Sustainable Nomenclature

[trinityvixen]

What could we do about the marriage practice of changing one spouse's last name (usually the wife's) to the other's that would make the practice a) entirely gender-independent and b) practical for multiple generations?

The best I can figure is that both partners have to change their name in some fashion. Either they would do it upon marrying--John Doe and Jane Smith would pick or be given third, new name, say "Brown"--or they would keep their names but give any children a new one.

That would certainly fulfill requirement a), but I'm still not sure that it's an attractive solution to the problem of b). Unless the parents took the new name and passed that on, having children with a different name from the parents is awkward and inelegant.

What do you all think?

Oh, and please, bear in mind that issues of being able to track genealogy are lesser concerns to me. We live in an age with adequate resources for tracking down that sort of information if you want to build family trees. I don't think "being able to trace/link back to our ancestors" is an effective argument against adopting a new system of nomenclature. Issues of how couples would choose new names are fair game though. I imagine we'd get plenty of crank names as the internet generations get married, to say nothing about the few folk who would expose their ignorance and/or bigotry by appropriating names from cultures not their own (or enhancing their link to diluted bloodlines with usurpation of old names).

Comments

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

enhancing their link to diluted bloodlines with usurpation of old names

I'm not sure it's fair to condemn this. At this point, I'm an Irish/German mix. Chuckro has English/Jewish/Gypsy/Greek/and possibly some stuff I'm forgetting mixed in. Our children will have a Greek name. Despite the fact that, percentage-wise, they're more Irish than anything else, and that they're really not anything but American. If they were to choose a name from somewhere on the family tree, it would be a different origin, but no less legitimate than the origin they allegedly have.

In a couple more generations, Americans' bloodlines will probably be so diluted that last name won't be particularly indicative of anything.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking less of melting-pot equality than I am of people abusing it. There are plenty of people like those idiot Aryans who named their kid Adolf Hitler who would happily name themselves that given half a chance or something similar to bolster their claim of purity. Generally, I like avoid legitimizing any such efforts, though I concede there would be no way to effectively weed those people out.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

I figured you just wanted to avoid the flakes who think they're the reincarnation of a British nobleman and want to name themselves Ravenscroft when their last name is in fact Butz.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

They're annoying, not dangerous.