5 ms·

A bit off topic, but changing your name when getting married is so strange to me. It is not at all common where I live (Belgium), in fact I don't think I person

A bit off topic, but changing your name when getting married is so strange to me. It is not at all common where I live (Belgium), in fact I don't think I personally know a single person who did.

revax 9mo ago
While optional, it's very common in France.
voidfunc 9mo ago
Its from the days when women were property of their man.
- B-Con 9mo ago
  It hails from when family lines were important, and you can practically only have one line reflected in a name. Unsurprisingly, most societies considered the male's name to be the dominate lineage of interest, although that doesn't hold true 100% of the time.
  - fc417fc802 9mo ago
    > you can practically only have one line reflected in a name Not true at all. You can trivially have two family names in a full legal name. In fact many cultures do exactly that to this day. Also worth noting that the male's name being preferentially propagated makes a lot of sense in a society where the best off frequently inherited their vocation from their fathers.
    - B-Con 9mo ago
      What societies? Keyword being "practically". Just because there is an alternative doesn't mean society will adjust. And hyphenation isn't a solution, it only works for one generation.
      - fc417fc802 9mo ago
        > Just because there is an alternative doesn't mean society will adjust. "It isn't practical to do" and "society at large didn't go this direction" are very different statements. Hyphenation is two names in a trench coat. Maintaining two names indefinitely works just fine as long as you discard rather than endlessly compound. Presumably the only requirement is that it be straightforward to trace any given lineage. The traditional approach is for women to keep their maternal name and discard their paternal name on marriage while men do the opposite. But of course any scheme could work, up to and including each person arbitrarily choosing which name to discard (not sure how they decide on ordering in that case). Another historical approach is the Foo Barson, Baz Fooson (Barson) approach. That scheme treats the male and female lines as being entirely separate so it doesn't quite match what you're after but it was quite practical.
        B-Con 9mo ago
        Preserving more than one lineage and providing a cohesive family name isn't practically easy, and society did not go that direction, and that likely isn't a coincidence. Discarding names doesn't preserve lineage. If you need a book to trace the names, then the point of using a name for lineage has failed. > The traditional approach is for women to keep their maternal name and discard their paternal name on marriage while men do the opposite It sounds like this scheme is "men keep one name lineage, women keep another". Which, IMO, has the practical drawback of not identifying the current family unit. Lineage was important, but so was gathering all folks together into a household. When taxes, religious ceremony, etc. occurred, there was one household name on the roster responsible. This was particularly important in societies where men held certain rights for the household.
UltraSane 9mo ago
What last name do your kids use?
- TacticalCoder 9mo ago
  > What last name do your kids use? In the country where he lives (Belgium), the parents get to decide which family name the kids get.
  - t0mas88 9mo ago
    But I think you only get to decide for the first kid? All following kids will have the same family name. At least that's the rule in the Netherlands.
- guessmyname 9mo ago
  Last name of father and mother, respectively. let motherLastName = "Carter Hughes" let fatherLastName = "Miller Thompson" let childLastName = "Miller Carter" let childFullName = "Jean Paul Miller Carter" Or so that is how it works in many countries around the world. You might ask, —“Why does the father’s last name go first and the mother’s second?”— That’s an old tradition, and it can change whenever enough people in our society agree. As it stands, the father’s family name tends to persist down the family tree, while the mother’s family name often disappears in each generation. Or so that is how it works in many countries around the world.
  - esafak 9mo ago
    You should have given a more complete example, where the parents themselves have long names to demonstrate that something does have to get dropped when you have children.
    - pests 9mo ago
      Hughes and Thompson were both dropped in their example.
onesociety2022 9mo ago
Not only is it strange, it’s obviously very sexist in practice. In majority of the cases, it’s always the woman who changes her last name. The husband gets to keep his. I still find it very strange and shocking that powerful women with successful careers in modern society still keep changing their names after getting married.
- bigstrat2003 9mo ago
  It is not sexist at all, let alone "obviously very sexist". Don't impute malicious motives to people like that, it's extremely rude.
  - krainboltgreene 9mo ago
    Come on man, I think it's safe to say a tradition that favor's men over women is reasonably sexist, especially given the time the tradition established women were property. I don't think Belgium's feelings will get hurt, besides wait until you learn about all the other things that Leopold II did.
- charcircuit 9mo ago
  By such a definition any tradition related to gender would be sexist. The tradition is that the wife will change her name. This tradition is why it makes up the majority of cases.
  - onesociety2022 9mo ago
    Not really - this “tradition” as you call it obviously started back in the day when women did not have equal rights in society and only the husband’s lineage mattered.
    - meitham 9mo ago
      How do you propose fixing that? Let the kids take both parents last names? In few generations you end with kids having their entire family tree as their last name! It might even make marrying within the tribe attractive again to keep last name single word!
bigstrat2003 9mo ago
Different cultures, different traditions. Personally I think it's a beautiful symbol of unity for one person to take the other's name (though I'm neutral as to which party should change their name, and I was perfectly willing to take my wife's name if she had wanted that), but of course that's the culture I was born into so it seems normal to me.
vedmakk 9mo ago
I was very happy to take my wife's name when we got married. A free choice I made. And I think there is nothing weird about it.
cromka 9mo ago
Actually it's strange to learn that outside Spain and Portugal there are other countries in EU where you do not change your name when married!

A bit off topic, but changing your name when getting married is so strange to me. It is not at all common where I live (Belgium), in fact I don't think I personally know a single person who did.

revax 9mo ago

While optional, it's very common in France.

voidfunc 9mo ago

Its from the days when women were property of their man.

B-Con 9mo ago
It hails from when family lines were important, and you can practically only have one line reflected in a name. Unsurprisingly, most societies considered the male's name to be the dominate lineage of interest, although that doesn't hold true 100% of the time.
- fc417fc802 9mo ago
  > you can practically only have one line reflected in a name Not true at all. You can trivially have two family names in a full legal name. In fact many cultures do exactly that to this day. Also worth noting that the male's name being preferentially propagated makes a lot of sense in a society where the best off frequently inherited their vocation from their fathers.
  - B-Con 9mo ago
    What societies? Keyword being "practically". Just because there is an alternative doesn't mean society will adjust. And hyphenation isn't a solution, it only works for one generation.
    - fc417fc802 9mo ago
      > Just because there is an alternative doesn't mean society will adjust. "It isn't practical to do" and "society at large didn't go this direction" are very different statements. Hyphenation is two names in a trench coat. Maintaining two names indefinitely works just fine as long as you discard rather than endlessly compound. Presumably the only requirement is that it be straightforward to trace any given lineage. The traditional approach is for women to keep their maternal name and discard their paternal name on marriage while men do the opposite. But of course any scheme could work, up to and including each person arbitrarily choosing which name to discard (not sure how they decide on ordering in that case). Another historical approach is the Foo Barson, Baz Fooson (Barson) approach. That scheme treats the male and female lines as being entirely separate so it doesn't quite match what you're after but it was quite practical.
      - B-Con 9mo ago
        Preserving more than one lineage and providing a cohesive family name isn't practically easy, and society did not go that direction, and that likely isn't a coincidence. Discarding names doesn't preserve lineage. If you need a book to trace the names, then the point of using a name for lineage has failed. > The traditional approach is for women to keep their maternal name and discard their paternal name on marriage while men do the opposite It sounds like this scheme is "men keep one name lineage, women keep another". Which, IMO, has the practical drawback of not identifying the current family unit. Lineage was important, but so was gathering all folks together into a household. When taxes, religious ceremony, etc. occurred, there was one household name on the roster responsible. This was particularly important in societies where men held certain rights for the household.

UltraSane 9mo ago

What last name do your kids use?

TacticalCoder 9mo ago
> What last name do your kids use? In the country where he lives (Belgium), the parents get to decide which family name the kids get.
- t0mas88 9mo ago
  But I think you only get to decide for the first kid? All following kids will have the same family name. At least that's the rule in the Netherlands.
guessmyname 9mo ago
Last name of father and mother, respectively. let motherLastName = "Carter Hughes" let fatherLastName = "Miller Thompson" let childLastName = "Miller Carter" let childFullName = "Jean Paul Miller Carter" Or so that is how it works in many countries around the world. You might ask, —“Why does the father’s last name go first and the mother’s second?”— That’s an old tradition, and it can change whenever enough people in our society agree. As it stands, the father’s family name tends to persist down the family tree, while the mother’s family name often disappears in each generation. Or so that is how it works in many countries around the world.
- esafak 9mo ago
  You should have given a more complete example, where the parents themselves have long names to demonstrate that something does have to get dropped when you have children.
  - pests 9mo ago
    Hughes and Thompson were both dropped in their example.

onesociety2022 9mo ago

Not only is it strange, it’s obviously very sexist in practice. In majority of the cases, it’s always the woman who changes her last name. The husband gets to keep his. I still find it very strange and shocking that powerful women with successful careers in modern society still keep changing their names after getting married.

bigstrat2003 9mo ago
It is not sexist at all, let alone "obviously very sexist". Don't impute malicious motives to people like that, it's extremely rude.
- krainboltgreene 9mo ago
  Come on man, I think it's safe to say a tradition that favor's men over women is reasonably sexist, especially given the time the tradition established women were property. I don't think Belgium's feelings will get hurt, besides wait until you learn about all the other things that Leopold II did.
charcircuit 9mo ago
By such a definition any tradition related to gender would be sexist. The tradition is that the wife will change her name. This tradition is why it makes up the majority of cases.
- onesociety2022 9mo ago
  Not really - this “tradition” as you call it obviously started back in the day when women did not have equal rights in society and only the husband’s lineage mattered.
  - meitham 9mo ago
    How do you propose fixing that? Let the kids take both parents last names? In few generations you end with kids having their entire family tree as their last name! It might even make marrying within the tribe attractive again to keep last name single word!

bigstrat2003 9mo ago

Different cultures, different traditions. Personally I think it's a beautiful symbol of unity for one person to take the other's name (though I'm neutral as to which party should change their name, and I was perfectly willing to take my wife's name if she had wanted that), but of course that's the culture I was born into so it seems normal to me.

vedmakk 9mo ago

I was very happy to take my wife's name when we got married. A free choice I made. And I think there is nothing weird about it.

cromka 9mo ago

Actually it's strange to learn that outside Spain and Portugal there are other countries in EU where you do not change your name when married!