"J. van Baardwijk" wrote:
>
> At 09:58 07-10-2002 -0500, Julia Thompson wrote:
>
> >The way it was explained to me how surnames go in India (and you can
> >correct me if I'm wrong) is that your surname is your father's given
> >name.
> >
> >In the US, your surname is your father's surname.
>
> Until recently, in The Netherlands a child would always get its father's
> surname. Nowadays, however, parents can choose whether Junior gets the
> mother's or the father's surname. If the parents have no preference, Junior
> gets his father's surname.
That's a reasonable way of doing it.
I have married friends who changed their last names. I won't use their
real names, just letter variables to illustrate. :) His was M A; hers
was N B; they changed their names to M A-X and N B-X, and their child is
P X. We got all kinds of funny looks from the nurses when we were
looking for Baby X just after she was born; they had her listed as Baby
B.
(I guess they were trying to match the baby with the mother's name. I
know that the baby is covered under the mother's health insurance for
the first 30 days after it's born, which is kind of a hassle when
everyone in the family is covered under the *father's* health insurance,
and they go bug the *mother* when there's a problem with the insurance,
which is what happened with us after Sammy was born. They'd tell Dan
they needed to talk to me, then I'd talk to them, and since it was about
the insurance that Dan was in charge of handling, I'd have to refer them
back to them, which was extremely annoying as I was tired and rather
fried from having recently given birth....)
In DC, there was a law passed that if a woman was married, the baby
*had* to be given the father's last name. This law was challenged
recently by a married couple who wanted their baby to have the mother's
last name. I can't remember where I read about it, but I thought it was
rather annoying of them to be dictating that sort of thing, even if they
were doing so under the best of intentions.
Julia
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