Hyphenate your name?

[madanthonywayne]

If there's one thing that annoys me, it's women who hyphenate their names. I'm a doctor and as such must create charts which are then filed away in alphabetical order.

So Mrs. Jayne Gorden-Vangeroffson comes in for an exam. She writes her name on my form as Jayne Gorden-Vangeroffson. So we file her chart this way and then attempt to file her insurance.

But her vision plan has her listed as Jayne Vangeroffson and so the claim is denied. After several hours on the phone, my staff finally gets ahold of someone and they resolve the issue.

Then she gets pink eye and comes in for that. She identifies herself as Mrs. Vangeroffson this day. (When filing a hyphenated name, you're supposed to go by the first name of the two so she'd be filed under "G") My staff spends a long time looking all over the place but can't find her chart. We question her repeatedly about the file being listed under any other name, but she denies this and since she's been married for over ten years. Finally, we ask her if perhaps she hyphenated her name? Oh yeah, I think I did. So we finally find the chart right where it should have been.

I treat her and then try to file her medical insurance. Remembering the previous problem, we file under Jayne Vangeroffson. But her medical insurance has her as Jayne Gorden. More staff time wasted!!!!!!!

Please women, do not hyphenate your name. You will be creating nothing but problems for yourself and anyone who must deal with you. Doctors will not be able to find your chart. Insurance companies will not have you listed as a client. The list goes on.

If you want to keep your maiden name, keep it. Just tack the new name on at the end without a hyphen. Who gives a fuck if you have three or four names?

But please, no more hyphenated names!!!!!!!

[leopold]

go by the name on their birth certificates.
or.
go by the name on their marriage license.

either way enforce your rules.

[madanthonywayne]

go by the name on their birth certificates.
or.
go by the name on their marriage license.

either way enforce your rules.
Ah, but the insurance company won't necessarily follow my rules. Everyone is confused by hyphenated names. Mainly because few women hyphenate their names all the time. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

[one_raven]

I never liked it.
It comes off as pretentious to me.

[leopold]

Ah, but the insurance company won't necessarily follow my rules.
in that case the patient is responsible for the bill.

you could even put it in your disclaimer/ TOS that certain naming conventions apply at your office.

[madanthonywayne]

in that case the patient is responsible for the bill.

you could even put it in your disclaimer/ TOS that certain naming conventions apply at your office.
That is a good idea, to specifically ask the patient to list their name as it appears on their insurance card.

It is funny, in every office I've ever worked at from Indiana University to my current offices, no one can ever find charts belonging to women with hyphenated names.

Hell, women's charts in general are hard to find as their names change frequently with each marriage/divorce. For some reason my staff never thinks to ask if the patient might have had a different name at their last visit. I'll see them scurrying around like crazy trying to find a chart and say, "Did you ask if she might have had a different name or a hyphenated name at her last visit?" The answer is usually no.

So staff training would definitely help. But I fail to see a reason to hyphenate your name.

[Fraggle Rocker]

You people need to crawl out of our little American ghetto and go visit the other 90% of the world sometime to get some perspective. Hyphenated names are extremely common.

But what's also common is dual surnames that are not hyphenated. And they are not just for women. In Spain it's quite normal for a man to use both his father's and mother's surname--and the father's comes first. This is less common but nonetheless quite proper in most Spanish-speaking countries.

Sometimes they will write their name as Enrique Meseguer y Correa, sometimes as Enrique Meseguer-Correa. But you're just as likely to see it as Enrique Meseguer Correa. You're expected to know that Meseguer is a surname, not a Christian name. (They don't name their children Madison and Taylor like we do. Those are last names.) So you'd better not commit the faux pas of calling him Mister Correa! It's okay in informal speech to use only one surname, but its the father's name, the first one.

Arguably the most famous Spanish language writer in the world (actually one of the four or five most famous writers period, the sun is setting on English literature) is Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez. American newscasters continue to refer to him as Mister Márquez. That may have been okay fifty years ago when it was presumed that America was the center of the universe and we couldn't possibly be expected to master the conventions of other cultures, but it isn't okay any more.

Anyway, it's up to us computer people to make our stupid barely-functional virus-friendly user-hostile software conform to the real world, not vice versa. Millions of people have hyphenated names and it's not an affectation. It's reality. Software developers had better pull their heads out of their X-Boxes and pay attention.

It just isn't that difficult for a program to be designed to find Suzie Smith-Jones and Suzie Baker-Smith if you type in Suzie Smith, Suzie Jones, Suzie Baker, Suzie Jones-Smith, Suzie Smith-Baker, or Suzie Smith-Jones-Baker-Washington. It's called "requirements definition" and it's something that American software developers are proudly ignorant of. Draw a flowchart on the back of your Starbucks napkin then run back to your cubicle and start coding. Nonetheless, in places like Los Angeles County, where there are millions of people from other countries whose naming conventions are different, the municipal government software has no trouble finding people's records if they turn up in a public school, hospital, or sheriff's office, no matter how the clerk enters it. Computers are supposed to make stuff like that easy!

If you're software is so dysfunctional that it can't find something this easy, you should send it back for a refund. Or shoot the idiot programmer.

[Athelwulf]

If you want to keep your maiden name, keep it. Just tack the new name on at the end without a hyphen. Who gives a fuck if you have three or four names?

But please, no more hyphenated names!!!!!!!

I've toyed with the idea of a hypothetical culture whose naming convention is both patrilineal and matrilineal.

For example: John Doe and Jane Smith marry, but both John and Jane keep their last names. Then they have two kids together, a boy and a girl. The boy is named Bob Doe, but the girl is named Sally Smith.

In this hypothetical culture, there are (theoretically) no hyphenated names to speak of. What would you make a hyphenated name with?

The common practice in America is very patriarchal. This hypothetical practice is better. But then, this one is very biased towards heterosexual couplings. What if one day we can artificially combine two men's sperm or two women's eggs and get otherwise perfectly natural offspring? Two women could only possibly have a daughter; whose name would she take? And whose name would the son or daughter of two men take?

Possibilities, possibilities!

[original]

I've toyed with the idea of a hypothetical culture whose naming convention is both patrilineal and matrilineal.

That seems like a reasonable and sensible practice. But I don't think you'll have to worry about two males or two females producing offspring. Unless you include artificial insemination or adoption by a homosexual couple, in which case the donor's name would be needed... or not...?

[Athelwulf]

But I don't think you'll have to worry about two males or two females producing offspring.

You do if we develop the technology needed to combine gametes from two people of the same sex, as I explained in my post.


Unless you include artificial insemination or adoption by a homosexual couple, in which case the donor's name would be needed... or not...?

Who knows? I haven't thought that deeply about it.

[S.A.M.]

Its archaic for women to change their names after marriage.

[Baron Max]

The question that I have is ...when does it stop? And if it does stop, isn't that leaving someone's name out?

Baron Max "Jones-Smith-Carlotti-Bugatti-Winston-Harrelson-Benton-Jamison-Karlson-Carlson-Wainright-Adams-Greenway-Natanelli-Seymor-James"

[GeoffP]

There should be no last names. Everyone should take a geographic name.

Signed,
Geoff of Philadelphia

[Baron Max]

There should be no last names. Everyone should take a geographic name.

Signed,
Geoff of Philadelphia

And just how many "Geoff of Philadelphia"s do you think there'd be? As it is right now, matching names all over the nation is becoming a challenge for all kinds of record-keeping, etc.

Baron Max

[GeoffP]

Well, there's me.

I don't care about the rest. People keep too many records anyway.

[Baron Max]

Well, there's me.

I don't care about the rest. People keep too many records anyway.

So what ye're saying is that ye're too selfish and self-centered to consider the needs of any other people in the world? How does that feel?

Baron Max

[Athelwulf]

So what ye're saying is that ye're too selfish and self-centered to consider the needs of any other people in the world? How does that feel?

This is ironic. Or have you had a change of heart in the past month that I've been gone?

[one_raven]

Its archaic for women to change their names after marriage.

Bullshit.
The vast majority still do.

[spuriousmonkey]

Isn't american bureacracy a bitch?

In Finland you give your social and you don't need to hyphenate your name. Everything is automatically updated. There can't be any errors.

Saves everybody hours of work.

Socialism is progress.

[S.A.M.]

Bullshit.
The vast majority still do.

The concept not the practice.:)

[GeoffP]

So what ye're saying is that ye're too selfish and self-centered to consider the needs of any other people in the world? How does that feel?

Baron Max

Pretty content, actually.

Geoff of Philly

[one_raven]

Geoff of Philly

Geoff of Philly on South Street???

Holy SHIT!!:eek:

How have you been???

[Gently Passing]

Well, my wife never got around to doing either.

If I ever piss off enough people, though, I'll probably change my name to hers so that I can confuse and confound my countless enemies.

[madanthonywayne]

Its archaic for women to change their names after marriage.
Oh yes. It's terrible. Why should everyone in a family have the same last name? The horror!

Really, I don't care if a couple marries and uses the woman's last name or they both add the other's name to their name. Just don't hyphenate. It's a pain in the ass and creates these super long names and results in bureaucratic snafu's for the rest of your life.

PS I wouldn't take a women's last name myself. It seems unmanly. But if someone else wants to, no prob.

[one_raven]

My fiancee is trying to figure out what she is going to do when we get married.
Other than being honest and saying that I always thought the hyphenated names came off as pretentious, I did not lean either way (changing or not changing).
I have actually considered taking her last name when we get married.
It is a much cooler name than mine, plus I have always had a connection with my mother's side of the family and all but disowned my father's side, so I have little connection with the name I have.

The biggest question was if we both keep our own names, what name do we give our children - if we have any?
I personally don't think the concept of both husband and wife having the same last name is archaic at all - I like the idea of forging a new family unit, all with the same last name.

[S.A.M.]

I personally don't think the concept of both husband and wife having the same last name is archaic at all - I like the idea of forging a new family unit, all with the same last name.

I don't even see a reason to have a last name.

[Oli]

I don't even see a reason to have a last name.
Shortage of forenames? :D

[S.A.M.]

Shortage of forenames? :D

You still need a card with your picture and a ten-digit ID number to convince people of your actual presence on earth .:shrug:

[Oli]

Not in the UK (yet)...
Only required to prove that you're old enough to drink... (which, strangely enough, never gets queried with me). :D
And how would friends keep track of every one they had in common with the same name... process of elimination by going through events/ descriptions that separate ME from any other Oli?

[S.A.M.]

Not in the UK (yet)...
Only required to prove that you're old enough to drink... (which, strangely enough, never gets queried with me). :D
And how would friends keep track of every one they had in common with the same name... process of elimination by going through events/ descriptions that separate ME from any other Oli?

If you need a "process" of keeping track of friends with the same name, they are not friends.

[Oli]

You don't have more than one friend (okay, or acquaintance) with the same forename, with overlapping interests?

[Nickelodeon]

I get text messages from people sending crap to the wrong Nick. All the bloody time.

[S.A.M.]

You don't have more than one friend (okay, or acquaintance) with the same forename, with overlapping interests?

Several times, but we don't refer to them by their full names, we just give them nicknames.

[Oli]

I keep getting texts "My new number - Andy" I know FIVE Andys - three of them female...

[GeoffP]

Geoff of Philly on South Street???

Holy SHIT!!:eek:

How have you been???

Pretty good, actually.

Off to visit John the Oddsmaker's Son; should be back when the booth closes.

[Oli]

Several times, but we don't refer to them by their full names, we just give them nicknames.
And if you have a large circle of acquaintances a number of those have the same nickname... I know (personally) 3 Olis in my home town (but only mine spelt this way) and have heard of four-five others...

[Fraggle Rocker]

I've toyed with the idea of a hypothetical culture whose naming convention is both patrilineal and matrilineal.I've been told that they do that in Iceland. Back in the 1950s Icelandic tourists had trouble registering as married couples in American hotels when he was Knut Eriksson and she was Kirsten Frigasdottir.

[moonshadow]

Okay.here's the deal...My husband's former wife uses a hyphen (her maiden name 1st,married name last) BUT they are divorced. Is that common?She didn't hyphenate her name prior to being divorced.From what i've read,most of the people using a hyphen are married...and isn't the sole purpose of using a hyphen so that the person can keep their maiden name? Someone enlighten me!:rolleyes:

[Vkothii]

The problem of identification, for society, will be around until fingerprinting, retinal scans and DNA profiling become as ubiquitous as driver's licences and passports (in which case, the documents will become redundant).

In case you think "they" aren't on to this, check out what the latest video surveillance systems can do. Did you know everyone has a unique "walking profile"?

But with an individual identity that wouldn't be theivable any more, you could have a different name every day, or a whole string of names. You could collect names, and they'd be as meaningless as the shape of clouds in the sky.

[ang2223]

I have hyphened my ex-married name with my new married name for the sake of the kids.. i.e. at school they can call me Mrs. Davis (as my older kids mother) or Mrs Smith as my younger kids mother, makes it easier on the kids, although my new husband who isn't at the school as often as i am sure hates when a teacher calls him Mr. Davis.
But i have never had a clerical problem with it... i always say its hyphenated

[Fraggle Rocker]

Okay.here's the deal...My husband's former wife uses a hyphen (her maiden name 1st,married name last) BUT they are divorced. Is that common?She didn't hyphenate her name prior to being divorced. From what I've read, most of the people using a hyphen are married...and isn't the sole purpose of using a hyphen so that the person can keep their maiden name? Someone enlighten me!Women used to keep their maiden names as middle names, without the hyphen. Some were named at birth with their mother's maiden name as a middle name.

There's a Merriwether Post Pavilion around here where concerts are held, named after Marjorie Merriwether Post. Her father was C.W. Post, the millionaire who founded Post Cereals, and she inherited the company at 27 when he died in 1914. She didn't really want to give up that identity, so as she married and divorced a string of husbands she kept concatenating their names, dying in 1975 as Marjorie Merriwether Post Close Hutton Davies May. Yes, that E.F. Hutton, she was worth $250 million and her ten-acre estate in the toniest part of Washington DC is now a museum surrounded by a park.

But when you use a hyphen to concatenate two names, it becomes one and it will be alphabetized according to the first one. Therefore it's customary to put the married name first. If Suzie Smith marries Bobby Jones, she will generally prefer to be known as Suzie Smith Jones or Suzie Jones-Smith, so she can be found under her husband's name in the public records and the social register.

For your husband's former wife to call herself Suzie Smith-Jones, putting her maiden name first so it alphabetizes that way, is an insult to your husband's name and to your husband. Especially since she never used that name when she was married to him. I think you should both be aware of that. It's like saying, "Look at the trophy I picked up and then threw away when I got tired of it." If she's already had it changed legally it's probably too late to complain. If not, see a lawyer and perhaps you can get an injunction. But it will be difficult since in America people generally have the right to call themselves anything they want so long as it's not for a fraudulent purpose.

In Spanish-speaking countries, they don't use the hyphen. It's customary to put your father's name first and everybody just knows that. Nobel prizewinning Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez, the dean of the "magic realism" movement, is often called "Mr. Márquez" in the American press, when he is actually Mr. García.

[moonshadow]

My husband brought it to my attention.I never really put much thought into it before that.He was somewhat baffled by it...They did have a child together...but I think she's doing it for other reasons other than for the sake of the child.Maybe for some sort of "social status". I think it's wrong..Not because of the fact that they were once married,but just the ethics of it.It's pointless to me.Guess it means something to her.She and my husband don't have alot of communication,so he's not too comfortable asking her. I was just trying to get some sort of understanding of a possible reason.Thanks for your input.We will consider consulting an attorney.But I'm afraid it will be far more trouble than it's worth.:(

[shorty_37]

I hate when women do that too. If you are going to get married be prepared to lose your old name and take on your husbands.

[Fraggle Rocker]

I hate when women do that too. If you are going to get married be prepared to lose your old name and take on your husbands.It seems like an increasingly archaic convention. These days virtually all women have credit accounts and employee records in their own names, which despite (or perhaps because of) computerization often leave bits of trouble when they're changed. My wife, at age 60+ and after 25+ years of marriage, was sent an indignant letter by the IRS informing her that the name on her tax return--a name she had used since our wedding--was not the name of the owner of the Social Security Number she was using. You would not believe what the too-big-for-its-britches government and its shit-for-brains civil "servants" put her through, first to prove that she was indeed herself, and second to correct the error. Ever try to find your marriage certificate when you've been married for literally half your life?

More commonly, women have their own businesses and their own professional contacts, as well as contracts, advertising, and articles written about them. Considering how difficult it is to change your phone number and make sure everybody who needs the new one gets it, how difficult is it to tell those people that you've changed your name?

Also common, though unfortunate, is the reality that a huge segment of the female population will marry more than once. I would imagine that going through the rigmarole of a name change the second or third time is enough to make a woman question the importance of marriage. Considering the additional reality that after a divorce most children stay with their mothers, it's downright stupid that each new batch has a different surname. Perhaps it's time for a matronymic naming system.

Most importantly, in this post-feminist era, why in the goddess's name should a woman have to give up her surname when she gets married, but a man does not? If she wants to, well hey sure go for it; nothing wrong with a quaint little touch of tradition. But I've seen some sweet alternatives, including both spouses adopting the hyphenated name (must be some interesting discussions over whose goes first :)), and both spouses adopting a new surname they made up, to honor their joint entry into a new phase of their life.

I've also seen both spouses retain their original surname without a hassle. As one woman put it, "Which man's surname do you want anyway, your father's or your husband's? Why can't you have your mother's?"

In Iceland, people can take their father's name, their mother's name, or both. And it really is their father's or mother's name. They don't have surnames. They have names like Guðrún Mínervudóttir (Guðrún daughter of Minerva) and Heiðar Helguson (Heiðar son of Helga).

[nietzschefan]

Just don't change the fuckin name. Don't get Married. Let the kids pick their own second name when they are like 5 or something. I would have gone with something greek like "Kurpopolous". That's at least as annoying as those big hyphenated tongue twisters.

I guess I'm on the outside looking in on this. It's all ego.

[lucifers angel]

i've got a hyphenated name!

and so has my daughter and oldest son!!

the reason being, because i didnt want my family name to die when i got married! my sister didnt want to keep it so i did!

[shorty_37]

I would have gone with something greek like "Kurpopolous".

LOL HAHA........:p (sorry inside joke)

[Cardin]

"Hey honey, let's Google our name"

http://www.google.com/search?q=Jayne+Vangeroffson&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

[madanthonywayne]

Women used to keep their maiden names as middle names, without the hyphen.Really? That's what my wife did. I thought she'd come up with that idea on her own.

But when you use a hyphen to concatenate two names, it becomes one and it will be alphabetized according to the first one. Therefore it's customary to put the married name first. If Suzie Smith marries Bobby Jones, she will generally prefer to be known as Suzie Smith Jones or Suzie Jones-Smith, so she can be found under her husband's name in the public records and the social register.

For your husband's former wife to call herself Suzie Smith-Jones, putting her maiden name first so it alphabetizes that way, is an insult to your husband's name and to your husband.
I don't think most women know that. I don't think I've ever seen a woman hyphenate the way you describe. It would work a lot better, as we could then find the damned charts in the same place as the rest of the family.

PS Who resurrected this old thread?

[lucifers angel]

Really? That's what my wife did. I thought she'd come up with that idea on her own.

I don't think most women know that. I don't think I've ever seen a woman hyphenate the way you describe. It would work a lot better, as we could then find the damned charts in the same place as the rest of the family.

PS Who resurrected this old thread?

i have got hyphenated name and so has my daughter and oldest son, and we dont get any problems with it? perhaps you should all be looking at the people who work in offices who do the filing

[Fraggle Rocker]

Really? That's what my wife did. I thought she'd come up with that idea on her own.I haven't traced the history of the practice but the name of poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning popped into my head. I looked her up and verified that Barrett is her maiden name and she subordinated it to her husband's name about 150 years ago.
I don't think most women know that. I don't think I've ever seen a woman hyphenate the way you describe.Well maybe I'm wrong then, sorry. It's been decades since anyone I knew did it and I can't remember any names to Google. Besides, that might have been an iconoclastic practice from the feminist era.
It would work a lot better, as we could then find the damned charts in the same place as the rest of the family.That's for sure, but as I said it would be better if women retained their maiden names (as they do in Iceland) and their children took their surnames, since statistically they're more likely to remain with their mothers after the (statistically common if not >50% probable) divorce.
PS Who resurrected this old thread?MoonShadow did it. But she had a question that wasn't answered in the original discussion. Still, I need to keep an eye on this so others don't pop in and repeat what's already been said. Moderating Linguistics is rather easy since we don't get as much traffic as Human Science or World Events, so I'd better do a really good job of it. :)
i have got hyphenated name and so has my daughter and oldest son, and we dont get any problems with it? perhaps you should all be looking at the people who work in offices who do the filingOkay, so you're the experimental data point. Which name comes first? These days the records are virtual so you have to blame the programmers who wrote the sort algorithms.

[madanthonywayne]

I haven't traced the history of the practice but the name of poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning popped into my head. I looked her up and verified that Barrett is her maiden name and she subordinated it to her husband's name about 150 years ago.I think that is the best way to handle it. Just add the husband's name to the end, no hyphen. Hyphenated names are a pain in the ass even to pronounce.

Besides, that might have been an iconoclastic practice from the feminist era.Hmm. I wonder if that's it. Maybe they switched the order back in the sixties to show how independent they were.


That's for sure, but as I said it would be better if women retained their maiden names (as they do in Iceland) and their children took their surnames, since statistically they're more likely to remain with their mothers after the (statistically common if not >50% probable) divorce.I don't think that idea will ever catch on. You might notice that most women who have children by multiple men seem to give each child the last name of the various fathers despite the fact that she was never married to the any of them.

One of my offices used to be on the South side of Chicago. Often times the only way you could tell that a bunch of patients coming in were in the same family was by the phone number. They all had different last names.

I think women do it to emphasize to the man his relationship/responsibiliity to the child. Raising a child is a lot of work and is an expensive process. Unlike women, men have the option of skipping out and avoiding responsibility. When the child(ren) have the man's name, he's probably much more apt to take responsibility for them.

[CutsieMarie89]

My mother kept her maiden name and just added my fathers last name to hers. That way everything that she had in her name before they were married which wasn't much she could still be identified. She goes by both, but she just has to remember what name is used where and she usually does. I don't plan on getting rid of my name, I don't see why I should. Children should take there mother's name anyway because you always know who the mother is but the father is anybody's guess.

[Pandaemoni]

In the information age, I am surprised to learn that computer technology has not solved the "I can't find the file for Mrs Gozer-Gozarian" problem. Sure the answer is an electronic index that has her listed in multiple locations in the database and will tell you under what name her charts are physically filed.

[madanthonywayne]

In the information age, I am surprised to learn that computer technology has not solved the "I can't find the file for Mrs Gozer-Gozarian" problem. Sure the answer is an electronic index that has her listed in multiple locations in the database and will tell you under what name her charts are physically filed.Most doctor's offices still have paper charts. They might do the billing electronically, but the actual exam is put down on paper.

Children should take there mother's name anyway because you always know who the mother is but the father is anybody's guess.Which is exactly why the children should carry the father's name if you expect him to support them.

[CutsieMarie89]

Carrying someone's name doesn't make them stick around. If your father hits the road and becomes a dead beat then having his name won't make him feel inclined to connect with you.

[moonshadow]

Sorry to have "dug up old bones" ie resurrected! I simply googled the words,_hyphenated names_ and this is where it led me.Since it's new to me,I'm finding the responses and comments quite interesting:)

[madanthonywayne]

Sorry to have "dug up old bones" ie resurrected! I simply googled the words,_hyphenated names_ and this is where it led me.Since it's new to me,I'm finding the responses and comments quite interesting:)Interesting. Why did you google "hyphenated names"?

[lucifers angel]

I haven't traced the history of the practice but the name of poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning popped into my head. I looked her up and verified that Barrett is her maiden name and she subordinated it to her husband's name about 150 years ago.Well maybe I'm wrong then, sorry. It's been decades since anyone I knew did it and I can't remember any names to Google. Besides, that might have been an iconoclastic practice from the feminist era.That's for sure, but as I said it would be better if women retained their maiden names (as they do in Iceland) and their children took their surnames, since statistically they're more likely to remain with their mothers after the (statistically common if not >50% probable) divorce.MoonShadow did it. But she had a question that wasn't answered in the original discussion. Still, I need to keep an eye on this so others don't pop in and repeat what's already been said. Moderating Linguistics is rather easy since we don't get as much traffic as Human Science or World Events, so I'd better do a really good job of it. :)Okay, so you're the experimental data point. Which name comes first? These days the records are virtual so you have to blame the programmers who wrote the sort algorithms.


my husbands name comes first, and no one has problems with it, i make sure that people know that they have made a mistake (on the odd occassion it does happen) and they correct it!

[Fraggle Rocker]

In the information age, I am surprised to learn that computer technology has not solved the "I can't find the file for Mrs Gozer-Gozarian" problem. Sure the answer is an electronic index that has her listed in multiple locations in the database and will tell you under what name her charts are physically filed.Unfortunately we're a long way from software technology being as reliable as plumbing technology. (If your toilet worked as well as Windows you'd run from the room carrying a plunger every time you flushed it.) You can do most of a plumbing project by walking into a store and picking your components out of a parts bin. On a software project you have to custom-build all the modules, even if a thousand other software engineers have needed modules that perform the same function. If you need a module that can find a name regardless of whether it's a surname, a middle name, or either component in a hyphenated name, you have to:Write and review the specifications, Design and review the end-user interface (menus, commands, mouse clicks, PF keys, scrolling, display format, etc.), Design and review the logic, Create test data that covers every possible combination of live data (not just every combination you can think of), Unit-test the module, Integration-test the whole system, And finally let the end users test it to see if they can understand it.This is equivalent to having to build every fitting in your plumbing by alloying the metal, rolling the pipe to the right diameter, measuring and cutting it to the right length, bending it to the right curvature, flaring the ends as needed, and cutting the threads. All the while hoping that you're accurate enough that the pieces fit together. Imagine how hard it would be to get anything built right! Software usually fails due to incomplete or inconsistent specifications, incomplete test data, end users saying, "I know that's what I asked for but it's not what I wanted," and programmers spread too thin by still fixing the bugs in the last system they (or worse yet, somebody else) built.

Every patient-identification system has a name-lookup function, but software functions don't yet fit together in a uniform standard way like plumbing elbows, so each one has to be custom alloyed, rolled, measured, cut, flared, threaded, and fitted.

We call it "software engineering" but it's really a medieval guild craft (at best) or a black art (at worst). It took centuries for standards and modularity to emerge in plumbing, and the same fate awaits software.
Carrying someone's name doesn't make them stick around. If your father hits the road and becomes a deadbeat then having his name won't make him feel inclined to connect with you.Yes, there was a rock song a couple of years ago with the line, "All my daddy left me was his name." I think it was by Puddle of Mudd.

[moonshadow]

Why do most people google anything? Hmmmmm. Might be because they are interested,or want to know more about something they know little about.:rolleyes:

[madanthonywayne]

Why do most people google anything? Hmmmmm. Might be because they are interested,or want to know more about something they know little about.:rolleyes:Well, obviously. The question was more along the lines of what made you interested in the subject of hyphenating your name.

The first time I came to this site, for instance, I had googled Stargate after having seen a particulary good episode.

[moonshadow]

Read my posts.....the origin.the reasoning...everything you need to know in the first 2 posts..:p

[Fraggle Rocker]

Here's the original post.
Okay.here's the deal...My husband's former wife uses a hyphen (her maiden name 1st,married name last) BUT they are divorced. Is that common?She didn't hyphenate her name prior to being divorced.From what i've read,most of the people using a hyphen are married...and isn't the sole purpose of using a hyphen so that the person can keep their maiden name? Someone enlighten me!:rolleyes:

[moonshadow]

Thank you Fraggle Rocker:D

[Asguard]

Mad here's a solution

Move to Australia and bill her under her medicare number:D

[madanthonywayne]

Here's the original post.
Yeah, I remember reading it now. When she made the comment about having revived the thread after a google search I forgot about her earlier post.

[adk_cigno]

At the risk of being accused of beating a dead horse...
I think that the issue with the hyphenation of a married woman's name is personal. Women will make their own decisions on this subject, and are warranted in doing so, particularly in the case of a professional history. I do, however, have a bit of a problem with the hyphenation (or double naming) of children. There are, clearly, a number of clerical and social confusions that are party to this issue, but I speak from personal experience as the wife of a hyphenated child (now adult). I am now a hyphenated wife with two names that do not "belong to me." I chose to take my husband's name for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that I guess I'm a little traditional at heart. I also changed my middle name to my maiden name, which (at least in the south) is a very common practice. The problem now is that many people, in fact most people, assume that I have decided to hyphenate, and thus that one of those names is my maiden name, when I was born with neither. This bothers me on several levels. One, it is a nuisance to be constantly explaining my name, both because people don't seem to know how to handle a hyphen, as this discussion has pointed out, and also because people assume they know my maiden name (and I think we all know what happens when you assume something). Two, though I chose to take my husband's name, this hyphenated name takes the removal of my own family name a step further. Let me see if I can explain. When someone meets Mrs. Smith, he or she might conclude that Smith is not this woman's maiden name. He or she would know that she has one, but not what it is. However, when someone meets Mrs. Smith-Jones, he or she may conclude that Smith (or Jones) is the woman's maiden name. If this is not the case, (as in my situation) it is almost as if the woman's identity is not merely unknown (as in the case of a single name) but erased and replaced by something else entirely. Maybe that seems melodramatic, but I think we know how emotional people are about their names and connections to them. I am perfectly okay with taking my husband's name and letting people know that we are a family, even though I do lose some outward expression of my birth name, but I don't like the idea of having it replaced with a wrong name. Does that make sense?

[bnjsaldua]

If 'Olivia Newton John' married Wayne Newton, but Wayne died so she married Elton John,
would she change her name to: Olivia Newton John-Newton-John?!

[Orleander]

I don't know why they hyphenate their name either. Just keep your own last name or not. My sister-in-law hyphenated her name because of professional reasons. She was a cashier at K-Mart :wallbang:

[Fraggle Rocker]

I don't know why they hyphenate their name either. Just keep your own last name or not.In some cultures it's the norm for children to inherit both parental surnames and to arrange them in a standard sequence. So everyone understands that Nobelist author Gabriel García Márquez's father was named García and his mother was named Márquez.

But in cultures like ours that is not the norm. If a woman tells me her name is Jane Ross Smith, I will assume that Ross is her middle name, not that Ross and Smith are her parents' names, or her father's name combined with her husband's name, or whatever. She needs the hyphen to make it clear that her name should be alphabetized under R instead of S. We recognize foreign prepositions such as de and van as part of a surname, but otherwise we assume that the surname is the last discrete set of characters in the apellation.
My sister-in-law hyphenated her name because of professional reasons. She was a cashier at K-Mart.Maybe she felt that having a noble-looking name would make the other employees think she was just a rich girl doing a hands-on project for her PhD in anthropology at Wellesley.

[wynn]

In some cultures it's the norm for children to inherit both parental surnames and to arrange them in a standard sequence. So everyone understands that Nobelist author Gabriel García Márquez's father was named García and his mother was named Márquez.

What about Gabriel Garcia Marquez' children?

Wiki says he married Mercedes Barcha Pardo, and their children are named Rodrigo García Barcha, Gonzalo García Barcha.

This still suggests a patrilineal naming system; the grandchildren omit the names of their grandmothers, but keep the names of their grandfathers.

[Fraggle Rocker]

What about Gabriel Garcia Marquez' children? Wiki says he married Mercedes Barcha Pardo, and their children are named Rodrigo García Barcha, Gonzalo García Barcha. This still suggests a patrilineal naming system; the grandchildren omit the names of their grandmothers, but keep the names of their grandfathers.Yes, each child is given only the first component of his father's compound surname and the first component of his mother's compound surname. Since the father's name always comes first, this indeed results in patrilineal naming. Not much of a surprise in Latin cultures!

America has no traditions about naming, so women (or anyone else) who want to compound two surnames can do it any way they want. In fact, upon marriage, women have considerable leeway in renaming themselves without having to petition a judge to approve it. There is even considerable leeway in naming children: Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher could name their daughter Kesha Sawyer, Kesha Thatcher, Kesha Sawyer-Thatcher or Kesha Thatcher-Sawyer. (As I noted earlier, I strongly recommend the hyphen if you want your child to be alphabetized under a compound name, otherwise the first half is likely to be regarded as a middle name and she'll spend her whole life arguing with computers.)

If you yearn for a society in which matronymics and matrilineal ancestor tracking are condoned and respected, Iceland is waiting for you. But if you stay here, they are at least permitted. ;)

[madanthonywayne]

, I strongly recommend the hyphen if you want your child to be alphabetized under a compound name, otherwise the first half is likely to be regarded as a middle name and she'll spend her whole life arguing with computers.)
Well, it might be alphabetized that way, if the person or computer program doing the filing knows that rule; but It's just as likely that it will be miss filed and lost forever.:cool:

[nothanks]

Technology and insurance companies: This is not a hard problem to fix. Get with it.

People who think it's "pretentious" or stupid: This is not 1623. Keeping your name or hyphenating is not a big deal (cuz you know, men almost always "keep" their names) and it's a person's choice--or not, if they are given the names by their parents.

/circa 2006 thread

[Fraggle Rocker]

Technology and insurance companies: This is not a hard problem to fix. Get with it.I beg to differ. If your name is Shawanda Buffett Gomez, how can I, or my computer, possibly know whether Buffet is your middle name, or Buffett Gomez is your surname? Sure, we can maintain a database of all known surnames... and the next thing you know, people are christening their sons Washington Irving and their daughters Taylor Dayne. Their own children, as is typical in anglophone cultures, are given venerable old family names as middle names, and within the next generation or two we have Joseph Washington Irving and Amanda Taylor Dayne. There's no way for me or my computer to figure out how to parse that.

Oh wait, there is. It's called the hyphen.

Of course every culture is different. In Spanish-speaking countries it's frowned upon to use a surname as a Christian name; and it's common for children (especially male children) to be christened Christian name followed by father's surname followed by mother's surname with no hyphen; AND it's both customary and legal for the the two surnames to be parsed as a single name with an embedded space. So if you see Morales anywhere in the name of a person from Barcelona or Bogota, you can be sure it's part of his last name.

In America and the rest of the anglophone world, we cannot make any of those assumptions. If you want to call yourself Patricia Taylor Jones, and you want both people and computers to regard T as the first letter of your surname, then you had better use the bloody hyphen. Either that or call yourself Patricia Jones Taylor!

This is why most American women who change their name to their husband's surname (let's say Bigboy for this example) when they marry, but want to hang onto their maiden name (let's say Famousattorney for this example) so colleagues can recognize them, spell their new name in one of four ways:Rebecca Bigboy Famousattorney Rebecca Famousattorney-Bigboy (both of these result in them being collated under their maiden name Rebecca Bigboy-Famousattorney Rebecca Famousattorney Bigboy (both of these result in being collated under their husband's name)
Keeping your name or hyphenating is not a big dealCertainly not these days, although it was much rarer in anglophone countries two or three generations ago. But in a culture that is both bureaucratized and (now) computerized, gigantic databases containing millions of names are common, and you appear in hundreds of them. Many of them are vital to your well-being, such as (in America) the Social Security database.

It's now not just wise, but for all practical purposes (unless you're an influential billionaire) inescapable, that you have no choice but to conform to the conventions of our collation rules. The group of letters following the last space in your name will be regarded as your surname. Period. No exceptions. You can't argue with a zillion computers. Choose your battles wisely, and fight the ones that you have a realistic chance of winning. This is not one of them. (Yes there are exceptions. We recognize prefixes that are common in non-English names, such as De, Di, Van, Van Der, Von and Von Den, and some of our computers recognize those prefixes and collate them with the surname. But not all of them! I have a friend named Rip Van Winkle--name changed to protect the innocent--and his bank records all insist that he is Mr. Winkle.)

When we got married in 1977, my wife dithered about how to write her new name. So she has received paychecks made out to Sweetiepie Oldname, Sweetipie Fraggle, Sweetiepie Fraggle Oldname, Sweetiepie Fraggle-Oldname, Sweetiepie Oldname Fraggle and Sweetiepie Oldname-Fraggle. When she turned 65 she filed for Social Security benefits. Does anyone want to guess how many times she had to go to the Social Security Administration office in person, how many different people she had to explain this to (from the beginning), and how many weeks, months or years it took before she got her first check?
(cuz you know, men almost always "keep" their names)In Iceland it's the rule, rather than the exception, for women to keep their names after marriage. Back before the Sexual Revolution this was often a stumbling block for couples registering in hotels in less enlightened countries.

It's also quite common in Iceland for women to be named matronymically: Solveig Kristinsdottir rather than Solveig Ericsdottir. Men who are the sons of prominent women often take a matronym: Jorgen Kristinsson rather than Jorgen Ericsson. The "modern" system of passing a surname down through multiple generations is starting to catch on in Iceland, especially if one is descended from a famous historical figure, but the old ways are still widely practiced.
it's a person's choice--or not, if they are given the names by their parents.In some jurisdictions in the United States, marriage gives a woman an opportunity to completely change her name. If you're Suzy Smith and you marry John Jones, you don't necessarily have to become Suzy Jones (or Suzy Jones-Smith or any of the other permutations). You can become Suzy Flowerbud or Suzy Givepeaceachance. You could even become Moonbeam Harvest Celebration, if the judge is in the right mood.

It's usually much harder for a man to take a new name, even just a surname. The judge wants to make sure you're not trying to escape from an old life and elude creditors or criminal charges, and he doesn't even want you to take a frivolous name, thinking (with some justification, to be fair) that you'll wake up one day and regret it.

When legendary rock musician Frank Zappa's first son was born, he and his wife Gail named him Dweezil. Their other children are Moon, Ahmet and Diva, so this was not a passing fancy. The hospital refused to allow that name on one of their birth certificates, so the Zappas wrote Ian Donald Calvin Euclid Zappa to give their recordkeepers a headache, and continued to call the boy Dweezil. When he turned five and began to read and to understand the world around him, he discovered that his name of record was not Dweezil, and demanded that this be rectified. The family hired a lawyer, the judge listened sympathetically to the boy's passionate argument, and changed his name.

[GeoffP]

Wish I had a von Den in my name. Could have been nice to be a tempestuous baron in a lighting-relief castle somewhere in a misbegotten reach of the Alps. One could ride horses and shoot peasants. I don't know.

[Fraggle Rocker]

One could ride horses and shoot peasants.Well... maybe pheasants, anyway.

[EmilyC-D]

First of all, it is not pretentious for someone to obtain two last names. For some people, the mother decided to keep their last name. Therefore, the kid gets both- legally this is what's appropriate. Secondly, you are doctors, so it shouldn't be that hard to understand you simply file the name under the FIRST letter that appears in the last name. You're obviously smart enough, so I call it lazy on your part to not file it properly and also lazy on your part to not educate the people who don't understand; just plain ignorance. This is the kind of judgment hat has us in this economic state. So, buck up and find some real problems to talk about.

[Fraggle Rocker]

Secondly, you are doctors, so it shouldn't be that hard to understand you simply file the name under the FIRST letter that appears in the last name.In the USA there are several problems that bear on this issue.The distinction between a surname and a given name in our population is not obvious. If a Spaniard is named Juan Pedro Molina, everyone knows that Pedro is a given name so that must be his middle name. Converselly if a Bolivian is named Jorge Acuña Guzman, everyone knows that Acuña is a surname so that must be the first half of his two-part last name. But if an American is named Loquatia Hoxha Dimitriadis we have no idea if any of those are given names or surnames, so we might alphabetize her under either H or D. Furthermore, in America it's common for venerable old surnames to be given as middle names or even first names, to both boys and girls. Many people are given the complete names of historial figures as their first and middle names. So if you meet a man named George Washington Carver, is Washington his middle name, or is Washington Carver his two-part last name? I used to work with a fellow named Franklin Delano Roosevelt Green. I'm sure somewhere on the boundary between the Northern and Southern states there's a couple with roots on both sides of the Maxon-Dixon line who wryly named their son Thomas Jefferson Davis. Therefore, in the USA, the only way to clearly identify a two-part last name is to hyphenate it. George Washington-Carver goes under W, but George Washington Carver is under C. Unfortunately this custom has not been established. Old British families with double-names usually hyphenate them, but new American families don't. As for women who combine their name with their husband's name: they have way too many things to think about during their wedding planning, to even realize that they have a choice to make regarding the hyphen. Of course computer software makes this choice for us now, as it does in so many other areas. It works back from the final letter in the name until it hits a space, and defines that block of letters as your surname. If it encounters a hyphen it keeps going. It's that simple and it's easy to understand and remember, but it doesn't make a lot of people happy. Of course these programs have all been given the logic to recognize common prefixes like Van, de, von, di, etc., and they include those in the surname, space and all. This is so ironic that it makes linguists laugh. In the countries where those names originate, the prefix is most often not counted when alphabetizing the name!
You're obviously smart enough, so I call it lazy on your part to not file it properly and also lazy on your part to not educate the people who don't understand; just plain ignorance.I hope that now perhaps you will understand that it has nothing to do with laziness or ignorance. It has everything to do with convention, and since two-part surnames were rare in the USA until the 1960s and the civil-rights-for-women movement, we have never established a convention for writing and sorting them.
This is the kind of judgment that has us in this economic state.Nonetheless as one of the oldest people here, I went to college when they didn't offer "remedial English" to incoming freshmen. If your reading, writing, speech and comprehension weren't at what we called "the high school graduate level" in those days, then the colleges simply told you to join a union and go get a lucrative blue-collar job. So I certainly join you in lamenting the trend toward illiteracy in my people. Today's average university graduate reads at what my generation called the sixth-grade level. And this is not a swipe at our expanding immigrant population, many of whom have better reading comprehension than some of my native anglophone brothers and sisters.

Fortunately the Information Age is changing that. Americans spend half their time typing and reading messages, so their literacy level is rising--even if they have a new language called Texpeak that requires a lot of cutesy abbreviations. But unfortunately the spread of computers has ruined their numeracy. Today they can't make change for a dollar without a POS terminal.

It's the latter phenomenon to which you refer, perhaps without realizing it. These people, who have no intuition regarding basic arithmetic, much less orders of magnitude, and goddess forbid anything to do with probabilities, have risen to positions of power, even within the financial sector. It was they who believed their own propaganda about the subprime mortgage and didn't recognize it as just the latest form of Ponzi Scheme. It was they who are responsible for the 2008 economic collapse. and they still don't know it!

Regarding my comment on being completely flummoxed by probability, why else are they spending trillions of dollars to fight terrorism, which kills about the same number of Americans as peanut allergies, while almost ignoring the scourge of drunk driving, which kills fifty times as many of us and would be much cheaper to address? (Install a breathalyzer igntion interlock in every car at the factory.)
So, buck up and find some real problems to talk about.Hey hey, this is the Linguistics subforum after all. This is what qualifies as a "real problem" over here. If you want to talk about the threats of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, global warming and nuclear holy war, we've got other subfora for all of that stuff. People come here to sit with their dogs in their laps, munch on chocolates, listen to Mozart or Sheryl Crow, and argue about the role of the pluperfect subjunctive. (And please don't share the chocolates with the dogs. Theobromine is an elixir for humans but it's poisonous to dogs and occasionally kills one.)

[Fraggle Rocker]

UPDATE

In today's "Ask Amy" advice column, a woman wrote in who has been married for 18 months, and she is still changing her name on various records. She wishes she had kept her maiden name. She advises every woman who is faced with this decision to:Open your purse or wallet and list every card in it. List every one of your online shopping accounts. List every professional, personal and social organization you belong to. Review your bank accounts. Identify the vendors for every bill you find. Finally, collect every legal document you have, for your home, car, insurance, etc.This is the number of companies, people and government agencies you will have to contact if you decide to change your name. And you can bet that a few of them will get it wrong!

Yet ironically, in a previous column, Amy Dickinson reported that more and more American women prefer to change their names after marriage. In the 1990s, 23% of them kept their maiden names, but in the 2000s only 18% did.

[NietzscheHimself]

Only 18 months? Wait a couple years when people you don't want to contact call asking your old name. Pretty handy.