the name the entire family uses now. I don't know if they had to do anything legally to make the change

Yeah, as I said above, I don't believe it's a problem calling kids whatever you want (including surname) - you just register their names accordingly. As regards the parents, there would normally be some legalities involved (you change your name by "Deed Poll" in the UK), probably slightly more straightforward for the woman than the man due to the relevant authorities/companies having had more practice on that front (total supposition, this, but bet I'm right ).

Once the couple have changed their names, they then need to notify everybody with whom they ever have dealings, especially banks. So give it another year or so for the name changes to percolate through for both the man and the woman. Then even junk mail will start coming through with the right names. Maybe.

I have a friend who wanted to change his surname and adopted a far more cheap and straightforward route - he simply declared to all and sundry his wish to be known as the new name. This doesn't seem to have presented him with any problems, even with banks etc. And he doesn't get post addressed to his old name with "k/a newname" next to it, either, which surprised me a bit.

Fisk

I get around it by using first, middle and last name!

So why don't people give their children first names that they are going to use?

An anecdote. My mother was names Josephine Mildred. When the boys in the family started calling her "Jo" her mother put her foot down declaring with nine sons she wanted her daughter called by a girl's name not a boy's name. Thereafter and all her life she was Mildred. It became her legal signature as she used Mildred J. all her life.

In Scotland - if a female is the last of her name her husband may take her name in order to perpetuate an ancient lineage - after, of course, obtaining permission of the Standing Council of Chiefs.

I have remembered me why it was that that man was called David Gregory, rather than Gregory David: it was to do with initials. His parents were Catholics and were concerned that people (perhaps especially cruel contemporaries in the schoolyard) would take the GD combination to mean "God Damn."

But can you ever be that careful, really? You might not see a bad acronym arising (like a bad moon rising, only less so). My mother's initials, for example, are PMS. There is NO WAY her parents could have foreseen what that would come to stand for....

Let us go in peace to love and serve the board.

Heh ~ my mom's maiden name was Berneice Mortenson, and she was a nurse... so every time she initialled patient charts, this one's especially for you, Dr. Bill they had a BM.

yes, a weird and ancient law allows one to simply declare a change in name in this country with no need to apply to official quarters, strange and pretty cool i think.

A lawyer told me you could use any name you wanted to, so long as it was not to deceive or defraud.
However since then there are so many things for which a legal name is required, that failing to get
a legal name change could cause one many serious headaches. Social security, driver's license,bank accounts insurance, etc. etc etc.

Reverting to the original thread:

If Yo-Yo Ma married Erica Jong, and they decided to use both names, he could be Yo-Yo Ma-Jong. Think of it!

<<Think of it!>>

Must we?

;)

A lawyer told me you could use any name you wanted to, so long as it was not to deceive or defraud.

Correct. While looking up something else I quite by accident stumbled across a case noting thus (with 11 citations):

... under the common law (which is recognized both by Illinois and by the federal courts in this regard), a person may adopt a new name without resorting to the courts, and may even use his birth name again after having adopted a new name for a period of time. A party may properly effect legal process under any name so assumed. Indeed, a person who is known by two different names may use either name in legal process without affecting its validity, even if the name used is not his "true" name.

Keiva: You started a flame war, and would not quit.
You got re-instated by threats of a lawsuit.
You will never be welcome in AWADtalk.
I used to like and admire you, but now I despise you.

slithy, you remind me of another strange pairing:

If Snoop Doggy Dog married Winnie-the-Pooh, would he then become Snoop Doggy Dog Pooh?



Let us go in peace to love and serve the board.

Dear MG: Winnie the Pooh may be a Bear of little brain, but not so little as to
commit matrimony with a bitch, let alone a dog. No hyphen-hitch conceivable.
As the Frenchman said they are both inconceivable.

This is not exactly or rather not at all about hyphenated names but I won't let such a tiny detail stop me:

In Poland, as in most of the various countries around the world, I presume, the proper way of introducing oneself by the whole legal name is:

[first|given] name, {last|sur}name

(forgive my programming-language-like notation). I'm not talking about directories but just about introductions or referring to somebody else, like I'm Lukasz Drejer, for example, and I don't like to and won't ever say it in reverse no, I don't mean rejerD zsukaL.

...but not in Hungary! Last names precede given names there even in the TV subtitles denoting the speaker's identity! Bela Bartok is known among his own countryfolk as Bartok Bela, Liszt Franz his company! For a Pole this looks/sounds strange, how's that for you?

Or maybe anybody heard about some other folk who do the same?

Lukasz

Bill, speaking of conceiving........at lunch today with friends, we were joking about the most Canadian way to have a baby. The discussion began when a girlfriend of mine was saying she was so eager to find out whether or not she was pregnant, she went to the drugstore for a test kit, and then straight across the road into the Tim Horton's (Cdn donut shop, long since bought out by Wendy's so no longer Cdn, but originally begun by Cdn hockey player Tim Horton, funnily enough - vastly popular coffee spot for central-Canada Cdns, if not also for Easterners - not so evident in the west). I said that was about as Canadian as you could get about having a baby, and the only more-Canadian thing you could do would be to conceive same baby in a canoe....Someone else at the table said, "Or at a hockey game, between periods..." I said, "It would have to be between periods....!" (rimshot please!)

I crack myself up! what a great yolk...it was truly eggstrordinary. [full of myself-e]

Let us go in peace to love and serve the board.

Last names precede given names

Very often in Asian countries. I believe that in China it is the custom to give the last ( family) name first in order, followed by the common name. ie Chang Liu in China would be Liu Chang in USA ...many Chinese who come to school in USA - for instance - have changed the way their names are presented on forms and cards so they are done the American way. Only time the names are really Chinese-correct is in lists alphabetized by last names.

For the Chinese Secret Police - if you are watching : No it's nobody I know, I don't even know if Liu is a Chinese name and I guessed at Chang ... it just looked and sounded right for purposes of illustration, here.

wow, your post and this part of this discussion remind/s me of The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon - Shonagon was the woman's first name. I am that anal-retentive that I have all my books in alphabetical order by author (but that's another story!), and I have that one under "Sei."

Let us go in peace to love and serve the board.

my parents tried hard but i still ended up with SCM (scum to me mates) and my brother changed his perfectly acceptable name when he married, to Colley. Nothing wrong with Colley but now he signs his name E.Colley