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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!watmath!saquigley
From: saquigley@watmath.UUCP (Sophie Quigley)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.kids
Subject: What's in a name?
Message-ID: <6816@watmath.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 7-Feb-84 23:40:40 EST
Article-I.D.: watmath.6816
Posted: Tue Feb  7 23:40:40 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 9-Feb-84 22:44:39 EST
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 51

I too, have been thinking about the issue of non-sexist last names for children
for many years and have come up with many solutions, only one of which I find
relatively satisfactory.

For a while I considered using concatenation of the parents names.  This is
however ignoring the issue as the child will not be able to give both names
to his/her children, so some names will have to be dropped along the way.

Next, I considered assigning names by sex: let all girls take the mother's
name and all boys the father's or vice versa.  This has the problem that if
one doesn't have an equal amount of children of each sex, then one parent
is slighted.
The next solution is to alternate.  The problems with this are
1/ deciding which name to start with.
2/ inequalities caused by having an odd number of children, which will
	be exarcebated if the couple intends (like me) to have only one
	child.
These last two solutions also have the problem that siblings will not have
the same last name.

The last solution I have thought of, and the one I hope to implement one day,
is unfortunately the most complicated legally: make up a new last name for
the children.  This can be done either by somehow mixing the two last names
of the parents, or creating a brand new name.  This has the problem that
children do not have the same name as their parents, but with the state of
marriages nowadays, quite a few don't anyway.  I think it is a nice solution
because it gives children their own identity.  It also gets rid of these
silly attitudes we have about "blood" relationships, the importance of
"carrying on the name", and so on.  It makes us think of our children less
as our posessions, but more as individuals who are more than mere extensions
or replicas of ourselves.
This will, of course, also greatly diversify the repertoire of names, eventually
simplifying the task of looking up people in a phone book (assuming people have
enough imagination)

PS:  I have read recently of a couple in the States who arrived at the same
conclusion.  They had to fight their case in court, but eventually won, so the
precedent is made.  Go for it!

PS:  In Sweden, they have had many problems for years with too many people
having the same last names.  Apparently, the concept of last names was 
introduced very late in that country, so almost everybody ended up with
the very banal name of sson, (i.e son of ), where
the choice of s is not very diversified:  There are currently
4.9% of the population called Johansson, 4.7% Andersson, 4.2% Karlsson,
3.0% Nilsson, 2.3% Eriksson, other favorites are Larsson, Olsson, Persson,
Svensson, Pettersson, Gustavsson, Jonsson, Jansson, Hansson capturing 14.0% of
the market.  (figures courtesy of my swedish boyfriend (a Karlsson) who is very interested in swedish trivia)
The Swedish government, realising how this is the source of many bureaucratic
confusions, have a program encouraging people to change their last names,
hopefully inventing new ones.  So if the Swedes do it, it must be right!