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Should we abandon our naming convention?
electricitylikesme
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Currently people have two commonly used names to refer to themselves by - their first name, and their last name. Something like John Smith for example.
In our society, we take that further - by and large - and assign family groups based on last names. So "the Smiths" are defined by all having the same last name.
Furthermore, it is generally customary that either a woman will take her husband's last name or that their resultant children will take her husband's last name. This seems somewhat giving of inequality however.
So the question I'm posing, D&D, is should we abandon our current naming conventions and if so, what would be a more equal system to replace them with?
I know people create mixed names, assign last names as middle names etc. but all of those modes of operation have problems. Lastnames can't be infinitely combined for practical reasons, middle names are essentially comedy names etc. etc. What I'm wondering is, what's an equitable system for which to assign names to people that both fulfills the role of identifying closely related groups without specifically favoring either gender?
Oh, and for the people who just have to post how much they don't care/it doesn't matter: a significant amount of tradition and lingual heritage includes implicitly some level of gender inequality, and less substantially some level of racial inequality. In moving towards an equal society, our biggest challenges are the little things which are subtle and insidious, rather then the big obvious stuff because, well it's obvious.
In our society, we take that further - by and large - and assign family groups based on last names. So "the Smiths" are defined by all having the same last name.
Furthermore, it is generally customary that either a woman will take her husband's last name or that their resultant children will take her husband's last name. This seems somewhat giving of inequality however.
So the question I'm posing, D&D, is should we abandon our current naming conventions and if so, what would be a more equal system to replace them with?
I know people create mixed names, assign last names as middle names etc. but all of those modes of operation have problems. Lastnames can't be infinitely combined for practical reasons, middle names are essentially comedy names etc. etc. What I'm wondering is, what's an equitable system for which to assign names to people that both fulfills the role of identifying closely related groups without specifically favoring either gender?
Oh, and for the people who just have to post how much they don't care/it doesn't matter: a significant amount of tradition and lingual heritage includes implicitly some level of gender inequality, and less substantially some level of racial inequality. In moving towards an equal society, our biggest challenges are the little things which are subtle and insidious, rather then the big obvious stuff because, well it's obvious.
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Is this a necessary goal? In an era of good record keeping and tenuous extended family ties, is there any reason we need to rapidly identify somebody's clan?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
TomKat!
Demton. Or is it Ashmi?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Presents a problem when trying to trace back family trees. In fact, it takes an existing problem and makes it worse.
Yeah. We should figure out a way of keeping track of who is born to whom. Maybe a... certificate... that's filled out at birth. And we should keep records of these "certificates" somewhere... maybe even accessible to the public. Yeah, and we can call them "public records."
Naw, nobody will support it. It's a lost cause.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Apparently, this practice is increasingly common.
As for family trees – hopefully, this is something we can deal with with current records and tools.
EDIT: Comparatively non-decaying systems come to mind here.
However, I think there's a pretty simple fix. When someone gets married, their family name becomes their maiden name (though I think the term would likely be changed), and they choose a new family name with their partner. The maiden and family names together act as their legal last name (though in practice they may choose to use one over the other for brevity). Their children don't receive the maiden name, so the full name doesn't explode in length with multiple generations, and there's no gender bias in the naming process.
Give genealogy a shot, wise ass. It is almost never a simple matter of "checking the public records."
Yep. I also think it should be easier to change your name. Right now, it's a pain in a lot of jurisdictions, with newly married women getting one "Change Your Name Free" card. Of course, that sucks if you're a man who wants to take your wife's name; one-half of a gay couple who wants to take your partner's name; or a child who decides that instead of dad's name you want mom's name.
I think we should level the playing field and make it (relatively) easy for anybody to change their name. To prevent fraud, name changes should be public record and easily retrievable; with the exception of abuse victims, witness relocation, and possibly victims of identity theft, whose name changes get to be closed court records.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
But it should be. I see no reason a functional system could not exist – admittedly, maintaining it over international borders and with immigrants may pose an initial challenge.
And damn it, Feral, stop being so right about things.
Only when you go back past the last generation or two and when crossing national borders back into countries with poor record-keeping. Yeah, it's a pain in the ass when looking up your great grandparents born in the 1880s, and certainly when trying to trace somebody backwards through immigration, but this thread isn't relevant to that. Going forward, there's no reason why geneology would be any more difficult if we abandoned patrilineal nomenclature in the first world.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Thing is, name-change laws are often quite discriminatory when it comes to marriage - its free for a woman to legally change her name upon marriage for instance (well, you pay for the marriage license, but there's no extra cost for the name change), but if a man wants to take his wife's name he has to go through the formal name-change process, which costs a lot more money. The specific example I'm recalling here was in California, where changing your name cost over US$300, unless you were a woman getting hitched. I know one guy was suing over this (liked his wife's name better), so I'm not sure if that's changed.
Am I right in suggesting that a lot of family names originated during feudal times as a designation of job function or of which lord owned you? Smith, Baker, etc. There's plenty of completely unrelated Smiths out there, I don't see why the easy-to-track argument holds any water.
Hyphenated last names just seem pretentious and snobby most of the time, and besides, if suddenly children's surnames were taken from the mother instead of the father, then the children would just have the last name of their maternal grandfather, eliminating the entire idea of gender equality in naming.
Really, I think it's just something to be worked out by the family on a personal basis, and compared to the the life commitment that raising a family is, whether or not it is called one thing or another can be completely irrelevant. Some friends of mine go by their mother's surname because their parents decided that it sounded better, and often, it's completely arbitrary.
This attitude kind of bothers me actually, because it states outright that a woman can never make her name her own, that it always belongs to someone else. I don't think it makes sense; I'm a very distinct entity from my father despite bearing 'his' name. Its like, men aren't told that their name isn't their own because it comes from their father, why should a woman be told that?
To be fair, often the point of the commonality of names in a family signifies the commitment and responsibility one holds to those who hold the same name - Family Honor, etc. In some ways, regardless of gender, nobody has full control over their own name, because of the duties to your family and how one's actions reflect upon them, and theirs upon you. To some, it can be a matter of pride to know who their ancestors were, and to remember who or where they came from.
I was merely pointing out how, on a genealogical level, even if there were a complete reversal from patrilinear to matrilinear naming conventions, it wouldn't erase the fact that if you looked back far enough, you would still have an unbroken line of male ancestors from which your surname came from, and thus the system would still be in some form patrilinear.
Don't hurt me
The other interesting thing is how quickly your name represents you. I can introduce myself by my name, then later that night tell that person I changed my name and what the old one is: they never think of me by anything other than the first name given, and say the other one sounds wrong. Neither are particularly unusual names.
Family reactions varied; parents didn't mind so much & got used to it. Grandmother (very English, Blitz generation) wasn't too happy as I'm the last male in her line with the old surname. I pointed out that it was hardly a rare surname, and that the bloodline was continuing anyway even if the name wasn't, so it was hardly wiping out the family line. Subtext was that I wasn't going to change my mind anyway, so she got over it.
I've also had reactions from people / places you wouldn't expect, or vica-versa. Expected reactions along the lines of: stopped by a policewoman recently for running a red light on a bicycle (oh nos). On working out the name thing, she essentially started treating me like a bloody terrorist - despite showing her a military photoID - and was asking my reason for changing my name. She wouldn't accept 'because I wanted to' and kept asking the question until I pointed out my reason was perfectly acceptable & legal, they had a perfectly legal deed poll on record, and if she kept asking that question I was taking her badge number & reporting her (was writing the ticket already, so meh). On the other end of the scale, I expected all sorts of crap from the military when I was joining re: name change, but there was zero admin problem about it, and the reactions of interviewing officers ranged from bemused-but-who-cares, to one LtCol who came straight out with the choosing-name-of-manhood thing and seemed to think it was a splendid display of individuality. Lads who I'm in with don't care either, though I think I told them post-basic training when we were already tight knit & each proved ourselves in other ways.
To sum up, if you don't like the naming convention, it's very easy to change it yourself.
In Turkey, it's [Grandfather/grandmother's Name] + [Given Name] + [Last Name]
This seemingly simple difference in naming conventions between two countries caused me a tremendous amount of headache when I was first coming to the US from Turkey and had to go through the immigration process.
That might be the strangest bit of name-based humor since Hiro Protaganist.
IOS Game Center ID: Isotope-X
Not totally unheard of here in Sweden.
I can't say that I could ever decide upon a surname that I found meaningful and that I actually truly liked. I rather like the fact that my surname was chosen for me, despite the fact that I actually dislike the surname itself. I shudder to think the types of surnames people would choose for themselves if they could :P
Pretty awful name, right? Don't worry, he changed it.
Now it's Keith.
True story. I think also he killed himself later.
Actually, while it's still more common than not that a woman will take her husband's last name, more and more women are hyphenating or keeping their maiden names. It's also important to note that in society in general (At least in Canada - I keep having to make sure I include that fact, I've learned the hard way when debating with other cultures) it's perfectly acceptable to do so and violates no mores in any way that extend beyond the individual.
I object to the wording of this. We're assuming a married couple, right? "Their children" taking "her husband's name"? In this case "her husband" being their father? It's not like their her kids and he's inflicting his name on them. They're his kids too, man.
I don't have a problem with changing the naming convention... but I don't see any need for it. Perhaps a better solution if equality is a concern would be de-formalizing the naming convention that stands and not having any real convention. Remember that any convention that currently exists is as a result of cultural input.
-Robert E. Howard
Tower of the Elephant
The kids belong to both parents, but the way Western naming convention works, 100% of the kids get 100% of the father's last name and 0% of the mother's (when the mother and father have different last names).
I know it won't generate much sympathy around here, but I've become much more radicalized on this issue of late, seeing parallels between the patriarchal naming convention (wives takes husbands' names, kids get fathers' names) and the African-American criticism of "slave names" (like Malcolm Little becoming Malcolm X).
I understood what his point was, I was objecting to the wording. It's one thing to question an obviously patriarchal naming convention (one I have no problem changing), but it's another to phrase the argument in a way that completely negates the father of the children.
-Robert E. Howard
Tower of the Elephant
I also think that it's nice for siblings to share the same name, in an identity sense. I know at school it'd be a case of 'oh, you're <surname>, are you a member of the <surname> family?' and then we would be recognised and it helped to keep things friendly. Of course, many reasons why you may not want to be associated with your siblings, but your average functioning family probably isn't going to have a problem with it.
I honestly don't think there's anything wrong, in the abstract, with making a proud statement of fatherhood.
That said, why is it so important that the vast majority of Western children's names follow this pattern?
Or, put differently, why is pride in declaring the father so much greater than pride in declaring the mother?
I don't really think it is... to be honest. At the same time, we hear so much prattling on about the bond between mother and child and how close it is and how there's nothing like it all the time... I kinda like that there's one thing that I can identify as "special" about fathers.
-Robert E. Howard
Tower of the Elephant
I suppose because in most general day-to-day situations, it's more obvious who the mother is. Rightly or wrongly, it's the mother who is doing the primary care-giving and she's more likely to be seen out and about with the child. People know who she is. People see a woman with a child and think nothing of it.
The unmarried couples with children that I know have given the children the father's name. Even though the woman has a different surname from her children, she's still usually assumed to be the mother. But it seems to help those couples to say, 'yes, we don't believe in getting married, but we're still together and both dedicated to raising the children, and our children have the father's name to reflect that'.
Fuck my last name.
...And here lies the bulk of my opposition, which is admittedly mild: there's still not a whole lot of choice in Western societies in who performs the bulk of the child care.
I'm sure that the vast majority of naming-after-fathers is perfectly benign, but it'd be nice (in a fairies and unicorns kind of way) for it to be more equitable.
--Oh, and then there's the thing where it's sometimes better to name kids after dad because then dad is less likely to be accused of kidnapping/child molestation--i.e., they're obviously his kids since they have his name.