Titles

[Haggridd]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Amy Z" <aiz24 at h...> wrote:
> Amber wrote:
> 
> >I have wondered though that if I get married, what am I going
> > to do about my last name. I love my last name, I would not want to 
> have
> > to stop using it. So either I would have have to keep my same last 
> name
> > or hyphenate my last name. The first option might potentially 
anger 
> my
> > fiance (in which case, we wouldn't last long) and confuse people 
who
> > are used to women changing their last name. So hyphenation seems 
to 
> be
> > the best option.
> 
> Where I live, there are enough different solutions around that 
> confusion is guaranteed but assumptions are rapidly being dropped.  
I 
> know when I meet a child that his parents might not have his last 
> name or each other's; when I meet a man I know that his partner 
might 
> not have his name.  
>  
> > Which leads me to another thought. Why men can't start to change 
> their
> > last names as well? They could take on the hyphenated name, the 
> same as
> > women. So John and Sue would both be known as Doe-Smith. Or Smith-
> Doe
> > (whatever the preference, dependant on each situation). The only
> > potential problem I can see with this is really, really long last
> > names. 
> 
> Some men do this.  One thing I really like about it is that like the 
> traditional scheme, it gives both people the same last name.  It's a 
> real problem when you have kids though.  There's no solution that 
> doesn't cause some other complication--when you sit down and do the 
> math, what you're doing over the course of a few generations is 
> turning 16 surnames (one for each great-great-grandparent) into one 
> (for the kid at the bottom of the tree).  Some are going to have to 
> be omitted, changed, turned into middle names, or hyphenated.
> 
> When we got married we talked about a few different options and 
> finally just decided to keep the ones we have.  The other option 
that 
> seemed most attractive to me was to make up, or choose from history 
> or our families' past, a name that meant a lot to both of us.  If we 
> have kids, we'll have to sort it all out again.  My parents have two 
> daughters, no sons, and my sister has already said that her kids 
will 
> have her husband's name, so it might be nice for me to pass on the 
> family name.  My husband's brothers have already had children and 
> given them their (and his) last name.
> 
> Amy Z

Did you know that in Iceland, descendancy for women is reckoned 
matrilineally, so that if Amy's mother was named Mary, then Amy's full 
name would be Amy Marysdottir.  I don't believe that their names 
change upon marriage; people keep their birth names, as do the 
Chinese.  How exactly this bears upon the discussion I am not quite 
sure, other than to point out that the English/American model is not 
universal.

Haggridd