The future of surnames

[DokiDokiTsuna]

Might as well start some new random topic

So I was thinking about surnames yesterday, and it struck me how rooted in tradition they are. Like, consider the following:

A female baby is born and takes the last name of one of their parents, probably the father. Why? No reason, just 'cause. Then she grows up and gets married and takes the last name of her husband. Why? No reason, just 'cause. She then has a baby who also takes the last name of her husband. Why? No reason, just 'cause. And the cycle continues.

It's only recently that a woman choosing to keep her last name (or hyphenate it '~') after marriage has become a thing. Not even a commonplace thing, just a thing that exists. And for children of mixed or unorthodox families, whose last name you have can feel kind of like a declaration of who you belong to, and sometimes you may want that to change. Heck, when I was a kid, I used to think about having our last name changed to my mother's maiden name. I figured it was the right thing to do, considering the circumstances...

Anyway, things that are done for basically no reason can stand for a long time in human society; we love tradition. ^^ But when they do crumble, they go like * that *. And I was wondering if that'll ever happen to surnames...at least, surnames as we know them.

And if they do go, will they be replaced? Will we go back to naming families after the places where they live or the things they do (Fields, Baker, etc.)? Will we just make stuff up? XD Or will we toss out the notion entirely (I mean, in today's world, you could have dozens of people living in the same city with the same first AND last name; they don't actually do that much for identification anymore...)?

[Rodimus13]

Believe it or not, my experience as a teacher comes in here.

Parents are already changing their child's last name to whatever they feel like. I have had more than one student who's last name did not match their parents because neither parent liked their own last name or the other. Often times they have the intention of changing their last name to match the child's later, but never get around to it (paperwork suuuuuuuucks!)

[Kelheor]

Heck, when I was a kid, I used to think about having our last name changed to my mother's maiden name. I figured it was the right thing to do, considering the circumstances...

Oh, we kinda have it worse in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. We also have patronyms. I guess in some other countries too, like in Iceland they have patronyms instead of surname.
And in adult society people are usually called by name and patronym together, children are also calling teachers like that, it's just a common formal title like Mr/Mrs. Really long (especially with a surname), unnecessary and is killing everyone who have bad relations with their fathers (or no father at all) every time.

As for the surnames, they are useful and totally okay (because what will you do, if there are 4 Michaels in your class only, huh?), if you can change it any time if you don't like it and if you are not obliged to change it after a marriage, which should be an option in most countries now.

[punkarsenic]

as a lesbian, ive obviously wondered abt this a lot. will i take my wifes name? will she take mine? what the HELL will we call a theoretical kid?

i hate the double barrelled option, so lets throw that out the window. i like @Rodimus13 's suggestion about just picking a new surname, although i also kinda like the idea of surnames connecting u to a lineage? i dunno

[therealbereth]

I've never even heard of the possibility to give a child a completely new surname. o.o In Germany, they either get the mother's or the father's name. IF the father has signed his acknowledgement of paternity. That alone makes way for weird discrimination against two women when they're BOTH the birth parents, since the documents aren't exactly made for trans women, of course (or two men and they're both the birth parents etc)........ But I digress;;

I don't see surnames vanishing completely. Their use is simply practical, and the bureaucracy around it alone would completely forbid it and go nuts if we suddenly didn't have them anymore. I mean, what would we use? Numbers? We're already assigned numbers by the country, of course, tax IDs and so on, but just for everyday use, I don't really see it. "Oh I'm seeing Mike today", "Mike 4950332?", "Nah, Mike 249340ß"..... I don't think so. xD

We just had to go through this thought process ourselves, since we expect our child in October. Many women keep their maiden name when they marry, and some of them do it because of feminist reasons afaik—don't let yourself be made into another man's woman or some such. I totally get the reason, but... The thought alone of keeping my father's name, a person who just completely abandoned his family and added insult to injury when he threw me out of my apartment and later our family home? Ha ha... no.

I'm happily giving my child the name of my partner to get rid of everything my father stands for lol; so in a way, that would be my feminist statement for myself. Can't wait to get married and get rid of that shitty name myself later, ha.

[Rodimus13]

Well I'd like to mention a third option! (fourth... losing track)

On my father's side of the family there was a tradition for the women to follow.

Since the women gave up their surname to take on the husband, this mean their father's surname could not be passed down to any sons the daughter might have. So the first daughter of that father to give birth to a son, would give her original surname to the son as a middle name. And the middle name would be passed down when possible.

This caused a HUGE fight with my grandmother and her sisters. All of her sisters who had children, including the idlest, only had girls. My grandmother, the youngest of 12, was the first to have a boy. When my father's gender was confirmed in the last trimester the oldest sister went away on a trip for a month. When she returned, she had adopted a baby boy. She gave the maiden name to her newly adopted son, which the sisters and my grandmother became furious about as the name was suppose to go to my father and the other sisters said my grandmother could no longer do it. Which made my grandmother doubly mad because she wanted to anyway.

The feud went on for years, and my father did not get the surname and was given a random middle name instead.

[punkarsenic]

i think this story needs a flowchart to follow where the names are going

however, it still sounds pretty gendered. what do two women with a daughter do?

[GabiWolf]

I took my wife’s last name, mainly because it made my name shorter lol. The paperwork was a pain though, and I always remind her of that.
It’s really going to be a decision between you and your partner in the end.

[punkarsenic]

see though thats the thing - its girl A takes girl B's name, and then gives that to the kid, or vice versa, OR both keep their names and then do what with the kid??? bc its still working from a framework made for a default man > woman exchange.

if two women are getting married and having a child n neither wants to prioritise the other's surname by taking it or giving it to the child, theres no established convention besides clunky double-barrelling.

[GabiWolf]

You can merge the name. I have seen that be done. For instance Jane Doe marries Anna Smith and have a child named Mary Smoe.
That’s a bad example but you get the idea.
I had no problem with changing my name, and if you want to talk about still working from a man-women frame work, my marriage certificate states I am the husband, lol. They haven’t updated the licenses here and some courts no longer preform court house marriage because people refused two marry gay couples. Change will come and that’s why the future of surnames is interesting to contemplate!

[punkarsenic]

You can merge the name. I have seen that be done. For instance Jane Doe marries Anna Smith and have a child named Mary Smoe.That’s a bad example but you get the idea.

yeahhh, ive seen this around n i dunno if itll catch on. youd get some really strange surnames a few generations down the line

itd work in a language where the surnames are constructed as a prefix and suffix - say like how in mandarin words and constructed from characters and each has its own meaning, so u could have a mandarin(or similar)-speaking society where everyones surname was two characters, one from parent A and one from parent B. thatd be cool for worldbuilding, but at this point we already have so many surnames in any language that we couldnt impliment it.

I had no problem with changing my name, and if you want to talk about still working from a man-women frame work, my marriage certificate states I am the husband, lol.

thats mental

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[Kelheor]

if two women are getting married and having a child n neither wants to prioritise the other's surname by taking it or giving it to the child, theres no established convention besides clunky double-barrelling.

You come to a mutual understanding?.. First find out which one likes her surname at all, maybe one of you is desperate to change it. You can just choose any surname for your new family, you can take a completely new one! Double surname can be tricky, but it would mostly depend on the surnames itself, if you are Doe and Black (and not McConaughey and Livingstone for example) - it's really not bad. But if you cannot agree on that, well, that's a problem, but the problem of a different kind totally.

[punkarsenic]

'you come to a mutual understanding' doesnt address that we're navigating a naming system set up for women to marry men and take their names. any adaptations we make to that convention are just that, adaptations, and youre right that we could take a totally different name but theres no established convention for that yet. its all very 'we'll just figure it out bc we're navigating a naming convention not made for us,' which is annoying and we'll have to grow out of it as a culture sooner or later.

like, im not saying when two women get married the surnames is an INSURMOUNTABLE problem with no visible solutions, its just that theres no convention and its still navigating around a problem that shouldnt be a problem.

[GabiWolf]

Or maybe just do an attribute name. Those have come up in history before. Like when slaves first became free there was a lot of need for surnames. So you see a lot of African Americans with surnames like Freeman (Morgan Freeman) or Black, Blackman, Moore, etc.

So you could name a kid Mary Mouse, because she has a little mousey nose or something, lol. One of my cousins just named their child the most dramatic name ever Prince Ali D’Athony... and then surname. But hey you can name your kid whatever you want. So if you think she’s an angel when she is born then why not Mary Angel?

[punkarsenic]

i think this is a good and cute solution, n i think its one that we'll probably move towards, but itd be nice if there were traditions connected to it - which obvs there wont be til ppl start doing it lol. like, if you picked ur kids surname based on someone u wanna honour, or a trait u want to associate w them, like ppl do w first names.

im mostly just lamenting that we have this problem in the first place bc its annoying to me

[Rodimus13]

i think this story needs a flowchart to follow where the names are going

however, it still sounds pretty gendered. what do two women with a daughter do?

Simple! Figure out which last name makes a better middle name. Make that the middle name and give the child the other last name as their last name.

Alternative. If I was in your situation, I was the very last generation with my last name... and the only child born into it as a female. Had I a female partner I would have asked if we could give my last name to the child so it can maybe survive as a last name for another generation.

[punkarsenic]

Simple! Figure out which last name makes a better middle name. Make that the middle name and give the child the other last name as their last name.

ahhh, i didnt read that part. thats kinda what a lot of latino countries do? altho iirc the convention goes fathers name then mothers name, fathers name becoming a middle name in the US. tho someone correct me if im wrong

[Rodimus13]

Nope In the US The father's name becomes the child's last name traditionally.

[Coati]

Well here we have a little weird way to work with surnames. Basically we get both of parents (grandparents) surname.

I have one middle name and two surnames. Not hyphenated, surname 1 and surname 2

If I follow the tradition, my child would have my surname 2 + the other parent surname.
But some families go crazy and basically accumulate surnames in the total Imperial family style.

But I will totally refuse to change my name not matter what . To much paperwork.