us. We were stumped.
Finally, after we had thought about it for a few days, something
occurred to us. I am a blond, hazel-eyed, fair-skinned European type;
Pau is quite dark. All the odds are that the kids would look like her
and not a bit like me. If the children would get their physical
appearance primarily from their mother, shouldn't they get at least
s o m e t h i n g to show who their father is? Why not a last name?
-Ding- went the lightbulbs over our heads. Case closed.
I realize that this solution applies to very few of you out there, but
I couldn't resist posting it. Hope I haven't bored you with too many
personal details.
--- Prentiss Riddle
--- ("Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada.")
--- {ihnp4,seismo,ctvax}!ut-sally!riddleriddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle) (02/09/84)
Speaking of a lack of diversity in the pool of names, it seems that in
West Germany it is still the case that all (first and middle) names
given to newborns must come from an official list. I once witnessed
the awful battle of an American GI and his wife in the US consulate in
Munich, trying in vain to get the A m e r i c a n officials to help
them get by the German regulations. It seems that their child had been
born in a German hospital; the physician in charge had told them that
he would be willing to bend the rules and put a non-German name on the
birth certificate, but that they would need the cooperation of the
American consulate. For some reason the employees at the consulate
refused. I never saw the resolution of the conflict, but if that GI
had gotten much madder, I was expecting them to have to call a marine
to come kick him out.
(I have also heard that the Germans have established exceptions for their
Turkish foreign workers and the like; why the exceptions don't routinely
apply to American military personnel, I don't know.)
--- Prentiss Riddle
--- ("Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada.")
--- {ihnp4,seismo,ctvax}!ut-sally!riddleleiby@yeti.UUCP (02/09/84)
watmath!saquigley sez: > The last solution I have thought of, and the one I hope to implement one day, > is unfortunately the most complicated legally: make up a new last name for > the children. I predict y'all are going to have a very difficult time of it. For example, my last name is Leibensperger. After years (and years, and years...) of having it misspelled one way or another, I've developed a very fierce loyalty to it as a result of having to defend it against the spelling errors of non-Teutonic types all the time. Not only that, but we Leibenspergers go back a long way history-wise, Hans Georg Leibensperger having departed Baden-Wu:rtemberg to arrive in Philadelphia in 1774. I think it's impractical to try to define a definitive non-sexist naming convention, since no matter what you do, somebody will be dissatisfied. Best to work it out one-on-one with the spouse. My preferrence would be either combining names (should I marry someone with a short enuf name! :-)) or else mapping boys => dad's name and girls => mom's name (or some permutation thereof). Actually, the only fair thing to do would be to play a poker game to decide!!! Serious question: Some folks out there on the net must have hyphenated names. If you're contemplating children or if you have them already, what will/do you call them? How did you go about resolving things if you had to drop a name somewhere? -- Mike Leibensperger @ Masscomp, Westford MA 01886 {tektronix,harpo,decvax}!masscomp!leiby
mark@umcp-cs.UUCP (02/09/84)
Mark Weiser's (me) and Victoria Reich's children are all
Reich-Weiser's, (alphabetize in the R's).
A perfectly good solution to hyphenated last names
taken from each parent, like our children have, is
for the female children to pass on the female half
of their last name to their children, and for the
male children to pass on the male half of their name
to their children. Thus, all my sons will pass
a Weiser on to their family if/when they are married,
and all my daughters will pass a Reich on to their family
if/when similarly inclined.
Logical, symmetrical, simple.--
Mark Weiser
UUCP: {seismo,allegra,brl-bmd}!umcp-cs!mark
CSNet: mark@umcp-cs ARPA: mark@marylandmmk@brunix.UUCP (Matthew Kaplan) (02/09/84)
There's a much simpler solution. Simply restrict yourself to having children only with people who share your last name. The trivial way to accomplish this is to form surname "clubs", that have regular meetings which provide their members with an pool of appropriate spouses (spice?)/ mates. In large cities this would be quite satisfactory. However, many might consider this solution a bit restrictive. A better solution would be for a couple to change their names to a neutral one (say, Jones) before bearing children. This solution has the advantage that, if everybody changes their names to the same thing (say, Jones) then in a generation (more likely two, because there is always a group of people who do their best to hold back social progress on all fronts, and will, therefore, refuse to change their names) everybody will be called the same thing (say, Jones) and the whole name changing business can go away. Still another solution is to have a correspondence between one's name and phone number. This might be preferred by some, because the whole family gets a new name when it moves (unless to prefers to keep its previous phone number) so people who don't like their name don't have to feel they're stuck with it forever.
ecs@inuxd.UUCP (Eileen Schwab) (02/09/84)
John Hobson suggested one solution to the problem of surnames
based upon a custom in Iceland. If Lars and Olga have two children,
the boy would have the surname "Larsson" and the girl would have
the name "Larsdottir". This is just as bad as the current practice.
Why are they the children of 'Lars', and not "Olgason" or "Olgadottir"?
/\
/V V\ Eileen Schwab (my given name)
/ ^ ^ \
\______/ "Some like it HOT!"
P.S. My husband and I decided that if we had any children, they would
have his name. He is the last 'Nusbaum' in his family whereas I have
three brothers who might pass on the name 'Schwab' to their children.
Interestingly, his mother also kept her given name (for business
reasons) when she married. Yet she objected to my not changing my
name. All her children were given the name 'Nusbaum'.julian@deepthot.UUCP (Julian Davies) (02/09/84)
A system which I fancied is to (initially) hyphenate the parent's last names on marriage, and the children take that long last name too. When two people from the next generation marry, they combine half-each of their last names: the wife the bit she got from her mother, and the husband the bit he got from his father... so both the maternal and paternal family lines descend indefinitely. The problem, apart from complexity, is: what order to have them. I fear an automatic tendency to put male half first without considering the alternative. The system, at any rate, can be extended in the obvious way to 'liaisons' between MOTSS if the issue arises. On marriage, it is obviously necessary to scrap some of the last-names, or they grow exponentially. There is room for discretion which bits to keep. I can imagine a person who really wanted to keep her or his opposite-sex parent's bit. So OK, why not.
ellen@unisoft.UUCP (Ellen Boyle) (02/10/84)
I have several friends who have combined their names for their children, one really clever one comes to mind: The mother's name is Goldsmith, the father's is Link - their son is Goldlink. I know of another couple who have changed their names to a combined name as well.
bev@hlexa.UUCP (Beverly Dyer) (02/17/84)
I plan to choose names based on ascetic reasons. If I didn't like the name my parents bequeathed me I'd change it. I'll choose my husband's name only if I like the sound of it more. I'll choose children's names the same way. Trying to keep track of family history is impossible for any length of time.