This started as a conversation on the long car ride home from the big-city hospital where my son Edward gets monthly Remicade infusions for his Crohn’s disease. We were talking about surnames, and how problematic it is to have a system that so consistently favors men’s family surnames over women’s, and how in many ways I wish I hadn’t gone along with that system—but also how I have been struggling for decades to think of something else I could have done that I would have liked better, when it is important to me to share a surname with my children, and when I don’t LIKE to be someone who bucks a system: I want to GO ALONG WITH the system, but I want the system to be GOOD AND FAIR AND NOT MAKE IT SEEM AS IF ONLY MEN’S FAMILIES/NAMES ARE IMPORTANT.
Edward (he’s 15) said that his plan is that if he gets married (he spent considerable time saying “IF!!!!”), he and his spouse will choose the Better surname, whichever one that is. He cautioned me that our surname is not starting out from a strong position, and I am not offended by that (it’s PAUL’S surname), and also I agree: the name is not nice sounding, it’s hard to spell and pronounce, etc. Anyway, I think this is a pretty good method. In some cases it’ll be easy to choose the Better surname; in other cases I expect it would result in some fairly competitive (but hopefully also FUN) discussions. I can imagine this system nevertheless ending in most hetero couples deciding, Purely By Coincidence, that the man’s surname is Better, but let’s not be pessimistic.
I next discussed this topic with William, age nearly-20, as we drove back to his college to pick up all the stuff he left behind last March: the college had been storing it, but made the suggestion that Right Now Please would be a good time to come get it, so we did. He liked the “choose the Better name” idea too, and we also discussed the merits of smash-names and choosing an entirely new name. We agreed that it seems that our society feels warmly about (1) household families all having a matching surname and (2) the history of surnames handed down generation after generation. So an ideal solution would make both of those possible, without resorting to “Welp, guess it always has to be the Man’s surname, then!”
So then I brought the topic to Rob, age 22. He enjoys this kind of discussion: picking through layers of meanings and cultural feelings and issues of fairness and so on. And he proposed the VERY FIRST solution I have EVER HEARD that feels to me like it solves all the issues AND could actually work. It’s an Everyone Gets Two Surnames solution. (As with our current surname system, no one is suggesting that this solution be REQUIRED or LEGISLATED; it would just be nice to have it replace the Current Traditional Default of Everyone Takes the Man’s Surname.)
When a couple married, each person would drop one of their two surnames (basing that decision on whatever priorities they personally had), and the couple’s new joint surname would be made of the two surnames that remained, and that would also be the surname they’d use for all their children. So Casey Miller Lovejoy and Jordan Appleby Rose would become, say, Casey and Jordan Miller Rose (they liked the sound of Lovejoy better but Casey is estranged from the Lovejoy side of the family; Jordan is close with both sides of the family but sick of Applebee’s jokes/references), and their children would all have the surname Miller Rose.
A single parent would give their own two surnames to their child(ren).
In the case of divorce/remarriage, a person would drop the part of their surname that belonged to the first spouse and make a new surname with the new spouse—which still lets them share half their surname with their children, if there were any children. Half-siblings would share half-surnames, which appeals to me. (Someone who was NOT remarrying could take back their original two surnames and still share half a surname with their children.)
Anyway, the kids and I had a lot of fun figuring out what their surnames would be under this plan. At first I was thinking I’d have had the birth surname [Mom’s maiden name] [Dad’s bachelor name]—but then I realized I didn’t know what my parents birth surnames would have been under this system OR what they would have chosen as the two surnames to be their new married surname! I could have had the surname [Maternal grandmother maiden name] [Paternal grandmother maiden name]! WHO KNOWS!!
One of the kids suggested we actually just go ahead and change our family surname. It wouldn’t even be very weird for the kids and me, since we all have those exact names in that exact order, it’s just that my maiden name is our second middle name; we’d just have to switch it to a surname.
It’s a little compromised in our case, because Paul and I only grew up with one surname each, so those are the ones that feel like “ours,” and so those are the ones we’d combine to be our married surname—and it’s unfortunate that this automatically results in both of us choosing the paternal surname. BUT: we have to start SOMEWHERE, and naturally there are going to be little glitches in transitioning from one system to another (similarly, we can all expect paperwork and computer-form glitches in the early days, before it takes hold as the new normal), so we will just ONWARD with it. To paraphrase an expression about trees, the best time to transition to a new naming system is many generations ago; the second best time is now. The name that is currently my paternal surname immediately becomes my kids’ maternal surname, and this is how change happens.
Also, if we’re GOING to do this, the time to do it is BEFORE any of our kids think of acquiring spouses, so that they can suggest this naming system to their spouses, and maybe their spouses will love it! LET’S GO, LET’S GET THIS STARTED
My ideal (and what we hope for our children) is something fairly similar to Rob’s but without anyone changing their own name. We kept our (single) surnames when we got married and gave our children double-barreled last names. My hope is that they keep their names when they wed and each give one last name to their children (as they see fit), creating new double barreled last names. Each parent shares one last name with their children, all children share the same last name, it’s a sustainable system, and no one ever needs to change their own name (this is something that’s personally important to me but may not be to everyone). I think there are parallels to some cultural naming conventions but without the patriarchy.
Man oh man I like this solution. Let’s all retrofit our current names as we see fit and then pass it on. I miss my birth surname so much, but I can’t change it back now without it seeming to say something Bad about my marriage. But if we ALL do it I’m in the clear!
Such a fun idea! I like being able to choose as I wasn’t especially close to my dad or dad’s side so I’d love to have had both my mother and father’s so I could have chosen one to carry forward when marrying (mother’s). As I’m now married (happily changed to husband’s which is both easier to say/spell and doesn’t have the negative father’s side association), but I can’t help but think of all the combinations of last names I could have had!
I love this. The one thing I just wanted to flag is that sometimes the unflavoured surname is just the surname that’s not British/ American English sounding. I’ve always disliked my last name because it’s Very Eastern European. I always thought it looked clunky. I’m realizing that this might be a negative reaction picked up from a society vs an actually aesthetic preference.
Double names all the way!
Unfavored not unflavoured!
This is pretty much the system they use in Mexico ( I have heard). It’s the best! Though there the name you keep is determined by sex (women keep their maternal lines when they marry, men keep paternal when they marry). I really wish we had something like this.
We went with the second middle name being the “other” surname, and our kids alternate which last name they got. It works for us because we adopted our smash name as our unofficial family name that people use to refer to us. So regardless of a family members official surname, we are the SMASHNAME. It checks the boxes for us :)
It makes me so hopeful that your boys are thinking along these lines.
Yes this! My Mexican friend explained the surnames using utensils once at dinner and I loved it. Also noting that my French Canadian friends (living in QC) actually cannot change their surnames upon marriage. I cannot remember if they can chose the child’s surname or whether it’s automatically the paternal line….
We also have a SmashName used unofficially by all! And my first got my surname as her second middle. My second did too, but we actually changed both her middles as I hated that I hadn’t honored my maternal line. And we didn’t alternate surnames because my BIL/SIL did that and it actually has caused a weird dynamic in their house where each girl feels more connected to one clan or the other.
Also – like your Edward – I wished to evaluate what surname I could trade for upon marriage and I thought it would definitely be better (had to!) and then my husband to be had a worse but very similar surname!!! Oh the comedy of it. To combine would make us sound like German super heroes.
I am really loving this discussion and encouraged by the next generation.
I’m so curious how common that weird dynamic might be! I’ve heard of many families who alternate etc, but never that concern actually manifesting. I wish there studies on these things!
I believe in Quebec they can choose the child’s surname or any combination of the parents surnames (up to two, so if both parents have a double barrelled surname the kid cannot have four!)
This works well in the USA where you get to state your name on marriage. But in the UK we must either keep your name, adopt the man’s name or go through a fussy process of creating a new name by deed poll.
OK, now you have to explain what changing your name by deed poll entails! And what is a deed poll? And do the rules of what you call people with inherited titles come naturally to all Brits, or is that just something people who move in those circles know?
Also, milk in first or not?
Thank you.
Hahaha the inherited title thing would be something about 500 extremely rich people probably know how to do ;)
I’m a journalist so I have some idea on titles etc but only a very vague one. And NO! Never milk first ;)
A deed poll is just a legal certificate of name change. You can do it yourself online I think, but a lawyer can help you fill in the forms and witness it really easily and fast. I actually don’t know how much it cost when I did mine, I was only 20, my stepdad paid. But I imagine maybe £100-200? Not a fortune by any means.
It’s not *that* faffy to be fair. The actual deed poll process isn’t that bad at all, and then the rest of the admin is the same as you’d face if you changed your name to your husband’s on marriage. I kept my name on marriage but changed it by deed-poll a decade earlier. It was just a 15 minute solicitors appointment, and then the usual faff with bank accounts, passport etc.
They (very quietly) seem to have changed the rules for name changes in the UK sometime in the last year. My husband and I got married in 2017 and decided to hyphenate our surnames so our future kids would have the same surname as us but neither of us had to ‘give up’ our surname on getting married. We realised we would each have to do a deed poll to change our names so we just changed our names on everything non legal (eg. at work, with friends and families etc) and thought we’d get round to the deed poll one day… Last year before the pandemic we started working on it and the paperwork and hoops we had to jump through were horrendous so we put it aside when lockdown happened. Then we got an offer accepted to buy a house and realised if we wanted to own it in our married names we ought to change our surnames. We looked up the rules again and lo and behold all we had to do was send our passport with our marriage certificate to hyphenate our names. I’m sure the rules have changed because that definitely wasn’t the case before!!!
This is so interesting! Although a concern is that I would hurt one of my parents’ feelings by choosing to drop their part of the name. So I like the idea shared above about men keeping the paternal name and women keep the maternal name.
I’m someone who has never been bothered by taking my husband’s name or bothered by the system. But I’m definitely intrigued by this idea and think it could work!
I love this idea. We’ve done a fairly similar thing, although we double-barrelled the kids on the basis that it’s harder to drop a name with a hyphen between them. I kept my name but I’d already chosen it a decade earlier when I changed to my step-dad’s surname, so I already felt a little bit freed from the shackles of patriarchal naming – or at least that I’d picked my own patriarchy, which is better than nothing I suppose!
We did talk about all becoming the ‘Double-Barrelled’ family but my husband has Italian citizenship and apparently it’s very difficult to change your name legally in Italy in that situation.
I’m thinking grandparents are gonna get their feelings hurt. When one name is systematically passed down, one expects it. However, for your child to deliberately drop your name by choosing the other one… besides, it just seems too long (double surnames)
Your son very nearly invented the Spanish system! I studied there in college and came home wishing we used it in the US. If Maria Apellido Surname married Juan Patronymic Matronymic, their names would stay the same but the children would be, say, Luisa Patronymic Apellido. Custom would be father’s paternal surname followed by mother’s paternal surname, but if you tweaked it to ‘best surname wins’ I’d be on board.
As someone who likes genealogy I appreciate how much easier it made family trees to trace. I’ve hit several dead ends in my lineage because Bridget Birthname married Eamon Marriedname, all records only referred to her as Bridget Marriedname, and Birthname was lost to time.
Yes! As a fellow genealogist I feel a system is important, and a two name system is superior. We hyphenated as a last minute decision because my partner is British, and we read a BBC article about British customs not allowing mothers and children to pass through customs if the child had a different last name. We used the Father-Mother system because it makes the most sense to me from a genealogy stand point, and I grew to really appreciate it. My kids have a total of five names each (given family family father-mother), so we shall see how they feel about this when they are older, and I’m very interested to see how they would choose married names and children’s surnames.
I live in Spain and though it’s usually (because culture) the father’s surname that goes first or “dominates,” it can certainly be the mothers. My own husband inverted his surnames as an adult so our kids are Baby His-Mom’s-Name My-Dad’s-Name.
Though I wish they’d let you alternate the order for the next kid, but nope.
In Latin America we do the double-barrel, with girls passing down the matrilinial name and boys passing down the patrilinial name. Adults don’t normally change their names on marrying, but do both use the new half-matrilinial, half-patrilinial name as the “family name.”
So for example, my name is still Cate Jane Bill, and my husband is Kyle Vera Joe; but we would both introduce ourselves as the Jane Joe family, and that is our kid’s last name.
I love this idea! I kept my surname after marriage, and my husband and I have discussed that if we have a kid, they’ll get my last name, with his as the middle name. That way, we each share a name. Mine’s a lovely Italian mouthful and his is very WASP-y- think Giordano and Newton. My name is much more uncommon and I am very attached to it!. Unofficially, we’re the “Newdano” family and I love it!
I’m from Puerto Rico and we use dad’s as first last name and mom’s as second last name, and that’s how it always is, to the point that if mom is registering the baby alone she uses both her last names. I work for a US based company and we have many issues when emails are assigned because they generally assume tje first last name is the middle name.
Also, we don’t change our last name when we get married, which avoid lost of paperwork if we divorce. When I married my now ex, it was really funny how many emails, from different vendors I got saying that it was time to start the legal name change.
It’s interesting to me that you and your children seem excited at the idea of getting to pick the better name, or the one you feel most attached to, because that is the part that I would find completely agonizing. I would almost definitely end up with the name that I felt sorry for, the one that it felt like nobody else loved quite enough.
But…this would also probably get me to my preferred outcome, where the symbolic connection of the name shores up what might be a somewhat tenuous connection otherwise (grandparents who live on the opposite side of the country, or passed away before the grandchildren were born, or just can’t compete for Thanksgiving dinner because the other side is so unwavering on TRADITION) or a name change denotes independence when independence is NOT being assumed by the older generation.
This is SO interesting to speculate about. My mom feels very connected to her maiden name, but nevertheless changed it because it was hard to spell. But it was a cool name and I kind of wish I could have had it. I too changed my name, and her decision definitely played into mine. And I fell into the trap of “well my maiden name is my dad’s name, so.” I considered using both last names, but my first name, maiden, and married names all have double letters and it looked weird. AND my husband’s family is large and pleasantly cult-like (they have a logo, t shirts, a calendar etc) so that seemed like a nice thing to be part of. As commenter Cece said, “I’d picked my own patriarchy, which is better than nothing I suppose!” And now I and hubby and our two girls have the same last name, which is pleasing and convenient. That said, I will strenuously encourage them to keep their name if they marry and pass it on if they have kids. If we’d had a boy, my favorite idea for a name was the name I would have if I was a boy, with my maiden as middle. Cram it in! Use ALLL the names!
I love this idea and I love how thoughtful and intentional your kids are being about this. We did the mine-as-second-middle thing for me and the kids, and my husband lists my maiden as his third middle even though he didn’t change it. I wish he’d do the paperwork to make it official.
I do wanna push back on ‘but it was just my dad’s surname so I may as well use my husband’s—not against y’all, dear fellow commenters, but arguing with the patriarchal crap that takes up space in my head.
The first time I heard this argument, someone responded, “That’s nonsense! That implies that names belong to men and women are just borrowing them!”
Okay, yes, you got it from your dad, BUT IT’S YOUR NAME. It belongs to you. It matters just as much as any other name that belongs to you, which is to say it matters precisely as much as you say it does.
I wish you had your matrilineal name(s) represented, but they belong to you regardless, and I reckon you can use them if you wish. There’s a difference between what’s on the paperwork and Your Name. You get to decide Your Name.
That’s exactly how I feel. My maiden name, which I did not change when I married, was not just my dads name. It was MY name. Which my parents jointly gave to ME.
I think this is a cool idea, but the length of the double name is going to be a deal-breaker for a lot of people. For example, if my husband and I had each chosen our favorite of our parents’ surnames and combined them into our child’s name, we would end up with something like Farralante-Shipplarder. 21 letters, plus a hyphen. As a previous commenter pointed out, this works well for Anglo names, but the Sicilian-Slavs among us are gonna have trouble here.
I actually think that society should just normalize people within the same family NOT having the same name. I’ve never understood when people say that it’s going to be so complicated or confusing if the mom and kid don’t have the same name. My mom has a different last name from me, and growing up it was never once an issue. Now I have a different last name from my daughter, and so far, no issues. And I certainly don’t feel any less connected to my mother, my daughter, or my husband because I don’t share their last names. I dunno. I agree that the assumed automatic passing on of the paternal name is problematic, but I don’t personally understand why sharing a last name with their children is so important to so many women.
Agreed! If my husband and I had hyphenated or surnames, we’d have 20 letters and 8 syllables, none of which sound pleasant (his surname is Dutch and already two words, mine was German). I ended up taking his when we got married purely because I was tired of writing the consonant combination “zg”. We definitely would have hyphenated if one of us had a simple one or two syllable name.
For me, having same last name as my kids means I could easy spot our names in a list, line up with them, or be grouped with them in someone’s head just because of shared name. I kept maiden as second middle.
I’m Brazilian and we use a similar system, but it still patriarchal unfortunately. Right now, trend is parents keep their surnames and when they have a child they combine their names the way they prefer. Typically, each contributes with one surname, the last one, tradition states it is the father’s name. So, Ana Santos Lima + Tiago Costa Gomes = CHILD Lima Gomes (grandfathers Lima & Gomes; grandmothers are Santos & Costa). If the kid has a child in the future, they will pass on the Gomes surname. Over the years, the men’s surnames stay (straight relationships). Only children with the same set of parents will have that combination of names.
Brazilians will often have more than 2 surnames. The child could easily be KID Santos Lima Costa Gomes, or any combination.
There is no law saying that the last surname has to be the man’s and it is the “most important” one, but cultural traditions are hard things to break. What do I mean by “most important”? When you have multiple surnames (and likely a double first name) no one expects you to use ALL of them daily. We elect a surname to use more; and when people know our full names but not which surname we use/elected, they normally choose the last one (= father’s side).
A trend that is still strong but is losing its place is for the mother to partially change her name. Ana was born Ana Santos Lima, but when she married Tiago, she (and ONLY she) changed her name to Ana LIMA GOMES (fathers’ names from both sides). And their kids will all have Lima Gomes as surnames. This way the mother shares the exact combination of her kids surnames.
None of my parents changed their names. When I was born, I got 1 surname of my mom’s and 2 by my dad’s. During my life I tested each surname in my daily life. After I lot of thought I chose to go by my LAST surname. A lot of my friends chose differently however, afterall why go by the supernormal Santos when you can answer by awesome Solanus? :P
oooh, I like Solanus! That is a cool name :)
I found your tweet thread, Swistle, thought-provoking. I live in Germany which, being the rather bureaucratic country it is, has name regulations in place for when two people marry. Either spouse can choose what they want to do with their surname: keep their own name; take their spouse’s; take a double surname (order doesn’t matter). So Claudia Schmidt and Max Meyer each have a wealth of options for themselves: Claudia Schmidt; Claudia Meyer; Claudia Schmidt-Meyer; Claudia Meyer-Schmidt; Max Meyer; Max Schmidt; Max Schmidt-Meyer; Max Meyer Schmidt. The ‘but’ in the whole matter is the following: they have to agree on a family name for any (and all!) joint offspring and said name can’t be a double name. This often (but not always) leads to the patrilineal name being chosen as the family name.
I hyphenated – at the time, a romantic decision on my part, and one which for practical and feminist reasons I wouldn’t repeat. Even though I really wanted to have my children have my name and my spouse was more or less open to it, we chose his name as the family name because it seemed to be a bigger deal for his parents. Which these many years later seems so ridiculous to me – why did I feel any possible feelings on their part were to be more highly valued then my own? Ingrained, patriarch-induced subserviency.
We were talking about this at dinner shortly before you posted. My kid have a hyphenated last name and my youngest was saying they planned to use mine (the less common one) to make a new hyphenated name for their kids, should they have any. They were also considering using my wife’s as a middle name because it is a first name. So they’re thinking about it. (Among my lesbian mom friends, the norm seems to be the adults keep their names and the kids get a hyphenated name, though I know one couple in which the woman with the less accepting family took her wife’s name and they gave it to the kids.)
The issue came up because my kid was talking with one of their best friends since kindergarten and they just learned that the girl’s surname was her mother’s. The dad took it when they got married. I was kind of shocked, actually, as I have never met another straight man who did this, to my knowledge. I did know a couple in the 80s, our next door neighbors, who had created a new surname out of their old ones for the whole family. No hyphens. The two names happened to fit together pretty well into one.
My niece has my sister’s (and my) last name. My sister adopted her and then married several years later and he adopted my niece, too. I thought they might hyphenate with her new dad’s name, but they didn’t. She has a hyphenated first name, so it would have been a lot of punctuation in one name.
My husband wants to take my name, has from the start. but he’s afraid it’ll hurt his parents feelings. Our kids are hyphenated; mine first and it’s the dominant one for anyone who isn’t my inlaws.
I just realized that in the universe of this system there is a reality where my surname would be Royall King and now I feel cheated. I have neither of those names now.
I LOVE this system so very much. However, I can’t see getting my husband and 4 boys to change their names. Also, I know they identify with my husband’s surname more anyway because it is a very large, close-knit family with who we spend way too much time. (I do love them.) So, I have requested going forward that if any of them should marry, they start this tradition with their spouses/children. We shall see. They are all in their 20’s and currently not inclined to marry at all.
A friend with a surname like Bass married a German fellow with a surname like Meyer. He adopted the surname Bass at marriage, as his recently-married sister’s husband had taken the last name Meyer and he felt his own family name would be carried on but my friend’s otherwise would not; their children are also surnamed Bass. I was taken with this whole family’s open-mindedness, although genealogists in the future will get really stuck when they reach this generation.
I so wish we all had two surnames. My kids have the hyphenated father-mother and my husband and I have not changed our birth surnames, although our Christmas card is from “the father-mothers.” My husband is a Jr and when we named the first child (a boy) we both didn’t do the III AND put their family surname first (not a last name, my in-laws complained), and my MIL was furious with us for a couple weeks and then managed to move past it. We chose which name went first by sound; only one ended in a vowel and we liked the sound of the vowel ending connecting the two vs the consonant, which is such a hard stop.
My middle is my mother’s birth surname, which she did not change, and I was always upset I didn’t have both parents’ surnames as last names myself. To this day, whenever I get any publicity for doing anything good, like an award or press mention, I use my full name to honor my mother, whose name is otherwise lost in the middle. She was such a role model and I feel she deserves public credit via the name.
Go team Swistle! Fight the good fight!
My last name has been one of my only true regrets. I swore up and down when I was younger that I would not change my name. Then when the time came, there were so many other issues with my husband’s family and work community (that we also I live in) that the surname just didn’t seem like the hill I wanted to die on. It also seemed like my decision could hurt my husband more than me. And of course there’s the thought that my surname is also just another patriarchal surname. I now live in a Latin America country where kids have both surnames (it sounds nice but they always pass the patralineal surname from both sides down so it’s essentially the same system just with two names instead of one). I was excited about the excuse to give both names to my kids, but because I changed my name the ridiculous registration people refused to put my surname on my kids’ birth certificates. So instead they legally (in this country) have my husband’s name twice! I wanted to cry. It was such a slap in the face. I am now close to publishing a written work, and I’m considering using my family surname as my pen name. It could create some annoyances legally, but it would be mine!
Thanks for the space to vent, and congratulations on raising such thoughtful kids.
I’m a lesbian and when my wife and I married, we discussed surnames. There was no expectation for either of us to change, but I took her surname for several reasons. I wanted to have the same surname so we would feel more like a family; any future children we want to share a surname with both of us; my surname was very common and I was not very attached to it whereas hers was more unusual and we both like it a lot; I have a brother and male cousins who will or have passed down the name to their children whereas she has a sister who is married and no male cousins to pass down her surname. We didn’t double barrel or anything, I just took her surname and we are very happy being a little family.
Swistle, just tell us you want to start a new blog about helping people figure out which of their eight possible surname choices sounds the best. ;)
I’m a loooooooong time lurker, first time poster, and I just want to say, encompassing ALL that you do to fight the patriarchy, including this wonderful post, THANK YOU, SWISTLE. I’ll start posting more frequently – I’m not on Twitter, is your account reason to finally sign up??? – but for now I really just wanted to say thanks, from one feminist to another. It’s really hard to stick your neck out over and over again, but you’re fighting the good fight, one name at a time. Thank you. Xo Caitlin
Ps. Just to add my story in – we went back and changed our daughters’ names to my last name, and our son stayed with an unhyphenated double barrel. We’re known as the Squishnames. It’s much more satisfying than before, when I was the only Lastname (and secret Better Name) and all the kids had my last name as their second middle. Our daughter decided she wanted my last name a few years ago, and the littler daughter of course followed suit. So we changed them legally. It’s not perfect, but boy does it feel amazing to pick up my daughters and say, “I’m here for M and E Better Name, please! Yes, I am Caitlin Better Name.” Having said that, I’m thrilled by the discussions in your household Swistle, and wish we could somehow just decide as a culture to do something like that!!!!