My sister decided to take her grandmother’s first name as her last name.  That doesn’t seem worse than any other solution.

Spanish people tend to have two lasts names.  I ended up using my mother’s maiden name when asked for my secunda apellido. The first last name is the Dad’s name and the second last name is the mother’s. Next generation use the first lasts names of both parents.  Second last names get drop off.

I remember being in high school (not THAT long ago) and finding out this particular kid who was often called to the office had a hyphenated last name.  For the longest time, I thought they were calling Luke (or Nick? I forget his first name.) Ramachili to the office.  It turns out it was Ramage-Healey.  It was the first time I remembered hearing/seeing a hyphenated last name.  And at the time, I thought, “That’s stupid.  What’s he going to do when he gets married and has kids.”

My great-grandfather’s middle and last names were Vergel de Dios delos Reyes, back the. They always had to write their whole names and he got tired of writing his long name. So he shortened his last name to Reyes. Wish he hadn’t though… Reyes is a far more common name than delos Reyes. Though it’s just my middle name now.
In the Philippines, many families have Chinese ancestry. My last name Go is one of the most common. Which is why many Go Chinese families added their grandparents full names to their last name… Gokungwei, Gosiengfiao… But we’re all really Go…. During the Spanish colonization, many also adopted Spanish names, so you have pure Chinese looking people with last names like Santos and Cruz.

I think when a woman keeps her maiden name or hyphenates it, she is trying to retain her own identity and possibly reminding her children of their maternal ancestry. I found it very difficult to let go of my maiden name because it’s what ties me to my family, but two years into the marriage, I figured its ok to do that for a work environment but helluva lot confusing when children come long. Plus it can (I emphasize the word “can”), come across as slightly pretentious…
Btw my mother is the only girl amongst four brothers and the JP at the time of immigration, gave my mum the correct family surname and her brothers had their grandfathers first name as their surname- something pretty common to do in the wonderful organized world that is the middle east. So I sort of understand the name changing that occurred during Jesus time.

I know a lot more women who keep or hyphenate their maiden names, but give their kids the husband’s last name. This is a tradition in some cultures (such as Vietnam) already, and is convenient for women who don’t want to change all their legal documents. Other than some kids when I was in school, I haven’t met someone who was given a hyphenated name at birth for a very long time.

In Italy it is illegal to change your name, so whatever name you’re given in baptism is it, and you must sign the whole name every time.  I’ve known Italians that informally adopt their husbands name in cultures where that is the case, but legally it remains unchanged.

Regardless of how you get there, I think it’s important for a family to have a “team” name:  mom, dad and kids all having the same identifier.

Simcha,

Very interesting post and reflection on the significance of names in our post-modern society.  I would like to challenge you to consider two points, however.  First, your reflection on the significance of names in Scripture in incomplete.  Not having a Bible ready-to-hand, I cannot cite specific passages for you.  However, I am confident that a quick look in the Old Testament will reveal a much different picture for you.  There are many, many times where a person is said to be Someone, son of Another.  There are even times in the Old Testament where there is a whole list of So-and-so, son of some other, son of this other guy, etc.  Family history and family names are important.  The fact that you cannot find “last” names has more to do with the fact that such was not the practice in the ancient world.  When people lives closer together, knowing his/her father (or a few generations of fathers) was quite enough.  Take note that the *clan* name was also important in the OT.  Furthermore, both the Gospel according to St. Matthew and according to St. Luke include an extensive genealogy of OLJC and St. Peter is often called Simon, son of Jonah (John).

Second, I would invite you to reflect that the ambivalence reflected in your post vis-a-vis family names shows a deep, Nominalistic influence of Post-modern society in your thinking.  If nothing else, family names remind us that we are rooted, that we are born into and are formed by a whole family history.  In some sense, our ancestors live on in the way of being of our parents, since they were formed by their parents, and theirs before them.  The individualism of Post-modernism, combined with a certain (oft-unrecognized) despair about man’s ability to know the truth of reality or that we can actually name reality (Nominalism) contributes to the indifference to the importance of names (along with a certain false-democratism!).

Thanks for raising the issue and I hope that these few points can spur further reflection.

Sincerely,

Ben

Thanks for the insight.

A man I know made up a whole new last name when he got married. They made some blend of their two last names. I can’t remember what it is but it went something like Corey + Ivanstat = Corestat.

In college, we wrote a paper on the significance of names, culminating in why it was so important when God revealed His Name: I AM. God gave to Adam the responsibility of naming all the creatures of the earth, and whatever he chose, that was the creature’s name. Knowing a person’s name gives you a certain “power”, if you will, over them (Rumplestiltskin?), or naming a thing lets you “capture” it. This theme shows up all the time in literature, and I think it’s because deep down, there is significance to the naming process.
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As for God changing names, I think it’s not because He didn’t have respect for ancestral names. As you point out, the change was a charge to BE something more. If names didn’t really matter, then why even bother changing it? It wouldn’t mean anything.

I think what some feminists have argued when they keep their own name or hyphenate it, is they don’t want to take a “man’s name” and get branded as that man’s “property.”

What they seem to forget is, unless their own mothers made up a new last name for them when they were born, is that their maiden name is often their father’s name. And their grandfather’s name. Oh no! A MAN’S name.  Geesh.

My grandfather was the only surviving son in a family of six, and then he had two daughters. My mom did say she pondered giving me her maiden name as a middle name, and I kind of wish she had.  It would have been nice to have that family line show up on the register.  But names are not the only thing we can pass on or keep.  I was thrilled to take on my husband’s last name, even though it’s the name of the first murderer in the bible (yes, really).  It’s easy to spell and pronounce, unlike my German maiden name.

Hyphenated names always sounded incredibly snobbish to me, and, in fact, they did begin in 19th century England, when rich commoners would marry last surviving female members of a noble line. People didn’t want the noble name to disappear, but at the same time it was thought only proper a woman took her husband’s name. The clumsy accommodation of a hyphenated name was the result.

The importance of the surname historically and Biblically is significantly undervalued in this post. At the very least, a consistent surname identifies the most significant building block of society - the family. In today’s America, where the family is under constant attack, the unitive principal showcased in the wife taking her husband’s name (two flesh becoming one) and sharing that name with their children is under assault by those who call for the bride to maintain her “own” identity (two flesh staying two?) after marriage. Giving the children a hyphenated name further alienates the family, changing it from “The Smiths” to Mr. Smith, Mrs. Jones, and Little Tommy Jones-Smith.  The name we carry will directly follow from our metaphysical understanding of the family.  Are we one or are we individuals sharing a living space?  Is our identity interconnected and interrelated or are we islands apart from the main?  Answer that and you’ll find your answer to the name dilemma.

Very good.  I didn’t change my name when I got married.  It wasn’t any huge identity crisis or rebellion, I just didn’t want to change it.  It didn’t bother my husband, either.  If if was a big deal to him, I would have considered it.  I guess what I’m saying is I like your take on it, that it isn’t a big moral or loaded issue.  I’ve had people tell me I must subconsiously not really be committed to him, or already planning to divorce.  That always makes me chuckle.  After 9 years, we have a very strong marriage and 2 kids.  If we were ever to divorce, it would be a tragedy, a nightmare.  I wouldn’t find any relief in the fact that I hadn’t taken his name!  My kids have his last name, and sometimes people look at me weird about that, but whatever, that’s their issue.  As far as it being “confusing” for the kids?  Nah.  I tell my kids many women change their name when they get married, and some don’t.  That’s all.

I can emphathize with Ez.  I didn’t want to change my name when I got married because my personal identity was tied up with it. In the end, though, I took his name because I wanted there to be no question, when people saw our names together, that we really were married and not just “partners” living together. Now that I have kids I see the additional advantage of what one commenter called a “team name.” I use my maiden name as my middle name, though, and my given middle name appears rarely outside of legal documents.

My maiden name is Polish-Lithuanian-Russian also, due to that fluctuating border situation. :) The name sounds almost regal in the original Polish, but really means, quite anticlimactically: “Son of John”.  I’m not sure if it is still on my drivers license because I’m trying to retain a thread of my past, or if it’s just because I loathe the DMV.  My husband’s family name can be traced to a small,ancient, Roman town and valley above Portugal.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that the patron saint of this town, is St. Blaise, whom we had coincidentally named our fourth child after.  My children can identify at least nine different countries, that they have blood relatives from.

I’ve heard that in 16th century Spain, they would wait to see which side of the family the child most resembled to decide upon the surname.

I also don’t see the name changing thing as some big moral issue.  In fact, I find the whole moralization around name changing quite irritating.    Keep your name or don’t but stop telling me why your way is morally superior.  My daughter says she detests our last name and swears she’ll change it when she marries.  I tell her she may rethink that if she falls in love with a guy named Lipschitz. 

@Maria - I like the team name too, which is why I did take my husband’s name.  However, I would disagree that it’s typically an important thing.

@Ben of the Bayou - You overused hyphens in your response to a post about hyphenated names to demonstrate that hyphenated names should be oft-ridiculed. Clever. However, I would invite you to reflect that the ambivalence reflected in your inconsistent capitalization of p/Post-modernism opens you to the criticism that you are oft-influenced by the relativistic and deconstructionist strains of post-modernism you claim to be opposed to. Anarcho-capitalizationism is very post-structuralist and I doubt you want to be associated with those scoundrels.

“Apparently the auspicious name of ‘Fisher’ was invented out of whole cloth for the purpose of making a fairly recent ancestor hard to find, after he did something that made a lot of angry people want to find him.”

Now I’m curious.

I am glad that hyphenated names are falling to the wayside.  Wow, the ending of this post was quite lovely.

I moved my last name to the middle position and dropped my middle name, because my last name and family was important to me in the town we lived in. Nobody cared, nobody was impressed. It worked well, and when I was divorced I just reassumed my original middle and last names.

I know a family where the girl children have the mother’s last name (maiden name) and the boy children have the father’s last name. These are legally married people and I understand the paperwork to achieve that was difficult. They were irritating people and had irritating anti-patriarchical reasons for doing it.

When I was a labor and delivery nurse (1980-90’s) at a very posh midwestern hospital, we used to joke to “sharpen the blades” when a woman with a hyphenated name came in.  They seemed to have a higher anxiety level for whatever reason that seemed to end up with a Caesarean section.  If they also had a birth plan, all doubts were off.  We (secretly) planned for the c-section.

I promised my husband that I would legally change my last name to his as a 50th wedding anniversary present. We have 20 years to go. 

Our three children all have my maiden name included in their middle names but all have my husband’s last name because, afterall, gosh darn it, they ARE his children. All the kids have long names only because I wanted to include the names of their grandparents and great-grands as well as their ‘own’ first name (that does not mirror anyone else’s in the family unless you count a beloved cat—my firstborn is named Jessica after a deceased cat, but that’s another story for another day…. As someone who LOVES history, I simply wanted to honor our family history. 

For some reason, in the 19th century(ish) after my family had been in America for awhile they dropped the O’ and we just became Callaghan instead of O’Callaghan. Not sure why, O’Callaghan sounds pretty cool to me.
I will say one thing, Callaghan is hard to sign with all the looping l’s and stuff.
I keep saying yes when I’m married and a famous author it will be easier to sign my name if it’s not Callaghan. Then again I could end up marrying someone with a more complicated name. So I’m seriously consider going with a Pen name.

I was pretty ticked that my husband just expected me to give up my last name when we got married.  I was a professional musician and was “making a name for myself” quite literally.  So, legally, it’s the same as his, professionally I hyphenate it, and like it that way.  The kids have the “team” name, no hyphen.

Well, that was a pleasant surprise!
When we had our first baby in Spain, we tried to explain he didn’t have a segundo apellido (mother’s last name).  They got very indignant and said, what, he doesn’t have a mother?  She doesn’t count?  You’re only going to give him one last name?  So our next Spanish-born baby got two last names, Torres and Prever, her father’s last name and my maiden name.  But our first child, who was American-born, also had to put something in the “segundo apellido” blank on all the forms, so she became Esther Torres Torres, since my legal last name is Torres now.  And we got lots of flack for me having “given up my identity” by taking my husband’s last name—whereas Spanish women keep their fathers’ names (which doesn’t seem any more feminist, not even having been chosen), and if they use their husband’s name, they add a “de,” meaning “of”—which REALLY sounds like property (I would have been Devra Prever of Torres).

I don’t think my husband would have married me if I wouldn’t have taken his last name.  But I also I wouldn’t have married him if he didn’t want me to!  But that’s just us.  :)  I know a couple who made up a new last name when they got married.  While I think it’s a little odd, it sure beats all those hyphenated names.  So confusing!

I read a story recently about young couple with an unusual solution. The wife did not want to change her last name, but the husband objected to hyphenated names because of the complication for future kids. After that response, the wife was getting her guns ready for her big defense when her future husband just shrugged his shoulders and said, “So, why don’t I just take your last name?” And that was that. What I think is funny about a woman keeping her maiden name as a feminist statement is that her maiden name is her father’s name.

Being a typical German, my husband is very proud of his family name. The men in his family were prominent in the Lutheran Church from the time of Martin Luther (then hubby had to go mess things up by becoming Catholic). I think if none of our sons married and had children, he’d be some what upset that the family name is not carried on. My mother’s family is from the Philippines. If you mention her family name to another Filipino from the same island and the same generation, they often know right away what “connections” her family have and her family’s history.

i know a couple where she agreed to take his last name if he would take her maiden name as his middle name (which she also made her own middle name).  in other words, they have identical middle and last name sequences.  interesting!

We wanted a team name so my husband hyphenated, too. There were questions the first year or so, but now it’s just not a big deal for us or the kids. The kids can decide what to do when they marry. I know several couples who have done the same and several women who wish their husbands would have done it.

I made the mistake of hyphenating my name in a fit of feminism when I married. It was awkward to say the least—some of my co-workers called me Dr. Many Names and neither my name or my husband’s was especially memorable or common so everyone managed to mess up BOTH parts.  And no one ever knew where to find my records…I eventually dropped the hyphen—it didn’t take long—and kept only my groom’s name.  But then we gave the kids TWO middle names, which just adds to the confusion.  Fortunately, they seem to have survived and are sensible about the whole thing.  Daughter, about to be married, is happily practicing signing her “Mrs. John Doe”.....the only remaining issue is what Social Security will require me to do when I am old enough to get benefits given that I have so many AKAs….

I do like the idea of the segundo apellido, but having worked with a large Latin community I heard more complaints of the clunkiness (paperwork! bureaucracy!) than anything else. I love the Spanish tradition, but wanting to be practical, I added my maiden name to my middle name (so two middle names) and changed my last name to my husband’s. My middle name is a two-name clunker, but who ever has to spell out their entire middle name on forms? For last names, I am a big believer in having a “team name,” as several other commenters pointed out.

Having dug a bit into my own genealogy, I understand where you’re coming from on “made up” names throughout history; sometimes it makes you wonder what the point is. But that’s not always the case. For us luckier ones, a name can beautifully trace the history of a family and rootedness through the centuries. I love that I can trace my mother’s maiden name through the Revolutionary War soldiers to early Puritan settlers to baptismal records in a tiny English church and then back even further, all the way to the 1300s. It’s incredible. I doubt we would be able to trace our family history so well if the name itself had been changed. Likewise, my own maiden name, while not as traceable (only a couple of centuries), speaks to the region of Germany where my ancestors used to live. When it works, the name/lineage thing is an incredible way to preserve history, whether through a shared last name or with the lineage of a segundo apellido. I want to make it easy to preserve that history for my descendants.

I heard that story too. (In fact I knew one of the interviewees, the lovely Sasha Harris-Cronin) But the point I found most fascinating was that this feminist effort of, really, the late 70’s through the early 90’s, was not seen to be unsustainable!  That few in those times probably thought about how the children of such hyphens would make their way.  It was an interesting insight into movements and idealization, I thought.

I later saw a show that highlighted a woman pilot who looked like a woman I knew in college.  It turns out that she and her college beau had married and picked an entirely new last name.  It was a good name, but totally new in their families.

Who are you really?

The name my husband and I share has kind of an, ahem, interesting origin. My husband’s father was born out of wedlock back in the Depression era, when such births were still very much frowned upon and in some cases, children so born were labeled “!@#$%” on their birth certificates. His mom (my grandmother-in-law) gave him a last name that did NOT match hers, nor did it match that of his biological father (who couldn’t marry her, possibly because he was married to someone else, but the details are kind of fuzzy). Apparently, she just pulled a name she liked out of thin air, in order to disguise or make less obvious his illegitimate status. The name stuck, and he passed it down to his sons and through my husband, to me and our child. Occasionally we toss around the idea of changing to the family name we “should have” had—grandma-in-law’s maiden/family name, or the name of my husband’s “real” paternal grandfather—but at this late date we probably won’t. However, if I ever start writing books or become a famous author I might use one of those names as a pen name.

This article reminded me of Chesterton’s ManAlive!, where Innocent poses as a professor who teaches that every man should go off & do/be the profession of his last name: all Smiths should take to the forge, all Hunters to the woods, all Greens or Whites should dress exclusively in that color.  Sounds reasonable to me.

My issue is more with first names - people who just totally make up a for thie child that means nothing, is connected to nothing. What message does that send?  Further, Catholics really should take saints’ names for their child’s “Christian” name, as we profess belief in the communion of saints, & that it a beautiful way to manifest it.  The Latinos still do this; they name boys Jesus or girls Maria because they want them to know & be like Jesus & Maria.  I think the mininum requirement for baptism is that the name not carry a connotation contrary to the faith.  Peace.

My husband and I moved from the USA to a Spanish-speaking country a few years ago.  We still both use his family name as our only family name, according to the most usual American custom.  This can cause confusion and laughter.  Once, we were asked at the doctor’s office if we were brother and sister (had to be from the same father, right?)  According to customs here, if my first name was Susan, middle name was Mabel, father’s last name was Jones and mother’s last/maiden name was Smith, I would henceforth and forevermore until my dying day be “Susan Mabel Jones Smith”, whether or not I married (or divorced).  If I married a man with the last name of McDonald and had children, their last names would forever be “McDonald Jones”.  (I _could_ use Susan Mabel Jones Smith de McDonald, but the only time I see this form used is in obituaries.)

A bridge spanning the old and the new.

@Wills - in the unlikely event that Social Security is still around when you are of retirement age or that you are not means tested out of whatever crumbs remain, you should be fine so long as you’ve been filing taxes every year without a problem. 
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I learned the hard way that the name on your SS card has to match the name on your 1040.  Whatever names are on your W-2 and 1099’s aren’t as important.

Before my wedding 27 years ago, I read an article in a wedding magazine about this issue. The author said she realized that whatever name she chose, it was some man’s name; either her father’s name or her husband’s name. So why not choose the name that would be for your own, new family unit, reflecting that unity. Made perfect sense to me. I hate addressing Christmas cards to multiple-name families.

My husband and I both hyphenated our names when we married 24 years ago. (Mine was 11 letters long, his 3.) Our kids carry the same hyphenate. My birth name has a long history (dating back to the Crusades) and is rather unusual, but when my only brother died at 25, married with no kids, it seemed the name would die out too. That’s why my husband and I decided to swim against the current and hyphenate.

All of the points mentioned in other comments are valid: yes, our kids will probably opt to shorten their name (though as young adults they’ve become more, not less, attached to the name) and yes, my birth name is patrinomial.

But a few observations: two of my friends went to great lengths to restore their birth names after divorce, and another regrets not returning to the original but feels her name should match her child’s. The reality is that many women who take their husband’s name at marriage will end up saddled with a constant reminder of an ex they may just as soon want to forget.

Also, it’s funny: my husband’s 3-letter name is Polish. There are LOTS of short surnames in Polish, and church records (and tombstones) dating back centuries document this fact. But people insist to us that “the name must have been shortened by someone on Ellis Island!” (His family arrived in the 1960’s via O’Hare Airport, not Ellis Island.) It is kind of fun to share a little bit of Polish culture with people who otherwise think in stereotypes.

Whatever a person does with his or her last name is their business. But you should be happy with whatever you opt for; names are interesting parts of our identities.

I disagree with Tina. It’s not about where your name comes from, but about the fact that you are expected to change your name simply because you identify as a woman. The tradition is sexist, and it needs to stop somewhere.

I suppose if a man wants me to take his name, he better adopt me…not marry me ;)

And by the way, if sharing a family name is so important, why can’t the man sacrifice and take on the woman’s name a little more often? If changing a surname is so wonderful, why aren’t more men doing it? It’s a symbol of love and devotion as others have stated…but why is only one party responsible for showing their commitment? Sounds quite fishy to me.

@MarieJD - I’ll agree with you that keeping your father’s name is not the same as taking your husband’s and a change in practice would have to begin somewhere.  However, I don’t know where you live or how old you are but people no longer expect that a woman will change her name simply because she is a woman.
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If taking your husband’s name is a “sacrifice” then by all means don’t do it.  NOBODY is asking you to or requiring you to.  When I got married and took my husband’s name, you know who gave me grief?  The keep your own name people!    If there is a contingent who feels strongly about a woman taking her husband’s name, I never heard from it.  But man oh man was I lectured by the professional women.  But either way, it was nobody’s business but mine and my husband’s (who didn’t really give a rat’s behind if I kept my name or not).  I asked him once if he’d take my name instead.  He responded, “If it’s really important to you.”  It wasn’t as I don’t view my life as some feminist crusade and there was nothing wrong with his last name - if it’d been Lipschitz, I’d have probably insisted I relieve him (or at least our children) of it.
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I certainly didn’t feel pressured to take my husband’s name - I’m the only one of my sisters (and the last to marry) who took her husband’s name both personally and professionally.  I don’t know if my parents even asked me if I was taking his name and since I had the most established career at the time of my marriage, they probably assumed I wasn’t and this was nearly 20 years ago.   
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Life’s too short and it’s complicated enough without worrying about the larger political impact of our most personal decisions and the most personal decisions of others.  I’ll say it again - keep your name or don’t, but please stop telling me why your way is morally superior.  The whole name changing thing may have been sexist at one time, now it’s just something people do or don’t do for reasons very personal and individual to them.

To be clear, I retained my maiden name as my middle name when I married. This practice is rather like the Spanish custom of using both names, except in reverse. When thinking of Lone Star’s post above, the current variety of choosing surnames in the US must be very confusing to those accustomed to the Spanish practice.

I ditched my maiden name without looking back because it was always misheard and nearly impossible to spell out loud without confusing people.  Ironically, my mother did the same thing when she married my father for the same reason :o)  I can see our daughters doing the same.  Guess it’s all perspective.
In general, I think taking your husband’s name makes a statement that you are leaving behind an old life and making a new one.  If it bothers you that only one person is “giving up their identity,” then by all means, make one up/combine them- as you said most American names don’t really MEAN anything- just as long as you have the same name.  Makes me think of an apocryphal story of a man named Robin Thursday marrying a girl named Tuesday Hood.  He decided to take the hit and take her name instead.  What a prince.
I’ll throw in a word that there are some notable exceptions- some women get married later, and they may have a career they are already known in, and I have more sympathy there.  Then I think it’s smart to keep their maiden name or hyphenate it, but I don’t think you should submit kids to hyphenation generally.  The natural exception being a kid who wants to take a step-parent’s name, but still wants to honor a parent who passed away.  Lastly, I have a good friend who kept her name- a simple, monosyllabic one- rather than don her husband’s 4 syllable, 8 different consonant Italian name (though she’s NEVER offended when people refer to her by his name).  She’s children’s speech therapist.

I love the argument that a woman keeping her own name when she marries is not committed to the relationship and thus just making it easier on herself to file for divorce.

I do not personally know a single woman who has kept her maiden name who has divorced, but I know plenty who took their husbands’ who did!

(This, of course, probably has more to do with the fact that women who keep their names are almost always college-educated and over the age of 24 at marriage, both statistically significant when talking about divorce rates.)

I’m another one who kept her own name after marriage.  I have appended my husband’s name to my own on Facebook, and in my social life I am usually known as Mrs. HisName, although when I am working I go by Ms. MyName—I was already beginning to be known in my profession before I married.  When we have children, they will have only my husband’s last name.

My brother’s children all have their mother’s surname as a second middle name, and my brother and sister-in-law hope that the children will keep their mother’s surname going, although they haven’t tied the kids to it.  But it is an unusual situation: she is an only child and her father was an only-surviving child, so she has no other relatives to carry on their rather rare family name.

Interesting, when I married I couldn’t wait to get rid of my surname and take my husbands.  I was one of three daughters (eldest) and my dad had a twin brother and sister.  His brother changed his surname by deed poll because of the hassle his kids got at school because of the name.  My dad refused to as it would upset his dad. 

My eldest granddaughter was born when my daughter was very young and was given her surname as the biological father was not around.  When her mother married and she had two small sisters she asked if she could have the same name and her surname was changed by deed poll and she kept our surname as her middle name.