| Aug. 30th, 2007 @ 11:50 am Double barrelling |
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I thought of another solution for a fixed system of surname-transferring. (Obviously not having a system at all is another option.)
If Andy Philos marries Betty Andrews and Colin Riddle marries Dara Keyser-Soze, and they all want to retain their names, their children become hyphenated. But when their children marry, of the same mind to keep their history, what happens?
Traditionally they became Edward and Flora Philos. Next most traditionally, they took a name from each parent, but only the patronymics Philos and Riddle. (Particularly when eta: the woman is the heiress of an old male-descended name.) A symmetric but heterogeneous solution would be to have a patronymic and matronymic, keeping Philos and Keyser-Soze. Betty and Colin lose out, but Betty's daughters and Colin's sons retain their names. This does mean your name can only be passed on through same-sex-line descendants. If you didn't like that, you could take father's matronymic and vice-versa, becoming Andrews-Riddle, and it still matters what children you have, but you don't have male surnames and female surnames.
If you try and retain everything you become Edward and Flora Philos-Andrews-Riddle-Keyser-Soze, which is just about workable, but the next generation definitely need to choose. But once you've got to E and F P-A-R-K-S, maybe you should just become E&F Parks and start the whole thing again. Of course, that's still patriarchal because three generations further down only Andy's first letter would survive. Maybe choosing one of the first two letters would help make a name? :)
Of course, I'm starting to know a few non-famous people who abandon the whole thing, and have made another name their own, notably Naath and Ferret. |
