lucubratrix
- Name
Jenny
- About Me
Mum to a J0ly0n Max and a Rup3rt James, with plans to have a few more children. Another boy would likely be a Wilfr3d, and girls would be H3rmion3 and Th0masina.
- My Favorite Names
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- My Recent Blog Comments
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PennyX, I totally missed this from the last thread (which I just went back and caught up on) but I am so, so thrilled for you and your baby on the way. I'm wishing you a happy and healthy and uneventful rest of pregnancy. I know what you mean about the "imagining self introducing name to other parents" test being a hard one. This made me seriously squirm and wonder whether we maybe should not pick our eldest's name, but we decided to go for it anyway and I am so glad we did. Other parents are much less judgey to our faces about it than I thought they might be, to my pleasant surprise. I am still rooting hard for Ursula (for a girl). I do think that for me Sylvie and Xavier would probably be too close if I were using the French pronunciation of Xavier, but this is the sort of thing on which tastes vary greatly. Sylvia and Simon actually would be easier for me not to get muddled up, even though it's more obviously matchy. Anyway, I think the obvious solution is to have an Ursula and a Xavier. :) I agree that it can be complicated to consider a whole sibset at once. I am currently in a bit of an agony ourselves: it's likely that we'll have a girl next, and I'm wondering whether a Rupert and a Hermione as successive siblings will make other people think too strongly of Harry Potter (Rupert is the name of an actor in the films, whereas Hermione a character). Incidentally, the same is true for our eldest (J0ly0n is the name of a character played by an actor named Rupert in one of the recent adaptations), but only very recently did someone notice that when we introduced our kids... and I don't think that'll repeat often. The Harry Potter movies are much more familiar, so I think it's an issue that may come up much more, even though they would not be our only kids (they'd have a non-Harry-Potter big brother, and we plan to have a fourth as well). Other conflicts like this: we can only have one -ina name, which are pretty much all the other girl names on our joint list besides Hermione. Wilhelmina might be the one we both agree on the most, but we like Wilfred for a boy even more... so that's an argument in favor of using Hermione on our next if it's a girl, and then we could use Wilfred OR Wilhelmina for our last, depending on the sex. But then, is it a problem that Wilhelmina is actually the name of a minor Harry Potter character (Prof. Grubbly-Plank)? Argh. Ultimately, I can only share your eloquently put frustration: with all the names out there, how can the list of names we want to bestow upon our offspring be so short? And in pet names: I think Cholera is fantastic, especially on a slightly cranky cat, due to the meaning of "anger" for choler. And growing up I did have a cat named Socrates, and it fit splendidly. We have friends with an Agamemnon, too - something about cats seems to work rather well with the Ancients!
I just went to the vet to pick up food for our cats, and the receptionist said, "Milo! I have a cat named Milo, too!" So, naturally, I'm very curious as to whether cats and cat breeds have similar stereotyping. I suspect that there's just more diversity for cat names since cats don't ever come when called regardless, so there aren't as many constraints on names that are easy for an animal to learn or to shout across a yard. Also, I get the feeling that more cats than dogs out there are "just" mutts/regular cats not belonging to any particular breed. We have a Persian (Priscilla, named for her wide-eyed, goobery, overly-face lifted resemblance to a certain Mrs Presley) and an exotic shorthair (basically a shorthaired Persian - the aforementioned Milo). He was named thusly because although the Spouse had loved the name for a child since reading The Phantom Tollbooth, I vetoed the name for a child on the grounds that it is too much of an energy drink for me... but happily, is a perfect name for our very energetic cat. We got him about a month after our youngest was born and I've spent a good deal of time feeding the baby with Milo also on my lap thinking about the fact that their names could have been so easily switched if I'd had just slightly different associations! Petfinder is great, and if you're looking for a particular breed, also consider breed rescues (how we got one of our cats) as well as your local shelter (how we got the other one - he just happened to be a purebred, though we picked him for personality). Good luck in the hunt, ZR! May the perfect dog to fit your household come along! As for kid input in naming -- my eldest has greatly been helped in his creativity in assigning names for toys by the books "So Many Bunnies" and "Hooper Humperdink", both of which we got after posters here recommended them. If anyone has any other name-featuring picture books, I'll gladly take them into advisement!
I'm another one of those pronunciation switchers. For names that have a clear equivalent in English and German, like say, my brother Jacob, I say DZHAY-cob or YAH-kop depending on which language I'm using in the surrounding sentence. It does not seem to bother anyone, including him. We did try to avoid such a disparity in naming our own children, though. My eldest has a name that doesn't exist in German, so the English pronunciation just gets ported into German sentences. I do find myself doing the German or English Rs for my youngest son's name, though. Same for our surname.
On namer's remorse - my feeling is that you should change the name if your child is too young to have formed an association with their current name AND if you are really sure that you have found the right name this time. I think at 7 months you're still good to go with the first criterion, especially if you've been using nicknames mostly, but I think it's a window that will close soon. The other issue is I think more concerning, especially since you don't address it at all - do you really have a substantially better feeling about the potential new name, something that really "grabs you" and that you feel with great certainty is the right name for your daughter? If you do, it's definitely not too late, and I think your conviction and enthusiasm about the new name can carry over to convince any skeptics. If you don't, though, I think you'd have a harder time selling the name change in a positive light ("I was filled with a realization that she'd been a Eulalia all along!" vs "I'd just realized I didn't love Emily enough to commit to it.") In your place I'd worry that I might just be swapping out a different name that poses similar difficulties in the future, but with a big hassle attached. And I think the number of times you can change the name is definitely ONE. I think a first name choice is often much easier and much more of a wild love affair just because it is the name you loved BEST in the entire universe, and then the second child of the same sex inevitably doesn't get the name that you've been thinking of as THE FAVORITE for many decades. So, more working your way down the list for subsequent children, along with more constraints (since some names just don't go with others you might have already bestowed, for reasons of the distinct sibsets that are the very topic of this post). I also think it might be harder to feel truly certain you have the RIGHT name for a 7 month old... there's just so much more personality there that I'd have a much harder time feeling certain of the right match than with the blank slate of a squishy newborn.
Interestingly enough, TamaraR, my spouse vetoed Alistair as a name for a child because it was "too nerdy" (we gave it to a cat instead). Her favorite name (and one that we used) is... Rupert, which she perceives as "not nerdy at all". :) So I think that the line between the nerdy and dashing qualities of the "Masterpiece Theatre" names is a fine, blurry one. I actually know an Oliver and Alistair sibset, with a surname that's also come up here as a potential Alistair match. So I think you're all on the right track! My boy Alistair matches would include Tristram, Duncan, Angus, Hamish, Ewan, Gavin. My girl list would DEFINITELY include Fenella (I'd use that spelling, which has more of the "masterpiece theatre" feel than Finola).
EVie, I think your analysis is spot on! Laura, I think this is the most fun ever! I too love how an individual sibling suggestion can approach different aspects of the niche one particular name occupies in namespace, but it's hard to hit all of the aspects simultaneously. As someone planning a bunch more kids, I obviously think this is fascinating! And I've noticed that even with just two kids, we've had hugely different responses to the name of our eldest son now that there's a younger sibling in the mix. Before, people invariably asked us "How did you come up with that?" and expected that we'd made up the name as a creative spelling hitting the starts-with-J, ends-with-n trend started by Jayden. Now people are asking "Where did you get that?" - much more correctly assuming that it's an obscure variant name that we sourced from somewhere, because if we'd been into de-novo creation we would not have named our second Rup3rt. I bet by the time we have more kids, everyone will place us firmly in Masterpiece Theatre space right away... though if we have a daughter named Hermione first, we'll be placed into Harry Potter space for a while next.
LauraV, I think you're right about that, but I always thought one of the advantages of the First Maiden-as-middle Last system is that you can be very flexible about whether you use or don't use the middle name in a particular context. I have my wife's maiden name in the middle slot and I use it much of the time, but not always. (If I had wanted to use it always, I would have hyphenated.) In fact, I thought Hillary Rodham Clinton was also alternately using and not-using the Rodham in there in different phases of her life/career.
PennyX, on Camille - I would tend to assume that a Camille was female when first encountering the name (at least in an American context)... and I think most people would, as Camille is only given to 5-ish American boys each year but to about 1100 girls. However, it's one of those things that would just need to be pointed out to me once for me to revise my mental script, and it would not be a big deal to me at all. My brother grew up with a very similar situation - his name is Jan, as in, the short form of Johannes, a European version of John (pronounced with a Y sound). After moving to the US at a very young age, though, on paper Jan is usually assumed to be a female name (as in Janet). He has always been one of the super popular kids and it never ever seemed to bother him: the occasional mix-ups (e.g. getting a pageant form in the mail) were only a source of great amusement. I never heard him express even the slightest dislike of his name... quite unlike my other brother, whose name is #1 in popularity. I think having a name only used for boys overseas gave that added "sexy European male" cachet of which you speak, actually. It does makes me think that a name like Camille on a boy really depends on the kid you have whether it works and is deemed really "cool" by his peers or whether you enter into "Boy Named Sue" category. I would in any case pair it with a very certainly-male middle name... this is not the time to embrace a Catholic heritage and throw Maria into the middle name slot for a boy. So, I do think it's useable... but I would solicit a lot more input from others who have more experience as growing up male with a mostly-female-useage name, since I think it could be much less comfortable than it was for my (very handsome, socially graceful) brother. I also wonder whether the newer proliferation of unisex names that stay in usage for boys might make it even easier for a male Camille or Jan now than it was growing up in the 1980s or earlier.
Hyz, you totally just beat me to posting that NYT article which I was coming to share. That exact quote is what raised my eyebrows, too... especially since they include women who keep their maiden name in the middle slot a la Hillary Rodham Clinton. In my social circle, I think it's a lot more than 6%, as per the different demographics discussion we had previously. Another NYT name article about expectant parents googling names and how it increases creative spellings to avoid unpleasant associations: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/fashion/google-searches-help-parents-narrow-down-baby-names.html?_r=1&emc=eta1
The Campbell story is vaguely relevant since the claim publicly being made by the Campbell family is that the children are being taken away solely based on the parents' naming style. However, that seems very much not to be the case according to the other individuals and government agencies involved (doctor, child protective services). I have been following it with interest because I think this family exemplifies the reason why many other countries (like, say Germany) have much more restrictions about what one can and cannot name your child... and while I'm generally a fan of the government staying out of personal decisions such as what children should be named, cases like this one start to make me question that stance. And Essy01, thank you SO much for making me aware of the Tollemache-Tollemache family! That is a truly spectacular sibset - so much to ponder!
Veering slightly off topic: On the Campbells, my bigger question is why they are using Hons in the first place. I've heard from news sources that Honszlynn Hinler is supposed to be a female version of Heinrich Himmler, Nazi leader of the SS. Given the blatancy of their other children's name homages (the far more well-known Adolf Hitler and Aryan Nation) I wondered why the namesake was so concealed in this case, especially reading here that Honszlynn is not the callname of their child. I wonder even more now that they decided to reuse the name for their fourth child. Granted, Heinrich is maybe not the most easy name to apply as-is to an American girl, but it's the German form of Henry and thus Henrietta would fit the bill... far more so than Honszlynn, which really only shares an initial and a number of syllables with Heinrich. And Himmler to Hinler is also bizarre. And if you want the name Hans because it's a common German name and it was certainly carried by some prominent Nazis, then why spell it Hons? It leaves me with the impression of distinct subliteracy, which is admittedly the most minor thing wrong with this family's naming style. And in general. ETA: Perhaps the Honszlynn H. is really just a reference to the fact that H. H. (and the number 88, as H is the 8th letter of the alphabet) is used as secret shorthand for Heil Hitler? I know this because there was a big brouhaha a few years ago about Walmart selling faux vintage jerseys with 88 as the number, which then kicked up a storm of Nazi-sympathizer analysis and the pulling of the items... but again, it seems odd to start being subtle and covert after naming your eldest Adolf Hitler. *sigh*
Clara Marilyn sounds good to me if it is the Clah-rah Marilyn pronunciation and not the Claire-uh pronunciation. And I was reasonably certain I was right about the composite photographs, and I was... but I suspect individual photographs would be much harder to pin down. I haven't made an account yet for taking the first quiz, but I will! Thanks!
Linnaeus beat me to it on Tesla: I would endorse it as a lovely name... for pretty much anyone with any other surname. I think it's totally non-doable for them, though. I like your alternates, especially Tycho. Galileo is I think useable -- could be Leo for short? And at least one celebrity thought Ptolemy was usable. And I think Odin and Thor are actually totally useable in my neck of the woods. Odin is a nice suggestion by ZR because I think it hits a lot of current trends (O, ends-in-n) but is still very much off the beaten track stylistically.
This is fascinating. I think to me the alliteration loss is the most satisfying solution, since I think it's totally bizarre for names to be changed when there is no compelling reason because the original name exists in the new language or has a clear obvious counterpart. And I love Spongebob Quadrilateral. And, belatedly, thanks to everyone for the congratulations from two threads ago. Rupert James and I are now finally home from the hospital. During our two weeks in the hospital we lucky to receive excellent care and also enjoy the company of some very well-named babies. Most striking was a little Eula. I asked the parents if it was short for Eulalia, and indeed, it was! What a delightful surprise! I really like it... very liquid and on-trend while delightfully vintage revival in feel. And in addition to Eula, which has a hipstery truncated-Beulah feel, there are other more blending-in nicknames as well. Great choice. We also received some good input on nicknames for Rupert, including an anaesthetisiologist who said he knew a Rupert who went by Rupaldo. We aren't nicknaming yet, but Rip might be an occasional just-by-me nickname and RJ seems to be the choice for the occasional nicknaming by the Spouse. I think Roo is also adorable in the baby stage. Lastly, I want to report that my mother, who had once pronounced Rupert as "such a stupid name" when I mentioned it years ago, actually guessed it in our baby betting pool (her second entry, first was Siegfried)... so needless to say she's totally thrilled with herself and the name and the chocolate she is receiving as a prize. So, I urge anyone in a similar situation who feel like a family member's thoughtlessly blurted-out comment might have ruined a name for them... just go ahead and give the name to the baby. All will have been forgotten when there's a tiny adorable person that the name is attached to.
I've encountered multiple little boys named Dutch, both formally named and nicknamed, and though it might be a local pocket phenomenon, I'd still lobby for its inclusion in the new edition!
Fascinating post! I had always wondered about the preponderance of shoes named Kate, so as a shoe person I'm delighted to see a quantitative treatment. I agree that the name choices are more apt when considered in the context of the collection. I'm also delighted to announce that I had a Rupert James last week! We had a stint in the NICU and special care nursery which is coming to an end, happily! It meant that we got a lot of feedback on his name from myriad medical professionals... Very few mentions of Mr Murdoch!
I just thought of another one that haunts me for DAYS after I encounter someone with the name: Dominique. I cannot escape the insanely catchy song by Sister Smile, but after some conversation with people outside my immediate family, this song is not as widely known as I thought it was (in which case: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHhyyRByuJ0). Anyway, I suspect Dominiques don't get regularly serenaded anymore, the way they probably did when this was a smash hit.
I think many song associations aren't quite as dominant as "Oh, Susanna" - a plethora of other associations, musical and non-musical, help dilute it. A friend once made me a mix-CD entirely consisting of Jennifer songs... so even though I've been occasionally serenaded with "Jenny, bright as a penny" or 867-5309'd, and my parents sing the Donovan song I was named after, it's very occasional and I always enjoy it. The one from Laura's list that is absolutely inescapable for me is Elvira (giddy up, oom pa pa mauw mauw). It doesn't hurt that I really love the song. Still, the thing that's keeping this name from being used is probably Elvira Mistress of the Dark and not the Oak Ridge Boys. It's a pity - I think it's a beautiful name. (My heart's on fiiiire, El-VI-rah!) I think that's the one that's going to be stuck in my head for the rest of the day (week). The one other song association that slams home the combination of rare name, dominant association and ear-wormishly catchy, singable song for me is Jolene. I had a student by this name and it took great restraint for me not to belt it out every time I was returning papers (Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Joleeeeeene... I'm begging of you please pick up yer exam). I'm sure she was mightily sick of it. I had such great fun when I found, thanks to the magic of the internet, ONE song with my son's super-obscure name, and I sing it to him alongside songs I make up about his name (great quality stuff with titles like "My Jolly Burrito"). I should do another iTunes search now for this baby due to make his arrival over the next few weeks! Oh, and I have a Donna for a mother-in-law and my brain still inserts "Donna e mobile" from Rigoletto sometimes, which is the rare belt-able opera aria. Along with the Dion and the Belmonts song. I've nobly kept both to myself, though, since they're not super-flattering in either case!
Re: Iris - I think Linnaeus hit the nail on the head. I like it a lot and think it's rather more fashionable than Lois and Doris and other -is names (which I should clarify I do like very much, but which have a more aggressive hipstery contrarian feel). I really like that Iris is a flower name that's not at all frilly in sound, as it's thus it's both sort of soft and also rather formidable. Hyz, about your poll: it's very different in different circles. Our post-high-school classmates (elitist college and grad school alike) tend to very overwhelmingly to keep their names, though not enough of them are sprogging up yet to be able to judge what's happening with the next generation. High school classmates: the ones who are conventional enough to consider marriage tend to have taken their husbands' names and passed those on to kids as well. Stay at home mom friends we've made locally through library activities: the vast majority took their husband's surname... some still additionally have their maiden name kicking around on email or facebook, though it's unclear if that's intentional. My over-extrapolation from our household's limited data seems to be that the more involved in out-of-home work women are, especially a more high-profile career rather than "just a job", the more likely they are to keep their name. So professional ambitions seem very tied to the decision to name-change or not, but it's obviously very unclear if it's causative or just correlated. EVie, I think dissecting out the "what do the two married people call themselves" issue from the "what do they decide to pass on to their kids" issue is a really good distinction. It's worth noting that in the case of our heterosexual friends who wanted to take a significant name from her family, they did NOT attempt to change their family names at time of marriage (rightly fearing backlash) and were instead planning to foist off the execution of the decision until their first child was born. Sort of, "While you're distracted by the excitement of this adorable wee first grandchild on all sides, we're all going to be the Newlastname family! Surprise!" And that alas did not work as intended. Keeping one's name seems to be very accepted and regarded as the norm in many of our circles, as mentioned above, but I think the kid surname being that of the father (if parents are married or even in a stable unmarried relationship) is very much the norm. Doing anything different raises eyebrows. The only person we know in which the kid of a married couple got the mother's surname was followed by a marital separation. To me it seems inevitable that one of the surnames must be jettisoned - if not at birth, then at the time when the kids are starting their own households, since one cannot continue exponentially adding on hyphens with each generation. However, I personally find it more pleasing when it's jettisoning for a reason of feeling more attached to one of the names (for aesthetics, for ease of use, for history, for personal connections, for rareness or commonness, whatever else) -- sort of a "let the best name win" rather than just an arbitrary expectation of "this name came with the person who had the Y chromosome" or "this name came with the person who had the mitochondria" for that matter. (That said, if a friend wants to abandon their lovely, rare, intuitively spelled, melodic maiden name to take a husband's vastly less attractive name, and to pass that name on to the kids, I do give unwavering support to that decision as well, because it is a personal decision to make... even if it means the children will face a lot of teasing due to sharing a surname with a very unfortunate body part.) Someone (ZR?) rightly pointed out that this makes genealogy more complicated, but I think the advent of the information age means future genealogists will be overwhelmed with searchable data... so an anything-goes culture being adopted now would not really overwhelmingly screw up the future research efforts. Or, failing that, you can just cut straight to the genome analysis aspects to retrace your roots. Focus on the patrilinial or matrilinial inheritance is really limiting anyway, because it only tells you about one of many thousands of ancestors at a certain point in time. To add to what Zoerhenne said: it CAN be pretty easy to just change one's name by court order in the US, but it can also be far more of a pain, depending on where one is located. I don't want to paint an overly rosy picture, as laws vary hugely from state to state (for example, sometimes you have to take out an ad in a paper for a prescribed span of time announcing the change first and there are long waiting periods). A lot also depends on the judge you get: some of them will happily sign off on your name change for any reason, and others won't. However, I do really appreciate the tremendous flexibility that the American system generally gives people to change their names, both first and last, to better suit them throughout their lives. I think it should be something that is not a huge hassle for anyone, regardless of the reason, so long as it is not to commit fraud (which we had to swear under oath, along with giving a reason for why we wanted to change our names). PennyX, I asked the Spouse some more about how she felt about having her mother's maiden name as a middle name growing up, and she says that she went through a period when she was little of wishing that she had a pretty first-namey middle name like all her friends, but then as a teenager she started to appreciate the distinctiveness more. As surnames-as-first-names become more super popular, though, I suspect that this distinction will be vastly less relevant, although I admit that your last name is not one that is going to be hitting the charts as a popular first name anytime really soon. Her not wanting to do the same with our own kids stems from finding her maiden name not particularly exciting, nor one that she felt very strongly attached to. Thus she felt that it would be giving a more meaningful middle name to chose a first name (honoring a particular family member rather than an entire lineage). She agreed, though, that in your situation passing on your last name WOULD be a very meaningful choice, and encourages you to stick your last name in one of the many available slots, either as a sole middle name, one of two surnames, or a second middle name. All of those slots have plusses or minuses, but I think they're all very workable, and as long as you accept that the name might be subject to jettisoning at some point down the line in your children's lives. One big thing that I'm getting out of this thread is that there's an infinitely large number of excellent possibilities for name choices throughout one's life and for one's kids, and my job as a parent is to support my kids in picking whichever of the myriad choices they decide works best for them in their new families. That means gracefully deferring to the fact that while I got to pick the birth name, there may likely be be future changes and that I should not imbue those changes with unnecessary family drama or have rigid expectations for what those changes should be.
Relating to what Beth said, it felt perhaps a little more important to us to change our names than it did to many of our peers who married members of the opposite sex, as a way in which we could establish ourselves as a family unit very unambiguously. It was one right of marriage that we could take on via a little bit of extra legal hassle (we just needed to get a court order to change the name in all areas of our lives rather than just brandishing a marriage license... and in our state the court-ordered name change process was quick and straightforward). But I definitely had always looked forward to having a family name someday for all the usual romantic notions, too, so I think that's really not the core reason we changed our names. The Spouse and I worked out a compromise wherein we took each others names, while avoiding hyphenation (which just was very unwieldy with our particular maiden names). She did what seems to be a very standard path in North America: took my last name and moved her maiden surname to the middle spot (replacing a middle name she wasn't very fond of). I did likewise: took her maiden surname to replace my previous middle names (to which I was fairly attached). In case that's confusing: Jessica Jane Jones and Sarah Susan Smith become Jessica Jones Smith and Sarah Jones Smith, with the option of using the full name or being Jessica J. Smith and Susan J. Smith. I use the full name name more frequently than she does (I think to showcase that I did in fact change my name, because I was really excited about that mark of establishing a household and family together), while she more frequently just collapses her maiden name to a middle initial. We're both very happy with the fact that we both have both names, but don't have to use them all the time (such as when having a behemoth of a name would be inconvenient). I had thought that we might want to give our kids the Spouse's maiden surname as a middle name as well, but she vetoed that idea... mostly I think out of not wanting to give up a naming slot, but also having grown up disliking having a family surname as a middle name, herself. Her maiden surname does have a long history as a male first name as well, and no objectionable meanings (thanks for enlightening me about Hollister!)... so it's usable as a first or a first-namey middle name for a son, but looking unlikely. We opted to use my surname as the new family name because it's rare (but with an intuitive pronunciation and straightforward spelling) and we have a strong connection to everyone with the name, both historically and today (there are maybe 50 or so people with our surname alive, worldwide). The spouse's maiden surname is very, very common (multiple linguistic origins leading to the same final name)... and paired with a top-ten-from-year-of-birth first name (for both of us), it becomes likely to encounter someone with the same first and last name at place of employment/educational institution/etc. The Spouse was pleased her married name is a unique identifier for authorship on articles, in a way that her maiden name was definitely not (even within her immediate area of expertise)... especially when you consider that many citation formats strip down to initials for first and middle names. Had we already been established professionally, rather than marrying just out of college, we'd have done the same but just kept using maiden names professionally. I think that the professional sacrifice of changing one's name is relevant though. The fact that women tend to marry younger than men across the board (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_at_first_marriage), and the younger one marries the less likely is to to have a career riding on their name, might also be a contributing factor to the fact that women are vastly more likely to change their names... but I think the traditional expectations are a much bigger part. I've written about this before, but I know heterosexual couple who wanted to take a died-out name from her family tree from a family member that she had been very close to. They'd regarded taking a family name from her side as a fair exchange for her religious conversion as a prereq for marriage. He was very excited about this plan; however, they ended up not going through with it due to large amount of fuss kicked up by his family. I very much wish that it were more of a free choice for men to make. In this case, the amount of negative backlash was so big that it was just not doable for them without creating major family drama. They kept their maiden/bachelor names. Their kid now has both of their surnames: mother's as the second middle name and father's as the official last name, which he described as the only compromise that would make everyone (in his extended family) happy. So, I think there are some very strong pressures for men to avoid doing anything more active with their surnames, even when they want to do so... and that strikes me as very unfair. In some (but not all) of our social circles, name changing for women can be perhaps slightly frowned upon sometimes as a bit old-fashioned, but it's certainly nothing that anyone would make a fuss about. When we announced the plan to change our names, we only got a token "women changing their names is an oppression of the patriarchy" comment from my mother-in-law... which we felt comfortable disregarding, especially given that there are no men whatsoever in our marriage. :) ETA: And I too agree with the historian husband's insight that both changing and keeping are patriarchal, and think he beautifully made the households vs lineages distinction. Further ETA: Also wanted to say that I really, really enjoyed this manifesto. We will keep it on hand to share with anyone who expresses dissatisfaction with someone else's choice to change their name, or someone who has had such disapproval expressed to them.