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A Fisch by any other name
BY AUDREY FISCH
(01/20/00)

When I married, there was simply no question that I would keep my own name. I would no sooner change my name than I would exchange my face for some other face. I was born with this name, lived through a lousy childhood with it, graduated high school, college and law school with it -- it was mine and that's that!

When it came time to have children, my husband and I discussed the name situation. In our case (both of us have unusual last names that are hard to spell) using both names or some combination of names was not an option, so we quickly came to the following decision: boy children would get his last name, girl children would get my last name! Ideal solution for our progressive, 21st century family! Now it's six years and three boys later, and no one knows how forward thinking and progressive we are (yet)!

-- Patricia O'Beirne

There are certainly lots of reasons for patrilineal naming and lots of feminists following that tradition in naming their children. Questions of phonemes and paternal legitimacy aside, I think there are two big reasons why this tradition is not openly rejected by most feminists: bureaucracy and ostracism.

People don't think it's your partner's kid if they don't have his last name. Bureaucracy can't even handle two middle initials! Ostracism is awful though. Is taking a stand worth the cost in pain and suffering? When we chose to create a new family name, which both my partner and I took as absolute surnames and which we gave to our two children, his parents took it as a rejection of their entire family. The stress and conflict were immense, on their side from rejections felt and on ours from the clear lack of understanding.

Yet the implied inequality of giving a child their father's last name is a tradition worth the effort to demolish.

-- Christina M. P. Sonas

This interesting article only looked at the American tradition of naming, which is far from universal. In many Hispanic cultures, for example, a child gets the last name of the father's father and mother's father, in that order. Then when that child reproduces, he or she will pass on his or her father's name, dropping the mother's. I'm sure many other cultures have differing practices. In an article that makes claims about evolutionary psychology, it seems prudent to make sure the phenomenon discussed is close to universal.

-- Elizabeth More

When women become more secure in their legal status and receive their just appreciation by society I suppose this whole baby-naming foolishness will wither and die. Although wrapped in unctuous sexist and classist origins, our patrilineal onomastics will remain the norm and in time even "free thinking rebels" will realize that the utility of using the current system outweighs its shady past.

Furthermore Lloyd and her man-friend have chosen to give their spawn his last name and her father's last name. In fact no actual feminist alternative exists except with people choosing new last names at the age of 18, sending chaos throughout any and every record-keeping system.

So what if our system is inherited from a horrid past, we haven't given this continent back to its original inhabitants, although we recognize it was wrong to have taken it.

-- Judy Kellner

After reading Fisch's article on the combination name she and her husband gave their son, I had to laugh. When our first child was about to be born 11 years ago, my husband and I had the naming discussion. My last name is Choinski and his is Threlkeld. Imagine the possibilities! Choinskeld, Threlski. (Would you spell that please?) We laughed ourselves silly. Ultimately, my husband felt more strongly about the kids having his last name than I felt about them having mine, so they are all named patrilinearly. I have no problem with it, my kids have no problem with it, and their teachers have seen plenty weirder families than ours!

-- Elizabeth Choinski

How convenient that Lloyd of the one-syllable last name can assume the high moral ground in baby naming. What if the last names of the parents are Papadapalous and Phantumabumrang, or Hougetsou and O'Murtaighearrhea? Or, in my particular case, Zuckerman and Christakis? Personally, I've never really understood why so many women think it preferable to give one's offspring the maternal grandfather's last name over the father's. Either way, it's patriarchy.

-- Erika Christakis

Arguments over sexism, biological tendencies and legitimacy aside, there is one compelling reason not to give a child more than one last name -- it's called common sense. Take this scenario as an example: Ms. Smith has a daughter with Mr. Jones. They name the daughter Jones-Smith. Ms. Jones-Smith marries Mr. Clark, taking the hyphenated name Clark-Jones-Smith. They have a daughter who marries Mr. Phillips, and takes the name Phillips-Clark-Jones-Smith, and so on. Forcing a child to take two last names is painfully short-sighted and just plain selfish. Let's not victimize our children by making issues out of non-issues.

-- Ben Lebowitz

The fact is that children get their fathers' last names because family is still very important, even in our modern culture. In most Western societies, we reckon family connections through the father's last name. It is not that big of a deal, and it is not particularly surprising. If the author of the article keeps encountering women who have long, involved stories about how they chose their children's last names, then I would suggest that she is talking mainly to a very small group of women like herself who care about such things. If the article's musings about last names is indicative of anything, it's of how the minds of aging feminists run more and more to the irrelevant in the realities of the post-feminist world.

-- Mark R. Shipley

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