I know "ancestor worship" isn't entirely religious, but it certainly feels similar enough to me.

[nonethefewer]

I was talking with Josh the other day, about what last name futureKid should have.  Two notes here:

1) "futureKid" denotes a way future child, not anything about me being pregnant right now.  Yall'd know a whole lot if I were pregnant.

2) Given that I have no intention of ever changing my last name, as it's, yknow, mine.  Yes, it's a pain to spell, and Josh's is easier to spell, and he has name-attachments whereas I don't really, but it's my name, and... that... is getting into a rant that doesn't go here.

Josh has a preference for futureKid to have his last name, no particular fors or againsts for hyphenated, and "it wouldn't be the end of the world" (no paraphrasing*) for futureKid having my last name.  I have no particular opinion, strangely enough, with the exception of that I don't find hyphenated names aesthetically pleasing.  (Should we go that route, it'd be his-mine, because alphabetical.)

* Note: I can has bias.  Not in the phrasing, but in me remembering it.

There are a few things from this, but the main thing for me, here:

He kind of wants the kid to have the last name of his family, in order to continue the family name.

...

What on earth does that mean?

I have used the rhetorical trick of saying something doesn't make sense in order to coerce someone into explaining themselves more specifically -- always fun, when someone makes sexist jokes -- but I'm not doing it here.  I genuinely do not understand the concept of "continuing the family name", within the context of our not-way-upper-crust socioeconomic position.

Apparently, from what I can understand from him, this is a way of honouring the dead, of honouring where he came from, and/or of respecting history in a somewhat personal fashion.

I clearly, given our conversation, have no goddamn idea what he's even on about.  To me:

(a) "Continuing the family name"... to what purpose?  By which I mean to say, why?  Or perhaps what for?  To what purpose?

(b) "Honouring the dead"... whuh?  The context was clearly historical, and not personal.  But I mean.  They're dead.  And they were people, same as us.  People who are, at this current time, dead.  They personally derive no benefit from this honouring, being dead; I cannot understand honouring someone because they existed before me, temporally, and also are not currently alive.

I... I just have no idea what "honouring the dead" would even entail, I suppose.  In this culture, at this time.  Graveyards take up space; I want very much to be cremated when I die; having personal emotional attachments to those you have lost is not the same thing at all.

What on earth am I missing here?

Originally posted on Dreamwidth.  Number of comments so far:

Comments

Long comment is unreasonably long pt. 1!

[naamah-darling.livejournal.com]

Bear with me for a minute.

I have a friend who heads a university library special collections department, and is also a historian, pursuer of family histories, pretty much an expert on the Tulsa race riot, and a collector of old photographs.

In other words, he cares very much about history, and about the past.

He is a demon about accuracy, and about gathering facts and being very, very careful about how one interprets them, and his rationale for this -- he has said this aloud -- is that accuracy is the duty we owe to the dead.

To my knowledge, religious sentiment has nothing to to with it. I think that's important to know in this case.

To be honest, I don't completely understand it. But I partly do. Yes, the past is the past and those people are dead. What we do now can't affect them one way or the other.

But they lived, and their lives were real and immediate, and full of very real things, experiences that only they had, things that only they knew, a hundred million million experiences good and bad, and loves and rivalries and good days and bad days, and all of it is terribly, terribly human, and very, very little of it survives. What does survive should be preserved and protected, and I believe that includes, to him, protecting the truth, in not allowing facts to be interpreted according to someone's bias, or in not letting them be forgotten, because that may be the only immortality, or the only legacy, that they have. Lying about the past, altering facts to suit our needs, is nothing more than telling lies about other people for your own gain.

I don't necessarily agree with all this, incidentally, but I do feel strongly about respecting the dead. Not the bodies, and I don't believe in souls, I don't think, but I respect the fact that they lived, and that everything that we build and are and do is built on the dust of their bodies, raised in the air of their breath, and that they may not have been extraordinary or contributed to an extraordinary world, or have left the world a better place, but that's not required, any more than it's required to like a living person in order to respect their lives.

Like, there's that little blue faience hippopotamus (http://cdn.wn.com/pd/7f/13/70f72ef803359b7d205ca478bb0e_grande.jpg) that some Egyptian person made, and now it's sort of famous. There were gazillions like it at one time. It wasn't really that special or valuable then. But this ONE has made it all this way. And it's probably the only thing, the only thing that proves that the person who made it lived. And the reason this moves us, if it does, is not because the item is rare or, in itself interesting (although I believe it is both), but because of the human connection there. It's impossible for me not to feel it, going through an exhibit of ancient artefacts or art. The Mucha and Bougueareau exhibits I've seen have profoundly moved me. Because there is the work of someone's hands and their heart.

And I think that same impulse is what drives people to "honor the dead." Because we see ourselves in them -- rightly so -- and see them in us -- also rightly so. We cannot literally say to them, "I didn't know you, I maybe don't even know your name, but you walked on the same earth and looked at the same sky and spring and fall probably felt pretty much the same to you as they do to me, and . . . I respect that you existed, person who made this blue hippopotamus. I am thinking about your life. We will never know each other, but here is a connection, probably not even the greatest thing you ever made, just a trinket, but it connects us."

And how much more powerful is that when it's a name, and you, like most people I think do, believe that names have great power? How much more powerful when those people were blood related to you, and you, like most people, believe that that has great power, too?

Long comment is unreasonably long pt. 2!

[naamah-darling.livejournal.com]

I feel very little obligation to blood ancestors. Almost none at all. But I was moved to tears by the Alamo when I went there, and by the Egyptian exhibit I saw last year, and by Robert E. Howard's house, and by Mucha's paintings, because there were aspects of all of those things that I identified heavily with, or that I found particularly touching or funny or tragic. Human.

Now, a cynical person, or even just a brutal realist, could say that honoring the dead is something that we, as living human beings, do for various reasons that basically boil down to "we do this to make ourselves feel better." And I don't deny that is completely true. But it does seem to make a real difference to many people, sometimes me included.

It's not about the disposition or location of their bodies, or when they died, or the fact of their deaths at all, that they deserve it because they are dead. I plan on being cremated and scattered, unless they'll let someone bind a book in my skin or something. I don't care. I don't care about gravesites much, either, because that has relatively little to do with the person they were. It's about their lives, and that they deserve it because they lived. It doesn't even mean being sorry that they are dead. It's just an acknowledgment of their humanity, and of our own.

The name thing I have never much understood, because I have a hard time seeing it in anything other than a negative light. It's something that has been used to erase women's names and histories, to make them give up part of themselves. It's why I cannot find old school friends who were girls, because they married and changed their names. It's why the legitimacy of a family line ends because there are no male descendants with the name, and if there are only girls, the line is said to have "daughtered out." Keep in mind that I try very hard not to judge an individual person's choice to change their name or how they name their child; it's the wider cultural prevalence of it that bothers me. Also, it helps to know that I consider names really, really, really important, so I am maybe not the most rational person in this way. You'd think that would make me understand the passing down the name thing, but it doesn't, it just makes me angry that names are forced on people who can't choose them. I'm glad I have my mother's maiden name (I hate that term) as a middle name, because at least she hasn't been totally rubbed out of existence, words-wise.

And . . . I am not sure that answered anything at all. But it seemed important to say.

Re: Long comment is unreasonably long pt. 2!

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

One thing is that not all cultures historically have erased women's names. I have a friend of Spanish descent whose full name is, like, a dozen names long. It INCLUDES her husband's name, but his name didn't REPLACE hers.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

So, there's this thing called "life". And "life" consists of some sort of pattern which has the ability to use energy and materials from its environment to replicate itself. But not 100% reliably, so sometimes, this "life" stuff replicates itself in slightly odd ways, which usually makes no difference, often makes it not able to continue, but, occasionally, it makes the near-copy do a BETTER job of using energy and materials from its environment to replicate itself, at which point, it can out-compete other forms of "life".

A long time ago, a couple chunks of "life" ran into each other, and formed a coalition, which glommed together, and one piece of the "life" started specializing in doing one thing, and another specialized in doing other things, and the whole chunk benefited, acting as a community. And these chunks of life got more complex and eventually became cells.

And cells got more complex, and chunks of cells started banding together, and getting more and more specialized and complex.

Eventually, there existed a community called a "human". This community consisted of lots and lots of cells each of which consisted of lots and lots of parts. But the weird thing was the the "human" considered itself one thing, not a community of closely-working-together beings. It had a consciousness of itself as a singular entity, and it created mental structures which counted the single entity at the level of the "human" to be the basic unit of what was important. The cells were not individually important, the cell parts were not individually important -- they were important only because they contributed to and were part of the larger community called a human.

What did the cells think of this? Obviously, they didn't think -- they just existed. And, in large part, they benefited from the arrangement. Even the cells which existed to sacrifice themselves for the greater good of the community.

But humans, themselves, ALSO formed larger communities. Just as cells formed various communities such as trees, moray eels, starfish, and humans, humans themselves formed communities such as nations, tribes, religions, and families.

What is the responsibility of a human to the communities of which it is a part? If the human actually IS the basic unit of meaning, then the membership is a loose thing, and its importance is merely in how it benefits the human.

But what if the basic unit is one of those things that is LARGER than the human? Do we have any reason to expect that it goes "subcellular structures, cells, multicellular creatures with specialization, organs, complex creature" and stops there? Or could it be that there is intrinsic meaning in the larger communities themselves?

It can be that "family" is the goal.

[terriaminute.livejournal.com]

Fascinating puzzlement, and great replies so far. :)

What he is after is connection to history by way of a sirname. He can call it honoring the dead but that's subjective view.

Ultimately, in written record somewhere, that child's name will be linked to his and his ancestors in history, and the connection can continue.

My friend is using ancestry.com to trace her family history, and the women are harder to track because much of her history is in Europe. They're often lost in the records as Mrs. [husband's first and last name].

I considered keeping my original last name, but I didn't really care. My family is vast, the name continues regardless. :)

Here is a question to ask him if you'd like: What if you selected a last name specific for your kid? Not yours, not his, but the child's alone. My guess is that this would be met with a puzzled stare. A sirname without historical connection has no historical anchor, so to speak. The reason for it would have to be something intrinsic to this child. Perhaps it would be a combination of part of your last name and part of the father's, perhaps it would be something entirely of the moment in which the child is born, I don't know. I imagine this is how naming began, though.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

As you say, I have no intention of changing my last name because it's mine. It's also the name of my family members, and my family members make me who I am. Since I like who I am, I must to some extent like that my family members made me that way. I would want a futurekid of mine to have the same name as me to acknowledge that influence. I am the last of my family name. If I had a future kid, my genetics clearly would go on, but giving a future kid my last name would explicitly acknowledge that my family's socialization (the nurture vs. nature thing) would also be going on.

If you really don't want to take up graveyard space, consider a green burial. It's my understanding the plots can be reused over time, while niches for urns generally have a limit on how many urns are allowed.

FWIW I do identify ancestor worship as a religion, and some might find characterizations otherwise offensive (though I don't). I wouldn't call it an organized religion, in that there aren't services, but (at least for the version of ancestor worship followed by many Chinese families) there are traditions that are more closely followed than in New Age religions. Ancestor worship also is not exclusive as many religions are - my mother's family follows both it and Episcopalian Christianity and they dovetail quite well. (Your ancestors are in Heaven acting as guardian angels and interceding on your behalf.)

[brynndragon.livejournal.com]

Two things: the first is, by having something that we know will continue on after we die, we can better accept death ourselves. I had friends who, back in high school, said they didn't care whether they were saviors or horrors so long as they would not be forgotten when they die. Sharing a name is a rather less dramatic way of doing just that.

The second is, it creates a connection and a context for one's life. My birth middle name, Renee, is a variation on the first name of a great-grandmother I never got to meet (Jewish tradition dictates that one only name children for dead relations, not living ones). It gives me a connection to her that exists to this day, even though it is now reduced to an initial, prompting questions about who she was and why she was significant enough to warrant such a thing. A name that has been used repeatedly can have multiple such stories associated with it - it is the family history itself, and each person thus carries a piece of it.

[siderea]

Apparently, from what I can understand from him, this is a way of honouring the dead, of honouring where he came from, and/or of respecting history in a somewhat personal fashion.

Eh, I expect this is bullshit. Try the following test: ask him how he'd feel about giving the kid his mother's maiden name as a last name. After all, it, too, is a venerable name with a long history of the dead to be honored. And, heck, it's his very own mother's name.

He'll say no. He may even be all "bwuh? But that doesn't count."

No, when a guy says he wants to "pass on his family name", what he wants is for the tyke to have his last name. And the reason guys want to "pass on the family name" is the reason ranchers want to brand their cattle: "see, this one is mine."

Guys want this because they're socialized to want it, same as girls thinking they are supposed to want to be pretty. It's a proof of virility. It's shows You're A Man. It's A Thing Guys Do. Sure, when you ask them they make up bs about how it's for other people ("the dead", but only certain, patrilineal, dead), the way the chick spending fortunes on her appearance will justify it as making other people happy. But it's actually vanity.

[whip-lash.livejournal.com]

Guys want this because they're socialized to want it

This is true of nearly everything.

It's a proof of virility...But it's actually vanity.

Those are not the same. There is a reason most socialized behaviors are socialized. In some cases that reason is no longer pertinent. In others it is.

Women know their kids are theirs because, you know, obvious reasons. Men don't. We have to take women's word for it. That's actually a pretty tough burden when the whole Selfish Gene point of existence is to reproduce. You can throw us this bone, thanks.

[siderea]

Wow, that was refreshingly honest.

So, let me give this back to you, to see if I get it: Naming a child after the kid's father's line is a concession ("throw us this bone") to men's insecurity that their child isn't their genetic product, because of the misfortune of fate that leaves men unable to bodily bear their own children ("we have to take women's word for it"). Yes?

[whip-lash.livejournal.com]

Pretty much.

[siderea]

What's fascinating to me in that, is that you've completely conceded my point that the honoring the dead thing is bogus, that this is about a man wanting his name put on his child. We may disagree about the why and the whether it's a reasonable desire or not, but we're agreeing about the what. Which, hey, I appreciate your coming out and saying so.

So my next question is, what do you see the nature of that concession being? That is, what exactly do you see the relationship of giving a kid his dad's name to be to the issue of legitimacy? Does it merely reassure the father that it is his kid? Does it affirm to the father it is his kid? Is it an unrelated quid-pro-quo, that simply makes up for a lack?

[whip-lash.livejournal.com]

Which, hey, I appreciate your coming out and saying so.Does it affirm to the father it is his kid?

Basically. Well, and to the rest of the world (virility, like you said). But mostly to him. From an evolutionary standpoint a man has no particular interest in raising a child that isn't his (probably his interest would be to kill one, like a lion father, so that the woman will spend more attention on kids that are his).

The economist Bryan Caplan did some work recently on this - economically, kids are a dead loss even in farm families. The point of having them is 1) to be happy and 2) to pass along those genes.

All of which is to say that when you say "social expectations" that seems to have the connotation of some outdated custom like women wearing long dresses or stores being closed on Sundays. There are certainly outdated social conventions which no one has any real interest in preserving. I don't think this is one, but even if it were, there's still powerful legacy biological reasoning behind it to the male and no cost associated with giving in to the female. In a relationship, that's the sort of issue where it's best to throw the other party a bone. See what I mean?

Fortunately this seems not to be an issue for the_xtina because her SO doesn't care that much. Unless he secretly does and feels pressure not to admit it, of course. Don't know him; couldn't say.

[vvvexation.livejournal.com]

I can't agree for one moment that there's "no cost" to a woman for having her family name and heritage be completely ignored in favor of her mate's. In a society that actually kept detailed records of people's maternity and not just their last names, you'd have more of a point.

[whip-lash.livejournal.com]

Whoops, I ran some stuff together there. Meant to say that, yes, we're absolutely agreeing about the what, basically.

[rosefox]

I had no qualms about giving up being the last of the Platts. It's not a family I feel a strong connection to, other than my father.

But it was important to me to explicitly be a Fox, to acknowledge and honor the ways I have been shaped by my mother and grandmother and stories of my great-grandmother and the connection I feel to them. So it's not just honoring the dead; it's honoring the ways they influenced my life.

[phaedra-lari.livejournal.com]

I know some couples give the mom's last name to daughters and the son's last name to sons. I always thought that seemed equitae. Inthink I would have suggested that route had I wanted to keep my last name, but I changed it to my husband's when we married because I don't like my last name and I did like the idea of both of us plus kids all having the same last name.

Anyways, it's an interesting issue. The hyphenation solution doesn't really work well to me across more than one generation.

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

That's what we're doing.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

My boyfriend's mother got the short end of the stick in giving last names to kids: her first two kids had their father's / her first husband's last name, the next two had their father's / her second husband's last name, and she had to have a fifth kid to finally get her last name one of them! :-P

[phaedra-lari.livejournal.com]

Gah, my mobile phone typing left something to be desired!

Daughters Maternal, Sons Paternal

[ankhorite.livejournal.com]

I know a couple who thought about that, but were afraid it would set up an us v. them set of gender teams, so they decided they'd go even/odd instead, using the birthday.

I don't remember which was which, I just remember their story of the labor-coach husband yelling "don't push, don't push!" as they approached midnight during one birth, at which point the naming privilege would switch over to him. :)

[novalis.livejournal.com]

Does he believe that Icelandic people don't respect the dead? Because they don't carry on last names; your last name is Xson if you're male and your dad's first name is X, or Ydottir if you're female and your mother's first name is Y. But we're talking, here, about the culture that gave us the Icelandic sagas: long genealogical poems. Of course they care about their ancestors.

I agree that ancestor worship comes from the same place as religion, and has about as much going for it.

I am opposed to hyphenation because it doesn't scale across generations. I prefer merger, although I admit that I have found one or two pairs of names difficult to merge euphoniously.

Patronymic Nomenclature

[ankhorite.livejournal.com]

Oooh, goody! I'm a genealogist, and a feminist, and I love questions like this.

Yup, your name is yours and you shouldn't be renamed at marriage like a dog picked out of the pound. So saith the feminist.

And the genealogist says, it doesn't matter what last name the kid gets, it will tie her/him into their ancestry either way. It peeves me (and even non-feminist genealogists) no end the way women vanish because they lose their surnames; so tying a kid into her/his mom's line would be a nice change.

"Honoring the dead." No, that's not it. For me, it's getting to know them, which is a better way of getting to know myself (mostly, by comparison; but sometimes, as in medical situations, by our shared DNA itself).

I'm descended from a Salem "witch" who gave her own eloquent legal defense and pointed out that her accuser had been flogged for perjury just the year before; they hanged her anyway.

I'm descended from a girl who came over from Germany at age 14 with no education beyond the fourth grade because her father felt she didn't need it. Her mother died, she raised her siblings when her father promptly abandoned the family, and she raised her own five kids alone when her husband died, and she raised my brother and me until I was five.

I'm descended from a widow woman whose brother-in-law had struck rich finding coal in what was thought to be poor farmland south of Chicago, and who could afford to move her and her kids to America during the Irish potato famine.

And her son was a fierce Socialist of whom I am very proud; defended Eugene Debs, knew Mother Jones and Jane Addams, etc.

Do I bask in the reflected glory of these people? No, I had no part in their accomplishments. But at least I have a feel for how hard their lives were, and what a miracle it is that anyone of my generation exists. Their lives have made me appreciate my own more.

And I think names are important to assist the future -- to help your great-grandchildren find you, and find themselves in you.

I also love it when families dig deep into their ancestry to find first names for their kids. It's nice to have a namesake. And it's nice to have a name uniquely your own, too; I'm not favoring one over the other, as long as some reasonable care is taken not to name the kid whatever is in fashion at the time.

[ankhorite.livejournal.com]

OR . . . some folks, especially gender separatists (which I know you are not), go all science-fictiony by way of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Oath of the Renunciates, which includes these verses:

If you go to the URL (http://www.angelfire.com/ny2/DPsCottage/oath.html) to read the whole thing, you'll need to know that "di catenas" is a non-divorcable marriage, akin to what right-wing twerps are trying to establish in real life as "covenant marriage," and a "barragana" is an in-house concubine.