Wednesday, August 12, 2009

The Hell?

There's an at least plausibly accurate survey out there showing that most Americans think women should be required to take their husband's name when they get married. The hell?

The J Continuum: Anekantavada has aspirations of doing some sort of Latin America-thingy with the future Mrs. J Continuum: Anekantavada where perhaps he adopts her last name as his middle and vice versa (making her prospectively more accurately named as the "Future Mrs. J Continuum: Anekantavada-Hyphen-Her-Name-Here") or some such other compromise; as a fan of some small amount of ritual and symbolism, I like the idea of reflection of a union of people in some sort of union of names. But a) I wouldn't even WANT her to simply replace her last name with mine, b) legally REQUIRED? c) the HELL?

2 comments:

Daktari said...

I was married to a man named Menier, which if it had been pronounced with it's proper French pronunciation would have sounded like Men-yeah, but no, this dorkwad pronounced his name Men-ear, which sounds suspiciously like manure, which is what my spouse was full of. My ex virtually demanded that I take his name, but I didn't like the idea of losing my father's name, which I am rightly fond of. So I tried hyphenating, but I hated it. Long story short. I just didn't like his name and didn't want it. So, unbeknownst to him, I legally changed my name back to my maiden name, used it in my professional life and he was never the wiser.

Now, I have had friends who combined their names, most notably the Pruett-Jones'es. If I had it all to do over again, I'd not cave to peer pressure. That said, if I was doing it again (just not with the same guy), I'd consider it as long as the name added something to mine and didn't detract from all it's awesomeness.

But I love the fact that people think they should be able to REQUIRE women to subjugate themselves to their husbands. It's not enough that women have to put up with this nonsense if they are religious. But by all means, let's please institutionalize it for everyone.

THE HELL????

On another note, have you noticed that anything you add "wad" to just becomes funnier?

Becky T said...

I guess since I didn't love my vowel-heavy last name, I used to dream of marrying a spouse who had an awesome, easy-to-pronounce-in-America last name and changing mine. My current spousal prospect doesn't look good with respect to great last names, but since I've already published under my current name, I'd probably not change it no matter what. At least not for professional use. Maybe there's something to be said for hyphenations, but probably only if the names are individually manageable already. Incidentally, my feminist mom kept her ex-husband's name because all her degrees are in that name. I like the modern Swedish idea of making up a whole new name or combining elements of both names to create a wonderful new one.