Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!etive!lfcs!jcb
From: jcb@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Julian Bradfield)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Proposed lawsuit
Summary: Men may take wives' names
Message-ID: <551@etive.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 20 Jul 88 08:59:58 GMT
References: <12165@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <6278@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <12180@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <1040@unccvax.UUCP>
Sender: news@etive.ed.ac.uk
Reply-To: jcb@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Julian Bradfield)
Organization: Laboratory for the Foundations of Computer Science, Edinburgh U
Lines: 17

In article <1040@unccvax.UUCP> dya@unccvax.UUCP (York David Anthony) writes:

>	Why should this default to "men" however. Why in the hell
>can't I say (with equal legitimacy) that emancipated men have the
>right to be treated exactly the same as women. Can you imagine the
>brouhaha which would ensue if I were, upon marriage, to change my
>last name to the one whom I entered the marriage contract, obstensibly
>the one possessing female genitalia?  I probably have a better case
>than Mark does.

Assuming your mangled sentence is trying to say `... if I were to take
my wife's name', no brouhaha at all. I believe (but don't know) that
that United States law is like English law in that your name is
whatever you choose to be called. It is, in Europe, by no means
unprecedented for a man to take his wife's surname, although it tended
only to happen when a man married into a rather more important
family---especially if he was marrying the only heiress of the family.