saquigley@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
ksh@cbosgd.UUCP (Karen Summers-Horton) (02/08/84)
Our solution, while it may not be perfect, gives our son a lot of choices. My husband is Mark Horton, I am Karen Summers-Horton. Our son is Matthew Randolph Summers Horton (no hyphen). Until he gets old enough to decide, we will use his full name on all 'official' documents, and for purposes of alphabetization, his last name is Horton. When he gets older, he may use Horton, Summers, Summers Horton, or Summers-Horton - it will be his decision. If he decides to use only Horton, Summers will just be another middle name. We discussed a lot of alternatives before Matt was born, and this is the best solution for us. A totally new last name for him, was never an option. We wouldn't want him to feel a need to explain himself to all his little friends, as to why his name was completely different from mom and dad's. If we have another child, it will also have 4 names, the last two being the same as Matt's. Karen Summers-Horton
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!riddle
riddle@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!riddle
leiby@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@maryland
mmk@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.
mike@dartvax.UUCP (Mike Morton) (02/10/84)
[ . <- You are here.] About kids' last names... Mine is actually fake, taken by my dad's family upon immigrating. Not caring much for my name, I'd rather give a child my middle name (my family name, which I do care for) and the mother's last. [Aside: I didn't use "his/her mother's..." there, which brings up sexism in pronouns. Ursula LeGuin's novel "The Dispossessed" describes a world of no possessives -- saying "THE mother's" is the only way to say it.] A related issue is taking a spouse's name. How about swapping names? This comes up because I've heard of women who plan to take their husband's name, whether he wants them to or not! Were I to find myself marrying a woman who wanted my name, I'd insist on swapping, for symmetry. Naming girls for mothers (and boys for fathers) is bad; it enforces role models. Allowing a child to choose is worse. Coin-flipping? How about a coin flip to see whether children will take names from parents of the same sex or from the opposite sex? No -- then all boys (or girls) in one family have a common last name, a sexist division. One could coin-flip for the first, and alternate for each later child... (What about twins? :-) ) I think I like made-up names. And to avoid children getting names like "Moon-Unit Zappa" or "God", check out (again) "The Dispossessed": kids get random, unique names... from a computer. -- Mike Morton USENET: ..!decvax!dartvax!mike or ..!linus!dartvax!mike USMail: c/o Kiewit Computation Center, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755 (PS: Pardon this slow response; dartvax' news has been delayed.)
amigo2@ihuxq.UUCP (John Hobson) (02/10/84)
Mike Morton says: >> I think I like made-up names. And to avoid children getting >> names like "Moon-Unit Zappa" or "God", check out (again) >> "The Dispossessed": kids get random, unique names... from a >> computer. I don't like made-up names. I agree that "Moon-Unit" is a lousy name, and I feel sorry for the poor kid who was named "god" (the actual name was spelled with a small "g"), but I once knew a man, from the hill country of Tennessee whose last name was Darling, and whose first and middle names were Welcome Baby. He was built like your typical NFL (or CFL for those in Canada) linebacker, and he used to say that he got to be big and strong from being in so many fights over people laughing at his name. Most people called him "W. B.", and he said that on his 21st birthday, he was going to the nearest courthouse to have his name changed to William Brewster Darling, William being his Grandfather's name, and Brewster being his mother's maiden name, and these would allow him to keep the W. B. initials. I also once met a U. S. Marine Corps colonel (from Virginia) named "States Rights Jones, Jr". My father once knew a man whose given name was "The Sword Of The Lord And Of Gideon", and his brother "Through Trials And Tribulations We Enter Into The Kingdom Of Heaven", generally called "Trib". If you had a computer spitting out names, how do you program it so that it doesn't come up with "Xyyxz" or "Fookue"? I don't know, but I rather like my name "John". I know that every Tom, Dick, and Harry is called John [ :-) ], but it is a nice, reasonable name. Remember, people, when naming your children, that the poor little tykes have to make it through the third grade, and that children in the third grade can be pretty cruel. I worked hard to rid myself of an English accent when I started in American schools, because some of my classmates mocked me, and you don't want your children blaming you for the yuckky name you laid on them. For the record, my three children are named Daniel, Joshua, and Noah. John Hobson AT&T Bell Labs Naperville, IL (312) 979-0193 ihnp4!ihuxq!amigo2
olson@fortune.UUCP (02/12/84)
#R:ut-sally:-92400:fortune:36200003:000:776 fortune!olson Feb 11 23:53:00 1984 My wife and I also used this solution. She kept her maiden name (Lyn Dearborn), and we named our son Kevin Erik Dearborn Olson. I feel that a hyphenated last name is often a burden to a child (I went to school with several, and at times people made their life miserable) When Kevin gets old enough to care, both of us feel that he can choose what combination of names he wants to use. (Many people change their names when they leave home anyway, you may as well let them do it when they want to do so. I adopted Dave as my legal first name, and abandoned my middle name when I moved out of my parent's home, and started filling out legal forms on my own.) Dave Olson, Fortune Systems UUCP: {ihnp4,harpo,ucbvax!amd70}!fortune!olson ARPA: amd70!fortune!olson@BERKELEY
srradia@watmath.UUCP (sanjay Radia) (02/29/84)
I'm reposting this since it didn't get through the first time. I don't have a solution for what last name to give to a child because it doesn't make much of a difference. If you are worried about being fair or non sexist then flip coins. Or better still let them be named after the mother for the next 4000 years or so to compensate for the last 4000 years. Last names are used by governments to keep track of people and the less they know about us the better. The important thing is for parents to change their attitude. The most important name is the childs first name since that is the name that singles out the child as an indivdual (by the way, I hate that custom, in some families, of naming a son after the father as in John Jr. - the child deserves his very own name which isn't begged, borrowed or stolen). Your child should be taught that first and foremost he is John (or whatever his first name) who is a human being and not John who is, say, a Robinson. Many parents (especially fathers) insist on giving their last name to their children because they want to them to continue their heritage. Children are your gifts to the future - so why ask them to drag your past with them. If aything, become like your children instead of making them become like you. Maybe you are proud what you or your father have done but it doesn't make a damn difference after you are dead. Isn't it better to be like the rest of the animal kingdom and leave no marks after you perish; if you think you (or maybe human beings in general) are any superior to any animal or thing on this earth then you .... (words fail me). All this reminds me of a famous cemetery that I visited while I was living in Paris. Some people have left behind tombstones that are 2 stories high - these people are leaving behind an indication of the size of their ego and nothing more. sanjay
emma@uw-june (Joe Pfeiffer) (03/01/84)
Regarding the claim that name a child as a Junior is offensive-- I was named after my father (Joseph John), and don't mind a bit. In fact, I rather like it that way. And, more or less by coincidence, my two grandfathers were named Joseph August and John Carl, which I also don't mind a bit. My mother, oldest sister, and my sister's oldest daughter are all named Mary Elizabeth. My wife is expecting a child (due late June or early July). I like carrying names through families, so if we have a boy, the name will be either Joseph John III or Joseph Lloyd (Lloyd is my father in law's name). As my wife does not share my sentiments, a girl will be Rebecca Lynne, just because we like the name. And, by the way, my wife is named for her grandmother. In any event, Heather took my last name when we married, and the child will also receive it. -Joe P.
laman@sdcsvax.UUCP (03/03/84)
My father never has liked being a junior. Beside all the little hassles and annoyances of receiving things MISSING the "jr.", he disliked being named like an extension of his father. No, they liked each other very much. (I use past tense because my grandfather died a year ago). My father disliked being a junior enough even despite my mother's suggestion to name me Richard H. Laman III, I was named Michael. I'm glad.... but that's what I like. Kind of a shame that we can't ask the baby when he/she is born, huh.... (Well, you can but "waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" would be a bit common). It's all just attitude. No big deal. Mike Laman UUCP: {ucbvax,philabs,sdccsu3,sdcsla}!sdcsvax!laman
mark@umcp-cs.UUCP (03/05/84)
I have to agree that "Jr's" are not so terrible as has been mentioned. How can it be that it is important for people (children) to have their own identity and then it matters SO MUCH that they have their own special name? Name and identity don't have much to do with each other, even in programming langauges. That is why programming langauges have equality tests, and why, in real life, stereotypes don't work but taking the time to get to know someone does. -- Spoken: Mark Weiser ARPA: mark@maryland CSNet: mark@umcp-cs UUCP: {seismo,allegra,brl-bmd}!umcp-cs!mark