Wow, Rachel, how fantastic to read this post of yours! I think you might find my experience interesting.
I'm Brazilian and, although there are variations, the most conventional thing in Brazil is that, when a woman gets married, she adds her husband's last surname to the end of her own, whether or not she opts to erase one of the those she already had (it's more common not to erase it). The number of surnames varies - some people are born with just one, it's more usual to have two, but it's not uncommon for there to be three or even four. There isn't exactly a rule that determines which surnames will be passed on: today it's very common for children to be born with the same surnames as their mother (including the one received by her through marriage), but in the past it was more common to have the same surnames that one's father had. The only consistent rule seems to be that everyone's last name (husband, wife, children) is the same, and it's the one that originally came from the husband. In the Portuguese tradition - and unlike the Spanish tradition you mentioned - the main surname is the last one, but in practice I see this being increasingly relaxed or forgotten.
Well.. when I got married, I realized that conventional Brazilian practices led, in my case, to unsatisfactory results for more than one reason.
First of all, there was the fact that either my wife or I would have a different set of surnames from our children, as well as different ones from each other. Secondly, my first surname (the maternal one) and her second surname (the paternal one) were the same, with an extremely slight difference, which could also lead to some strange results. Finally, I didn't like the solution of her giving up both her surnames to take mine: apart from the fact that it would seem like a "colonization" of one person by another, she would have the same surnames as my brother and my mother, which would make her seem more like an adopted sister than a wife.
So we came up with a solution identical to the one you said was the most elegant, since we both had two surnames, one maternal and one paternal. In this system, the groom would replace his maternal surname (the first surname) with the bride's maternal surname, and the bride would replace her paternal surname (the second surname) with the man's paternal surname. The advantages are numerous. The whole family (man, woman and children) would have the same pair of surnames, which would be a different pair from the ones of the previous generations. As you pointed out, this system would create surnames representing the male and female lineages, and, besides this, children would also necessarily share one surname with each grandparent and each parallel cousin (besides both unmarried and parallel uncles and aunts).
In order to make things perfectly symmetrical and logical, a society following this system could agree that the first surname (the maternal surname) would be the main surname for women, and the second surname (the paternal surname) the main surname for men. This would also reduce the identity transition that is now common and troublesome when women change their surnames.
So that's what we did: we exchanged surnames. The choice came with its own costs. It turned out that, despite the elegance of the solution, my mother hated that I lost her family name. This really brought an unpleasant conflict, so sometimes I think it would have been better to have made another choice. Reading that someone else reflected on the topic and also came up with our choice as the most elegant solution brings me a little consolation, in any case.
Men today spend more time doing child care than women did in the 1970s. So maybe chill
Wow, Rachel, how fantastic to read this post of yours! I think you might find my experience interesting.
I'm Brazilian and, although there are variations, the most conventional thing in Brazil is that, when a woman gets married, she adds her husband's last surname to the end of her own, whether or not she opts to erase one of the those she already had (it's more common not to erase it). The number of surnames varies - some people are born with just one, it's more usual to have two, but it's not uncommon for there to be three or even four. There isn't exactly a rule that determines which surnames will be passed on: today it's very common for children to be born with the same surnames as their mother (including the one received by her through marriage), but in the past it was more common to have the same surnames that one's father had. The only consistent rule seems to be that everyone's last name (husband, wife, children) is the same, and it's the one that originally came from the husband. In the Portuguese tradition - and unlike the Spanish tradition you mentioned - the main surname is the last one, but in practice I see this being increasingly relaxed or forgotten.
Well.. when I got married, I realized that conventional Brazilian practices led, in my case, to unsatisfactory results for more than one reason.
First of all, there was the fact that either my wife or I would have a different set of surnames from our children, as well as different ones from each other. Secondly, my first surname (the maternal one) and her second surname (the paternal one) were the same, with an extremely slight difference, which could also lead to some strange results. Finally, I didn't like the solution of her giving up both her surnames to take mine: apart from the fact that it would seem like a "colonization" of one person by another, she would have the same surnames as my brother and my mother, which would make her seem more like an adopted sister than a wife.
So we came up with a solution identical to the one you said was the most elegant, since we both had two surnames, one maternal and one paternal. In this system, the groom would replace his maternal surname (the first surname) with the bride's maternal surname, and the bride would replace her paternal surname (the second surname) with the man's paternal surname. The advantages are numerous. The whole family (man, woman and children) would have the same pair of surnames, which would be a different pair from the ones of the previous generations. As you pointed out, this system would create surnames representing the male and female lineages, and, besides this, children would also necessarily share one surname with each grandparent and each parallel cousin (besides both unmarried and parallel uncles and aunts).
In order to make things perfectly symmetrical and logical, a society following this system could agree that the first surname (the maternal surname) would be the main surname for women, and the second surname (the paternal surname) the main surname for men. This would also reduce the identity transition that is now common and troublesome when women change their surnames.
So that's what we did: we exchanged surnames. The choice came with its own costs. It turned out that, despite the elegance of the solution, my mother hated that I lost her family name. This really brought an unpleasant conflict, so sometimes I think it would have been better to have made another choice. Reading that someone else reflected on the topic and also came up with our choice as the most elegant solution brings me a little consolation, in any case.