Should married women change their names?

Most of my friends happily change their names and somehow overcome the patriarchal oppression behind it. Other friends have gone with hyphenation (don’t do it!), a double last name or retention of a maiden name. All for a variety of reasons. I myself rather like the Spanish naming conventions and wish I had a lengthy name like this one. But here’s what I don’t get about “don’t change your name” feminism.

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1) How is using the name your father and his patriarchal privilege forced on you somehow less oppressive than taking the name of the man you chose to be your husband and the father of your children?

2) If a feminist solution is to give one’s children hyphenated names, how does this work out in subsequent generations? Let’s say you’re Apple Blickensderfer and you’ve married Moonshine Pollowitz. Your children include one Wilhelmina Blickensderfer-Pollowitz. She meets the love of her life who also has a hyphenated name, Jayden Raaf-Immergut. Their children are then …. what … Olivia and Victor Blickensderfer-Pollowitz–Raaf-Immergut? I know someone who said his cousin’s grandkid does indeed have a surname with three hyphens because of exactly this phenomenon.

One wonders if lack of concern for both the past and the future is feature of feminist thinking.

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