Letters to the Editor
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What's in a name?
I am endlessly amazed by the people who are so concerned with other people's names.
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What's with the defensiveness?
Cute article, nice idea, but what's with the "We're feminists, but not the bad kind"? Way to stand up for a cause, there.
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What about the children?
When I married last year, I kept my own name. It has been interesting to hear people's responses to this which I thought was pretty mainstream by now. The biggest concern is, what last name will the children have. Which is funny since we haven't decided whether we even want kids. My response is always, why, do I look pregnant. When I suggest alternating names or giving the child one or another or combination of our names, I have usually just openned up a can of worms. It looks like if we do have kids, I can look forward to more of the same.
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The Latin Americans
My daughter was born in Latin America, and her birth certificate lists her two last names, his and mine. Admittedly, in many LA countries the mother's last name has a sort of for official purposes only status, and only the father's last name gets passed on, but at least the system recognizes the importance of a person's background. You can know a lot about a person if you know their mother's family name. My ID from abroad states my mother's maiden name. This is actually a very good system for identifying people.
If my daughter changes her last name, I would be as devastated as if she had changed her first name.
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still a man's name
Go ahead an alternate last names. You've now given one of your children the last name of your husband, and the other the last name of your father. That's certainly a blow to patriarchy.
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Who ARE these nosy people?
The part of this that strikes me as most stunning and outrageous are the people, including utter strangers, who seem to feel entitled to a justification for another family's naming practices. I suppose we should feel fortunate that such people exist, so that Ms. Ingall has a leaping-off point for bringing us another insightful and funny installment of her excellent East Village Mameleh column.
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Alternate names would have been good for me
My husband's family was quietly scandalized that I kept my own name. For a couple years I would overhear them whisper an explanation to other friends and family, as if it was an embarassing medical condition. I don't think they were thrilled when our second son was given my last name.
I tell them that my younger sister hated, hated, hated growing up under my shadow. She spent most of school rebelling against what the teachers expected of "Kristi's sister". She would have been happy to have a surname different from mine!
Time will tell how this arrangement works out. The boys do not share a surname with each other, nor with any cousins (so far). I don't think it will have any effect on their closeness as family.
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What's in a (last) name? Not much
First - "Why? Well, we're feminists, but the fun kind. Not the type who sing dirge-y folk songs and talk about our personhood; the type who really do try to be fair to each other while maintaining a sense of humor and respect for difference."
Uh-huh. I'm learning not to take too seriously anyone who starts out explaining what kind of feminist they're not. Or who can't describe themselves without taking lame little digs at imagined others.
As for the naming thing, it's not a new idea but a variant on the "boys get his, girls get hers" solution to the problem. I like the simplicity of the "everyone gets a new (invented) name" that friends of mine came up with.
But really, who cares? I know at least one step-family where every single member (2 adults, 2 kids) has a different last name. What's in a (last) name? Not much.
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We combined 'em
I kept my name when I got married because I didn't feel like changing it. (My rationale at the time was that I was marrying my husband, not becoming him.) This confused a few people and mystified a few others (I have some relatives who still address letters to me by my husband's name -- and I've been married for 14 years and they're on MY side of the family!), but overall things worked out swimmingly.
And then I got pregnant. I wanted to give the baby my last name because, as I pointed out to my husband, I knew that it was mine. He wanted to give the baby his last name because he already knew that it was mine!
We compromised and combined our two last names to make a new surname for our kids. Now we have three last names in the family. It has gone pretty well. Everyone knows who is who, there is no doubt about who is whose child, and my kids have a last name that is unique. I get called by the kids' last name occasionally, but such is life.
We were fortunate enough to have short last names that sounded harmonious when combined, though, so this solution is not for everyone.
Other creative solutions to the name game:
- A friend with last name that's difficult to pronounce goes by his wife's surname, which is short and easy to say. However, they plan to give his last name to their first kid to carry on the family name.
- Another friend and his wife picked out a completely new surname when they got married, and BOTH changed their names.
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It's worked for us.
We did this -- when my husband and I married we each kept our our own names and we agreed that when we had kids the girls would have his name and the boys would have mine.
As the fates decreed, we had a girl and a boy. We followed through on our agreement. And it's been NO problem. We're signed up as a family unit in dozens of places -- schools, doctors, pharmacies, scout groups -- and each time it's been completely matter-of-fact. Occasionally someone will blink, or double-check that the form is filled out right. But there has been literally no consternation, no argument, no how-could-you-DO-that? And even more telling, just about everyone has gotten it right.
My hunch is that there are so many permutations of family out there -- step-parents, half-siblings, divorced, remarried, unmarried, unable-to-marry, not to mention all the inter-generational complexities -- that a woman and man married to each other, living in one home with their two biological children, is actually fairly simple, no matter what their naming strategy.