Couples find new names for marriage

NEWLYWEDS in America are “meshing” their names in an attempt to banish the sexism that comes when a woman takes her husband’s surname. Much as the tabloid newspapers have christened film stars Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes “Tomkat”, couples are opting to mix and match elements of their names as a sign of togetherness.

Gary Ruderman, 43, a playwright and architect, got married last year to Jodi Wilgoren, a writer for The New York Times. The couple now go by the name of Rudoren. Ruderman’s wife-to-be first raised the subject, saying that she would love to share his name but on an egalitarian basis.

“I have a lot of respect for Jodi so I considered it,” he said. “Some clients couldn’t wrap their heads around it, but very few people I talked to said, ‘Oh that’s stupid’.”

One friend teased Ruderman that “married life has taken the ‘man’ out of you” but even his parents came around to the idea. “They felt it was a little bit unusual, but I think they were just happy that, at 42, I was getting married,” he said. “My mother has taken to introducing me as her son Gary Rudoren.”

Jodi Rudoren, 35, ruled out hyphenation when her nephew pointed out that “our name wouldn’t fit on the back of a sports shirt”.

One name-meshing pioneer is Antonio Villaraigosa, the mayor of Los Angeles, who combined his name of Villar with his wife’s name of Raigosa in 1988.

“I was planning to take his name,” his wife Corina recalled. “But he said, ‘Really? But Raigosa is your name’.

“He said, ‘I’ve been thinking about it and why don’t we combine our names to make one name? If you are willing to take my name, I should be willing to take yours’.”

Villaraigosa recalled that “guys made fun of me” but the voters of Los Angeles have long since forgotten it.

The feminist custom of retaining one’s maiden name is going out of fashion. According to Claudia Goldin, an economics professor at Harvard University, the number of college-educated women in Massachusetts who kept their original name at marriage dropped from 23% in 1990 to 17% in 2000.

“It’s gone the same way as feminism,” Goldin said. “There has been a shift even among liberals towards more family-oriented values.”

Those who begin by hyphenating their surnames often give up, Goldin added: “They have these long names and then they have problems with the school district or the plumber. It gets too hard.”

My first thought was oh no, genealogy is hard enough! (I have a lot of ancestors named Unknown) Although, when I research in PR, it's very handy that the married women retain their maiden name and it gets added on to the childs name. .... voiceinthewind

For a single generation it is not a problem but what happens if this catches on and everybody changes or alters their surname every generation? .......... msnimje

In the Spanish system that voiceinthewind mentions, the surname is not "changed" with every generation. The surnames are merely expressed in combination in more formal situations such as when someone maybe called "Mary" or "Mary Ellen".

The "hyphenated surname" currently in vogue in the U.S. destroys both surnames and is a genealogical abomination. As msnimje, points out, it becomes unworkable after John Smith-Brown marries Joan Wilson-Parker and have a child named Tom Smith-Brown-Wilson-Parker who will later marry Karen Kowalski-Jacobs-O'Brain-Kelly who will produce John Smith-Brown-Wilson-Parker-Kowalski-Jacobs-O'Brain-Kelly.

The Spanish "first and second surnames used in more formal situations" system that voiceinthewind is talking about simply keeps the maternal Grandpa from being totally ignored, brings order into the chaos of a genealogy of multiple generations of Smiths each married to a Mrs. Smith and begetting more Smiths who marry other Mrs. Smiths, and, even 300 years later, keeps maternal Grandpa's surname in the picture.

By contrast, as I pointed out in Post 93, in the U.S. system, even the father of such a famous person as First Lady Laura Bush is as invisible as a Stealth fighter by the time his grandchildren are born.

In the Spanish system, the individuals in the marriages listed before would be referred to as follows:

In less formal situations, the father, son and grandon would be introduced as:

John Smith
Tom Smith
John Smith

In more formal situations and in official records, the father, son and grandon would be introduced and listed as:

John Smith Brown
Tom Smith Wilson
John Smith Kowalski

In the Bush geanealogy, in more formal situations, the father, son and granddaughter would be introduced and listed as:

George Bush Walker
George Bush Pierce
Jenna Bush Welch

The maternal surname therefore becomes a "tag" after the paternal surname such as Sr. or Jr. or III. In the Spanish system, there is no need to differente between five different "John Smiths" as each "John Smith" has his own different maternal surname tag. Therefore, in Spain, only Kings and Queens have Roman numerals after their names.

As you can see, the Spanish system keeps the surnames of the fathers of these two women in the public eye:

See my Post 93.

In my own genealogy, the Spanish system has been a fantastic help in documenting maternal lines from hundreds of years ago and determining where persons with the same first name and paternal surname fit into the genealogical tree.

Given the choice between passing on their surnames to their wives at the expense of their fathers-in-law and the choice of passing on their surnames to their daughters and their grandchildren in their daughters' families for centuries to come, the Spaniard chooses the latter option.

I once read about an American couple who lived in Spain for a few years and shared the same surname as in John and Mary Smith. Their neighbors kept telling the husband what a nice sister he had. :-)

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