On names

[sysd]

I sent an email to friends announcing rosindust 's pregnancy, and in it I described how we choose names for our offspring. I don't think I've described it here, so here it is.

Nowadays, many modern couples don't want to have the wife change her surname to her husband's name. This leads to interesting contortions as they attempt to figure out naming conventions for the family and for the children.

The most common approach is the hyphenated name. This works, but only marginally. By 'marginally' I mean that if it were adopted by the public at large, it would quickly break down after the second generation. There are options to let the kids drop a name etc etc, but if the goal is to avoid making people change their names, this really falls short in my opinion.

You also occasionally hear of folks using a completely new last name or a compound name made from elements of the parent's previous surnames - for instance, since my last name is Hess and rosindust's is Woodard, we might become the Woods. This is a little avant-garde for my tastes, and once again, you're changing a name.

So we decided to simply not change anyone's name. Well, then what about the children? Here's what we came up with:

• The first child's surname would be that of its same-sex parent. Subsequent children's surnames will alternate between the parents regardless of sex.
• The parent who does not contribute the surname picks the first name.
• Middle names are reached by agreement from both parents.

Our first kid is a boy, so he's a Hess. Tracy picked the name Karl to honor a great-uncle of hers, a very interesting and decent man by all accounts. We agreed on Arlen, my father's name, as a middle name. Karl Arlen Hess.

This next kid is a Woodard. I've decided to name it after my much-beloved maternal grandmother, Ada, so if it's a girl, she'll be Ada, and if it's a boy, Adam *. rosindust wants to give her middle name, Kathleen, to a girl child, which I'm fine with, and we're still going over options for a boy. So it's either going to be Ada Kathleen Woodard or Adam Woodard.

So with this convention, nobody needs to change a name and neither family 'loses' a name in a marriage (at least, not in a marriage with two or more kids). The only difficulty is explaining a single family with two surnames to the various powers-that-be, but in this age of remarriage and blended families, the PTB will simply have to cope.

* Technically, the closest male version to the name Ada is Adolf. Uh, no - some folks already give us funny looks for Karl with a K. I've tinkered with creating the name 'Ado', but that's a long shot. Adam is fine.