You will take my last name when we get married.
Our children will have my last name when they are born.
And if you don't like it, there's the door.
See how much easier that was than belaboring over it?
Additionally, I might add, you would not only draw the line in the sand for men, you would also effectively end any feminists from having children (at least via the traditional methods).
Enjoy the decline!
25 comments:
My parents hyphenated my last name. I hated two last names, i thought it was dumb. Well of course my parents split, one passed, and i went to live with my mom's side of the family. In the end, i picked the last name of the family i liked most (mom's) and dropped my dads. So much for hyphenated names...
Actually, there is an argument to be made that children should bear their father's name *in order to* strengthen a connection which is by nature not as strong as the one with the mother. Society has no need to reinforce the mother-child bond, is is already strong by nature. But every means available should be taken to encourage men to invest emotionally in their kids, and that is one of the best ones by reinforcing the link. I think there's something to that.
quote from article
I went to Grad school with a guy that hyphenated his name with his new wifes last name. Not kidding. You can probably guess his politics.
Sounds like a great screening protocol to me. It's never been a question in our relationship, from either end. In fact, she was rather insistent on it, but she had nothing to worry about.
Well, I'm a long ways away from having children, but my solution is easy. Any sons I have WILL bear my last name. Daughters are optional.
I'm willing to wager that the likelihood of divorce is exponentially related to hypenating ones last name.or
I'm willing to make an exception in the case of published authors or scientists (or whatever) - the rare cases where somebody has branded their accomplishments with their name.
In the articles she's "Dr Zhoungou-nu-ren". Out on the town, she's Mrs Aurini.
The hyphenation is restricted to legal documents alone.
Though in all likelihood, she won't start publishing until after we're married.
What of the next generation? hehehehe. Picture it, two people meet, fall inlove, marry....only they both have hyphenated last names. What happens then? 4 names hyphenated for a last name? Pity the poor children from a union like that.
I am so tired of ignorant people.
You young fellers are only gettin' half of it. Up until probably the 1970's, a wife took BOTH her husband's first name AND last name, in a formal setting. That is, she would be called Mrs. John Smith, or if her name appeared in a newspaper article or on a letter addressed to her, NOT Mrs. Mary Smith.
If you marry a woman who is a professional, her name is part of her identity. Don't tell her to take your name. Tell her to pick one or the other, but not both.
Professional women -- easy.
Passport and work ID is Ms Brown or Dr Brown.
Social name is Mrs John Smith. Progeny are Smiths.
Spanish and Icelandic peoples can safely use their traditional systems and then shorten them.
It also helps the woman: she uses her name to signal when she has taken her professional role off.
why should your wife take your name? doesn't that stem from when women were considered the property of men upon marriage? she should keep her own (father's) name which denotes her lineage. Children get the father's last name.
It makes sense for a man to bear the surname of his biological father because yDNA is conserved in the male line.
False. The taking of a last name simply signified the acceptance of the daughter into the husbands family. Prior to modern society there were lengthy periods of time were a women simply couldn't support herself and had to rely on her husband, and her husbands family, to survive. Those periods were when she was in the later terms of pregnancy and shortly after. The whole concept that women took the mans last name because they were regarded as nothing more than chattel is a modern notion, and a false one at that.
For a quality understanding of why most society's follow "patrilineal descent", i.e., taking on the man's last name and adopting into the man's clan, read Human Family Systems: An Evolutionary View by Pierre L. van den Berghe--especially Chapter 4. Bottom line: it's NOT entirely due to cultural programming and certainly not due to some organized oppression by the pay-tree-ark-y. Sound reasons include...
1. Single descent means that every human lies in a convenient, non-overlapping kin-group. This historically made it much easier for organizing complex group tasks.
2. As Lorne's comment above mentions, there are very real, physical chromosomal factors and that favor adopting the father's (and not the mother's) name and patrilineage. A father's son has a replica of his grandfather's Y chromosome. This isn't true for the X chromosome of a father's daughter.
3. The greater variation in male reproductive success encourages patriliny. Historically, a much greater percentage of women (than men) were successful in passing along their genes. The men who did pass along their genes tended to be more wealthy, powerful, desirable, etc. Therefore, there was an incentive to pass resources--including the man's last name--along the male line.
4. Cultures that historically practiced "bride wealth", i.e., the groom's family paying the bride's family at marriage, show higher rates of patriliny. Basically, the groom's family is paying for the wife's reproductive power and release from her lineage and name. Since far more cultures practice bride wealth than opposite exchange forms such as "dowry," there's more patrilinneal socieities today. It's more the norm.
I too have a male family member who took-on his wife's last name in a hyphenated way. I laughed out loud when I heard it. He thinks it's a unique, liberal, modern, and enlightened solution. However, just the opposite is true. The idea of bilateral descent is quite archaic. It ultimately proved socially inconvenient and reproductively unsuccessful.
Yea, how "progressive."
For centuries the Scandihoovian means of establishing paternity was by the father's first-name. "David John's son," or for a girl "Patsy John's Daughter." The written County/Parish records were recorded yearly by traveling priests and go back past the 12th Century. There's stacks and stacks of books, the Permanent Record as it were.
Usually the 'ol hyphenated name is one of the numerous signs one has accepted Feminism.
The solution you posit, Cap, is the simplest, yet also the most likely to go unheeded sadly.
My take on the hyphenated name issue is how it REALLY is irrelevant and THUS people (namely feminist women) who make it an issue belie just how selfish and self-absorbed they are.
The only other issue I have with it is the exponentially growing names. 2^x power. What, after 6 generations you have people with 64 last names?
Sisterbrat, they already have hyphenated names marrying hyphenated names all the time in Mexico and you don't end up with 4 names. The second name in each name (the mother's) gets dropped.
Ex. Pablo Hernandez-Diaz + Julia Gomez-Sanchez = (Kid first name) Hernandez-Gomez.
It's a pretty established thing and makes tracing lineage easier if you ever had the inclination.
I went with option b: I took his last name and changed my middle name to be my maiden name.
Oh yeah, I went round and round with the Mrs about this. I even surprised myself about how adamant I was regarding her taking my last name.
Capt., I married a Brazilian, and
yes, they have 64 middle and next-to-last and last names. I told her in no uncertain terms that she could take whatever middle names she wanted, but the last one was going to be my family name, and our kids would have no hyphens, and 2 middle names tops. Seems arbitrary except that I bust my ass being a good husband, and, well, they certainly don't. My name is worth its' ascendency. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth ensued.
Captain,
Just stay single with no kids and enjoy life as much as possible.
In today's world it's a total crime to have children and total lack of self-respect to even be with a woman, let alone marriage.
Freedom is much more important.
Easy solution: Boys take the last name of the father and girls take the last name of the mother. Hyphenating names just passes the responsibility of making a last name choice to the next generation.
All you have to do with this topic, when someone starts taking personal offense over someone refusing to change their name, is start asking "Why?" Sooner or later you get to the bottom line; they believe a woman's place is beneath a man's, a man's identity is more important and supersedes a woman's, a woman is not so much her own person (a real person/individual) like a man is, and so on. It's pretty simple to ask them to consider reversing the situation, the man taking the woman's last name, and then gauge the quality of their character by how quickly they are repulsed by the very concept. This is actually a very simple way for a woman to know who her true friends and allies are.
**I noticed that men who "allow" their wives to keep their own surnames are castigated and ridiculed, usually referred to in some feminine way (because the worst thing you can call a man is "woman" right?) as spineless, pussy, etc ... to the men who think like this, just remember one thing; these men (married) are getting more sex, more often and more regularly than you are. Why? Less latent resentment between the two.
Also, it's simply because married people tend to have more sex than single people (that myth has been busted several times over in various studies, and it makes sense; single people have to expend a lot more energy trying to get laid and often have dry spells that married people don't really have to deal with unless the couple is on the verge of divorce).
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