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From: ethan@utastro.UUCP (Ethan Vishniac)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Re: Name Changes
Message-ID: <612@utastro.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 26-Aug-85 18:36:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: utastro.612
Posted: Mon Aug 26 18:36:22 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 28-Aug-85 11:02:04 EDT
References: <400@mhuxr.UUCP> <100100001@ima.UUCP>
Organization: U. Texas, Astronomy, Austin, TX
Lines: 41

[]
   When my wife and I got married we were young and foolish.
She felt ambivalent about name changing and decided to hyphenate.
In my usual helpful manner I told her to do what she wanted, but
I was keeping my name.  Now that I'm older and foolish I have
some recommendations.

   1) *DON'T* hyphenate.  My wife quickly found that she was
      "Busch" "Busch-Vishniac" and "Vishniac" on a bewildering
      variety of records.  It was about 2 years before it all
      got straightened out.  I think MIT continued to think
      there were two of her for about a year after she arrived.

   2) If you are in a profession where you publish, don't change
      your name at all.  If you get divorced (very common after all)
      you will either confuse your colleagues or spend the rest of
      your life using your despised ex-spouse's name.

I have a modest proposal.  Why don't we all use a combination of
matrilineal and patrilineal names?  For example, I would be

     Ethan Vishniac-Simpson

and my wife would be

     Ilene Rudnick-Busch

and our (hypothetical) children would be

     Isaac Vishniac-Rudnick

and
     Anne Rudnick-Vishniac

What could be simpler? (and still be nonsexist).  Volunteers?
-- 
"Support the revolution        Ethan Vishniac
 in Latin America...           {charm,ut-sally,ut-ngp,noao}!utastro!ethan
    Buy Cocaine"               ethan@utastro.UTEXAS.ARPA
                               Department of Astronomy
                               University of Texas