•This can particularly be the case for parents whose children will grow up in a country different to their own.
• Will people with newly invented surnames feel less of a strong historical tie to their own names, and therefore be less motivated to pass it on to their child?
Image: COURTESY
When Nerea Safari, 38, became a parent for the second time, she knew she wanted to do things differently. Her first child, by then a teenager, took their father’s last name. But she had other ideas for her new-born daughter.
“There were two first names that I really liked, and I couldn’t choose between them when looking to name my youngest daughter,” she said. “So, I decided to use one of the names as a surname.”
For Safari, the decision to create a new surname was an easy one. She ended up choosing the surname ‘Kimani’, which has Kenyan origins. Safari, who is British but has Kenyan heritage, says the name was a perfect way of honouring her family history; she loved the fact that the word means ‘warrior’.
Her partner was relaxed about the idea, and she feels strongly that as society changes, so too should the way we think about what we pass on to our children.
Within her family, she adds, the decision wasn’t a particularly strange one. Her own surname was also created for her; she feels having a different surname from her parents gives her a strong sense of identity.
Although Safari is far from the only parent going against convention in this way, her decision is still something of a rarity. A reported 96% of heterosexual married couples in the US still give their child the father’s name, and in the UK – where Safari lives – around 90% of straight women still take their husband’s name when they marry, many of whom pass it onto their child.
Still, there’s no longer a wholly default option when it comes to picking a surname. Some parents are taking new routes – whether that means hyphenating parents’ surnames, naming a child after just one of the parents or coming up with a new name altogether.
But these creative approaches are not always without hiccups.
Bucking convention
For most of Western history, parents didn’t have to give much thought to a child’s surname – women would take their male partner’s name when they married, and this would then be passed onto their offspring. But the fact most people still choose to follow the patriarchal tradition suggests how deeply rooted this social norm is.
“Defaults are powerful,” says Matt Wallaert, an applied behavioural scientist, who studies how pressures like identity change people’s behaviour. “I doubt that every child that has their father’s surname does so because their parents carefully considered the action – they simply did what was cognitively easiest.”
However, the changing landscape of families is increasingly disrupting this ‘default’ setting. More children than ever are being born outside marriage or to single parents, and more women are choosing not to take their spouse’s name.
Additionally, “even our systems are now better set up to include more naming options than in the past”, says Michelle Janning, a professor of sociology at Whitman College in Washington, US, with a specialisation in family and gender studies. For instance, women used to have difficulty traveling internationally with a child who had a different last name – but today, this isn’t a barrier.
These evolutions have meant many parents are considering bucking convention. But if parents go their own route, they must take important decisions that can be deeply emotional in nature.
This is particularly true in non-traditional family units, where there isn’t a standard convention to follow.
This is the case for Barcelona-based Danny McLoughin, originally from Glasgow, who is in a same-sex relationship.
The 30-year-old and his fiancé have already agreed they aren’t comfortable taking the other’s name because they already contend with “ignorant” questions about “who is the man and who is the woman” in the relationship; he feels following heteronormative traditions would play into these stereotypes.
This means that there’s no straightforward answer regarding which of their names any future offspring would adopt.
There’s also the added complication of his fiancé’s surname. Because he already has two last names (Sanchez Medina), McLoughin feels like the option to double-barrel is off the table, as it would ultimately result in a triple-barrelled name.
He and his partner have been going back-and-forth for some time about how they will name future offspring, and are yet to reach agreement. “One potential solution is creating a whole new surname,” he says.
“We’ve considered going for McSanchez and combining the two names.”
Cultural considerations
Another factor driving a broader range of naming traditions is the increasing ethnic and cultural changes in Western nations.
“We’re seeing increased diversity of family structures that stem from various global locations where practices differ from Judeo-Christian patriarchal practices,” says Janning.
In other words, an uptick in cross-cultural relationships is another key driver in changing naming choices in the Western world, she says.
In the case of McLoughin’s fiancé, his ‘Sanchez Medina’ surname is a combination of his father’s first name and mother’s surname, which is Latino cultural convention.
For him and McLoughin, this has factored into the couple’s naming calculus, as it doesn’t leave a clear and straightforward naming route for them to follow.
While some parents choose to preserve cultural traditions in naming, others take a different route, opting for a more anglicised spelling or entirely different version of their surname to pass down the family.
This can particularly be the case for parents whose children will grow up in a country different to their own.
“[Choosing a different name] is a common story in a lot of the US’s immigration history, and is often viewed as a way for people to assimilate themselves or present themselves in a favourable way in a new place where they may be seeking employment or social status,” says Janning. “This has softened a bit, but contemporary examples still exist.”
‘Snowflakes in a blizzard’
It might be becoming increasingly common to choose an unconventional surname for a child, but taking this route is still not without complications.
Behavioural scientist Wallaert put his research into practice when naming his now six-year-old son.
He and his wife decided that because he had two nephews who shared his surname, while she is an only child, it made sense to use her surname so the family name continued.
His surname is complicated to spell and pronounce, he adds, whereas her surname – ‘Sugar’ – is much more straightforward.
But when the couple, who are based in the US, tried to register their son’s name, they found the reaction “strange” – the hospital couldn’t figure out why a married couple would want to name the child after the mother.
“They had all sorts of processes for what to do when the father wasn’t in the picture, but I was the one doing the registration, which really tripped them up,” he says.
Although choosing to go against patriarchal naming tradition is still an uncommon choice, as more people do so, it’s possible even these new ways of naming could rapidly evolve in a variety of different directions over the next few decades.
For instance, will children begin to carry triple-, or even quadruple-barrelled surnames, or will double-barrelled-named parents be pushed to make different choices to avoid a wave of lengthy surnames?
And will people with newly invented surnames feel less of a strong historical tie to their own names, and therefore be less motivated to pass it on to their child?
“This doesn’t even begin to approach families that aren’t a married man and woman,” says Wallaert. “What about two dads? Two mums? Donors? Surrogates? People have been figuring how to deal with this on their own terms, and as that continues, new cultural norms will emerge.”
The business of picking a surname could be set to get even more complicated, but Wallaert argues at its core, naming has always had some key functions, and humans will continue to find ways to project these important facets of our identity, even when conventions change.
“As humans we are snowflakes in a blizzard. We have a deep-seated need to feel unique but also to feel connected to others,” he says.
“Traditionally, we’ve used our first names to express our uniqueness and our last name to express our tribe. Whatever comes, it is those two core needs that we’ll likely continue to honour.”