What's in a name? Everything.

"If women’s last names are consistently absent from history, never passed down, then where is their—our—value?"

That's the most profound question (that shouldn't be profound at all) I've ever read. It's from this essay about a couple who gave their first daughter the wife's last name instead of the husband's. In her essay, the author questions why children taking the husband's last name is always a given in our American society.

This entire idea is something I had never thought about before, even though I've hemmed and hawed over a decision on changing my own last name once I get married. I even assumed that any potential future children may have my soon-husband-to-be's last name. It was never even a question. I had never given it a second thought, even...up until now.

I'm not saying with absolutely certainty anything except that I think this author is right: it shouldn't be assumed that children will take their father's last name always and forever. It should be a decision both parents make together, provided both biological parents continue on to be that child's actual parents.

Furthermore, while reading or just after reading this article, I got to thinking about lineage and how historically, men have held positions of power for centuries upon centuries of time. How did that come to be, that men have always (or at least primarily) been 'on top' and 'in charge'? Why is it that no women are aloud to be priests in the Catholic church, and have just barely been able to hold authoritative positions in government and large corporations? Why has this been the case for so long? How have we as a species made trips to the moon but we haven't managed to level the gender playing field?

Maybe what I'm about to say is completely foolish and fictional, but I thought it earlier and I'm going to put it out into the ether anyway. First, what lead me to this thought was the passage in the essay about "birthing"and how a woman should claim the rights to that process, since it's an active one, not a passive one. If a woman carries a child for 9 months inside her and basically opens herself up to let the child out into the world, how is it that no one considers that maybe the mother's last name should be the child's, too?

I do realize that men have a major role to play in child bearing and the process could not be done without their sperm, at the very least...but seriously... the woman carries the baby for 9 MONTHS. The man spends a maximum of, say, 15 minutes doing his part and the woman spends 394,462 minutes doing hers, and that may not even include the minutes spent in labor! And she doesn't even realize that she can question the child's last name and make a case that the kid share her last name? That's crazy.

Back to the foolish and fictional. I got to thinking that maybe, deep deep down, just maybe men feel threatened because women hold most of the power of procreation. And it's because of that threat that men felt the need centuries ago to overpower and oppress women, starting a deep lasting patriarchal trend of gender inequality.

Anyway, this essay has definitely made me think a bit differently about my own future naming decisions. I haven't favored hyphenation or blended options, but I know that I'll absolutely consider them more and more if and when the need arises.