- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
There have been a few posts on this thread saying that a woman who gives her child her last name is really only passing on her father's last name. So I was wondering, how does a woman get a last name? I mean, a baby boy is born with one, and nobody disputes that it's his own. Yet a disturbing number of people seem to see even a thirty-year-old woman as still only having her father's name.
It is quite awful to think of myself as only having a first name (that pesky middle name can, of course, always be discarded for my "father's name", if I take my husband's father's father's father's name as a surname).
Look, most people's last name came from a distant ancestor, quite possibly a woman (Baxter means female baker) or a couple who chose or were both given a surname at the same time. Just because most names are passed down through the paternal line does not mean that it has been or should always be thus, nor does it mean that a woman does not possess her own last name.
Oh, I should mention my family. My parents chose a new last name together and gave it to all their children. I've kept my last name, and my husband hyphenated his. Our children will have my name, as it's our family name now.
