I don't really like that the feminist stance on cis marriage is that women should keep their own surname rather than taking the man's
Why can't it be something fun like swapping surnames and then creating a portmaneau or blended name for the kids.
This should be included as part of the typical wedding ceremony
Women keeping their last names as in such notoriously feminist paradises as all of Latin America
It's still from the woman's patriline though.
If we had one name transmitted patrilineally and one name transmitted matrilineally, that'd be really cool, and would also not cascade beyond 2 surnames.
Abolish surnames, also abolish names, replace everything by 72 alphanumeric characters codes that are absolutely unique so we abolish all discrimination and administrative ambiguity /s
I propose the following:
Of course, people are free to do whatever they want, but this is just an idea. Because unlike the convention of always taking the husband's surname — which inevitably leads to surname extinction and a thoroughly unequal distribution of surnames — this system would by my reckoning gradually lead to a completely equal distribution of surnames.
This done in Spain, e.g. Pablo Ruiz Picasso is called Pablo Picasso
That's related but it's not quite the same thing.
? Is this really the feminist stance? I thought it was that women should have the choice of doing what they want with their surnames
This is a historical quirk but, in case you had any illusions about us living in the 20s, the (bourgeois) feminist movement for women to keep their surnames upon marriage kicked off in the 1920s in the US.
There's a whole essay in here somewhere about how bourgeois feminism was co-opted by capitalism from its very outset, how women became a target demographic for smoking, the colour green, why you have to add eggs into box cake mix, and the Guatemalan coup of Jacobo Arbenz and the Cuban revolution. Oh and Nazis and Sigmund Freud too, of course.
There's a whole essay in here somewhere about how bourgeois feminism was co-opted by capitalism from its very outset, how women became a target demographic for smoking, the colour green, why you have to add eggs into box cake mix, and the Guatemalan coup of Jacobo Arbenz and the Cuban revolution. Oh and Nazis and Sigmund Freud too, of course.
I want this as a tagline just for the immediate transition from putting eggs in cake mix to the Guatemalan coup. I got whiplash lol
I desperately need this essay
Ultimately yeah, but it's the difference between what an egalitarian world should look like vs how to normalise that choice in a patriarchal hegemony like the UK. Various european countries' past feminist/egalitarianism movements have resulted in laws that neither men nor women can change their names when married.
We should give children a number starting at 7 trillion and counting backwards so future generations get worried about what happens when the number reaches zero
You should both be forced to each separately pick a new completely unrelated name once married to make genealogy has hard as possible
The portmaneau/blending suggestion was specifically to stop hyperhyphenation, but we could lean into it like Discworld vampires and in a few generations have people with surnames like Smith-Huber-Кузнецо́в-김-García-Carvalho-सिंह-გელაშვილი.
It costs money to legally change your name without a marriage certificate and making a fun portmanteau would cost a lot since you'd both have to pay.
That being said I know two couples who just go by the portmanteau but on legal documents use their birth last names
It's ridiculous that you have to pay now to change your designator. Back in the late 40's my grandpa's name legally changed from "John" to "Jack" simply because he started writing his nickname on forms instead of his "real" name.
Fully agreed
For the most part you can do that now, you won't be able to change it on a bank card, or licence, etc, but i stopped using my birthname years ago for free
i think it would be awfully confusing if we had lots of couples running around called pordmanitou. why would it be french anyway?
Everybody gets a new surname after an extremely specific value on a color wheel. When you get married you both take a new name halfway between. I have the best ideas.
M #007D90 4 F #008270
Looking to marry up
Just put all the letters from both names together and mix them up like you’re playing scrabble. Then see what the best single word score you can come up with together, or just a fun name that has a funky pronunciation.
I know people who blended their surnames together when they got married. You can both change your names upon marriage. Taking one over the other is pure convention.
"No I want to keep my name."
"What, the name you got from your father??"
I've had that short circuit a few people. Honestly though, the paperwork is a super obnoxious.
I’m keeping my name when I get married, and if someone said this to me I’d think they were being super obnoxious.
I don’t think of it as my father’s name, I think of it as my name, since I’ve had it my entire life.
EDIT: Seriously though, why is this even something you’re trying to “short-circuit” people on? Women get enough flak for their decisions as it is.
I'll say you're ascribing nonexistent intention to my comment. "Trying" implies I have some goal in mind, sarcasm among people I'm close with is realistically the goal. That doesn't change the reality that on occasion it didn't give someone pause. It got my SO and I to seriously consider inventing a surname. Ultimately, my SO keeping her name was the right choice for her. Her reasons were different then yours, everyone will have different reasons. Most people assume we have the same last name at the end of the day. No one cares that we don't.
Why not fuck the patriarchy by refusing marriage altogether? Who the hell needs the state to bind you together?
who the hell needs the state to bind you together
Anybody who needs to pay taxes or get child tax credits
There's a reason why gay marriage was such an important battle. Marriage is a legal contract that has numerous benefits including inheritance, right to decide care, visitation rights, and being eligible for benefits to name a few.
It's not just a " piece of paper that says we're in love." It's a huge fucking deal that offers legal protection for your partner and yourself.
Hip hip hooray for bureaucracy!
Honestly though, you oughta be able to just write it down on a notarized piece of paper without the state having any say in any of that.
tax evasion is only affordable for the rich
The married couple should have to draw a random surname from the top 1000 most popular ones but with 1 % obvious joke names sprinkled in, no refunds
congratulations to Mr. and Mrs. Hugglebump
Changing your name can be a bitch. I know people with dual citizenship for whom it's even worse. Obviously the solution is to make it easier but advising women to not change their names in places where doing so is difficult is good advice.
My proposition: couples dont change surnames on marriage but children have surnames that are just first names of their parents
You might wish to look up the words "patronym" and "matronym"
Hello, my name is James Eliseson Tamarason Cesarson Tomson Dimitrison Josephson Sophieson Antonson Holden.
I love this for you Holden
My platonic ideal of a Blarite politician is a lady with three hyphenated names that are just different regional variants of that name. Like Elizabeth Smith-Smythe-Schmidt or something.
what if instead of Michael Keaton, it was Michael Penis.
Michael Beanis, even.
As the nuclear family withers away and is replaced by more social relationships and parenting, I imagine keeping one's surname will become more common just out of practicality.
I actually have a somewhat serious question about this. I know a guy who had a really bland and boring surname so when he got married he took his wife's name. The thing is, she's from an ethnic minority and he is not. Am I wrong to think it's weird for a white person to change their name to a minority one but not the other way around? A Huang changing their name to Smith feels normal but a Smith changing their name to Huang just feels appropriationy.
Maybe the reason you think that is internalised normalisation of whiteness though
You're probably right. Normal was also a really poor choice of word.
wow.. uhh... "normal" is something you might want to examine there
Just abolish surnames altogether. No reason to have them
Go full Prince and just become a symbol.
Sincerely,
The Poster Formerly Known As Ishmael
When I changed my name I decided not to have a middle name cause they're kinda dumb and my parents didn't have them either.. I'll probably put my maiden name there if I get married.
No middle name is the best aesthetic, I should get rid of mine one day too
There should be some game played in which the winner decides who keeps the surname. They can decide what game is played.
Our last name should be an assigned number counting from the first ever human to you.
"We should reject the patriarchy and refuse to adopt our husband's surnames as our own!""
"Right on!"
"We must take back what is ours and overthrow men's dominance over women. We should fight to keep our maiden names."
"Yeah!!
Wait a sec - we're going to reject the cultural practice of taking on our husband's surnames and we're going to keep the ones that we were born with?"
"Exactly!"
"So we will keep the surnames that our fathers gave us in order to reject the patriarchy?"
"I... uhh... hang on, let me check my notes here."
(I'm not shitting on anyone who chooses to do this btw; you do you. After all you aren't property to be transferred from one owner to another. I'm just illustrating why bourgeois feminism is a dead end and why Marxist feminism is the only real path forward for women's liberation.)
I mean you gotta start somewhere. My surname might also be my grandfather's surname, but people don't think about that, they think about how my surname is my mother's surname instead of my father's.
Yeah, I'm with you. I just think that ultimately it's window-dressing, call me a class-reductionist if you will.
Women aren't going to be liberated by keeping their father's surname because there's this context of an always-already existent gender subjugation that they find themselves born into, which is what my little vignette is basically pointing towards.
In lukewarm defence of myself, I feel the same sorta way about stuff like workers striking for minor pay increases or Bernie-tier politicians; I half-heartedly support that stuff—far be it from me to oppose it—and any gain no matter how small is worth something to the masses but, as a revolutionary, I don't think it will ever go far enough in and of itself (hence why I'm also historicising this within the context of The Lucy Stone League of a century ago elsewhere in this thread).
To paraphrase James Connolly: our demands are most moderate, we only want the earth.
When my ex and I got married, we picked a new surname that we both liked but didn't have any connection to. We're not together anymore but I have no plans to return to my original name b/c I still like it and basically all of my friends and colleagues know me by the current name
Eyy, I love this! Good for you 💪