silver (02/23/83)
My wife was first a posslq. We married four years ago with little fanfare and agreed that she should no more become Ms. Silverstein than I should change to Mr. Carlton. There have been surprisingly FEW problems; we are quite used to explaining the situation as required before any confusion arises. It's mostly how you feel about it yourselves, that is, how you can handle the occasional mistakes and misunderstandings that inevitably happen. Of course, naming the kids brings up new and wonderful dilemnas. We've settled on using my last name; don't know yet if that'll cause problems later. (As you can see, hyphenation was out of the question...)
bch (02/24/83)
My wife and I kept our given names when we were married and have had no (well, almost no) problems in doing so. Our respective mothers do insist on sending mail to us as 'Mr. and Mrs. Byron Howes' and somebody's mailing list has created a new individual named Ivins Howes by using her last name as a first name. Friends of ours have not had such good fortune, however. Their neighbors became mortally offended upon learning that despite different last names they were not just living together but were, in fact, married. The idea that some people find cohabitation more acceptable than marrieds keeping their given names intrigues me. I expect that business and formal organizations should not have trouble with people living together having different names. Cohabitation has become enough of a fact of life in this society that business procedures have adapted to take account of it. Different names, however, do confuse people in less formal, social, situations. It is less easy to drop couples into neat categories on first meeting them if you are unsure of their marital status.
jfw (03/02/83)
In regards to naming children, how about naming them after USENET machines? :-), John Woods, ...!mitccc!jfw
berry (03/10/83)
#R:csu-cs:-205100:zinfandel:17200002:000:180 zinfandel!berry Mar 8 10:03:00 1983 In regards to naming children after USENET machines: Fine, but how do you pronounce 'ihxlp'?? Berry Kercheval Zehntel Inc. (decvax!sytek!zehntel!zinfandel!berry) (415)932-6900
steve (03/16/83)
#R:csu-cs:-205100:zinfandel:17200004:000:133
zinfandel!steve Mar 14 17:02:00 1983
Fine, but how do you pronounce 'ihxlp'??
I don't know, Berry, but if you say it backwards you go back
to the fifth dimension.