In Western societies, how can a man have a hyphenated name? (and why!)

[zridling]

Someone explain this to me. I'm seeing more and more professional athletes artificially hyphenating their mother and father's surnames on their uniforms. Why! And how could you do this until you go through the legal process of changing your name? Me not understand the phenomenon, please help. The ones below sound like a Graham Norton skit:

Poore-Sapp
Looney-Ward
Little-Wang
Crapp-Beer
Long-Wiwi
Best-Lay
Wang-Holder
Hardy-Harr
Traylor-Hooker
Little-Gay

[J-Mac]

Looks like something from a Leno monologue!

Actually though, this is not a modern concept. An example is the French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, generally considered to be the father of the modern style of conjuring, and often mistakenly referred to as "Robert Houdin". His name before he was married was Jean Eugene Robert. He married Mlle. Houdin, and obtained permission to use the old hyphenated form of the last name, Robert-Houdin. That was in 1830! And, yes: Harry Houdini took Robert-Houdin's name and added an "i" to it for his stage name.

Thank you.

Jim

[nudone]

hmm, not sure what the legal requirements are here (in the UK) but plenty of "posh" people take on a hyphenated surname when they marry. it's all about them showing off their exceptional breeding, i suppose.

[cranioscopical]

Someone explain this to me. I'm seeing more and more professional athletes artificially hyphenating their mother and father's surnames…

Dashed if I know 

[vizacc]

I have a friend (who will remain nameless)

He had a double-hyphen name.

The reason?

He was an orphan (i.e., both his parents died) and was raised by his auntie. That family decided to suffix the surname with his current surname.

[timns]

Well I normally just go by "timns", but if you want the full monty:

Leone Sextus Denys Oswolf Fraudatifilius Tollemache-Tollemache de Orellana Plantagenet Tollemache-Tollemache

[app103]

Leone Sextus Denys Oswolf Fraudatifilius Tollemache-Tollemache de Orellana Plantagenet Tollemache-Tollemache

* app103 blinks  

[zridling]

Well I normally just go by "timns", but if you want the full monty:
Leone Sextus Denys Oswolf Fraudatifilius Tollemache-Tollemache de Orellana Plantagenet Tollemache-Tollemache

How about I call you "Leo" if we meet? Because I'm sure not putting that on an envelope, Timns!

I suppose there are reasons for doing so, though, still, it seems unnecessary. If parents and relatives are so vain as to feel the need to pass their name along, that's a pride of breeding issue. In the NFL, I figured players were hyphenating their names because they finally found out who their father was, since stats show the majority black children are raised in fatherless homes in the US.

[Eóin]

Passing on surnames is crazy because unless you're the first generation it gets completely out of hand. If my great-grandparents did it for example I'd now have a stupid eight surnames.

After about 27ish generation peoples name would need a gigabyte of memory each 

[app103]

Passing on surnames is crazy because unless you're the first generation it gets completely out of hand. If my great-grandparents did it for example I'd now have a stupid eight surnames.

After about 27ish generation peoples name would need a gigabyte of memory each 

You just gave me a flashback to childhood and the story of Tikki Tikki Tembo^w.

[timns]

Passing on surnames is crazy because unless you're the first generation it gets completely out of hand. If my great-grandparents did it for example I'd now have a stupid eight surnames.

After about 27ish generation peoples name would need a gigabyte of memory each 

Ah but then you can compress!

Yours truly,
rTTr^9*MkI~*AIm?$_yOV!3g#U.uOd\LEq}LLbku`^kB8'4D9kx~#r*ZiZXzNc29kqjR'^H9:iny:<b5*i (Mrs)

[cranioscopical]

rTTr^9*MkI~*AIm?$_yOV!3g#U.uOd\LEq}LLbku`^kB8'4D9kx~#r*ZiZXzNc29kqjR'^H9:iny:<b5*i

You might have made a hash of that 

[mwb1100]

And how could you do this until you go through the legal process of changing your name?

In the United States anyway, the common law situation is that you can use whatever name you want for business purposes as long as it's not for fraudulent purposes.  Wikipedia has a lot of detail on this, and I believe that it's largely accurate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_change

In many (most?) jurisdictions, the same applies to your legal name - there's not necessarily a need for some court order to change your name, you just start using it (again - as long as you're not trying to engage in fraud by doing so).  However, I'm sure that there would be an awful lot of hassles in dealing with banks, government agencies, and employers if you actually try to put any of this into practice today - as far as getting legal documents, accounts, etc.

But as far as what goes on a player's jersey - there's nothing in the law about that - whatever's OK with the team and the league can go on the jersey.

And don't forget that names don't have to follow standard pronunciation rules either, as from this Monty Python sketch:

Interviewer: Good evening. I have with me in the studio tonight one of Britain's leading skin specialists - Raymond Luxury Yacht.

Raymond: That's not my name.

Interviewer: I'm sorry - Raymond Luxury Yach-t.

Raymond: No, no, no - it's spelt Raymond Luxury Yach-t, but it's pronounced 'Throat-warbler Mangrove'.

[Eóin]

I say we all just adopt UUIDs, then there would never be a name clash.

[nudone]

classic python piece.  

[cthorpe]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNoS2BU6bbQ

[JennyB]

hmm, not sure what the legal requirements are here (in the UK) but plenty of "posh" people take on a hyphenated surname when they marry. it's all about them showing off their exceptional breeding, i suppose.

More to do with land, which is why the breeding is important. If you've inherited more than you husband, he adds your surname to his own. If you've inherited a lot more, he takes yours and drops his own. At least, that's how it worked in the days when he took all the land too. 

Here in Ulster we have a tradition of christening a son with his mother's maiden name, or the surname of a closely related family from whom he may have - expectations.    Lots of people called Johnston Thompson or the like.  Back the 19th century there was a landowner by the name of Porter Archdale for that very reason. Then he inherited the Porter estate, and changed his name to Porter Porter!

[nudone]

Oh right. Interesting. Never knew there were rules behind it.

[MilesAhead]

From watching Korean sitcoms I came to the opinion they handle women's family names and marriage in a much simpler more sensible way than in the USA.

Instead of changing her surname every time she gets married, divorced etc. like American women do, Korean women keep their original surnames.  The children are given the surname of the father. No hyphens or chemical formulas required.

Here's a wiki page with way more info than necessary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_name

[zridling]

I just pissed myself laughing reading mwb1100's Python quote. I spent Sunday nights watching that show as a teen.

[tomos]

hmm, not sure what the legal requirements are here (in the UK) but plenty of "posh" people take on a hyphenated surname when they marry. it's all about them showing off their exceptional breeding, i suppose.

More to do with land, which is why the breeding is important. If you've inherited more than you husband, he adds your surname to his own. If you've inherited a lot more, he takes yours and drops his own. At least, that's how it worked in the days when he took all the land too. 

Here in Ulster we have a tradition of christening a son with his mother's maiden name, or the surname of a closely related family from whom he may have - expectations.    Lots of people called Johnston Thompson or the like.  Back the 19th century there was a landowner by the name of Porter Archdale for that very reason. Then he inherited the Porter estate, and changed his name to Porter Porter!

a variation on that (in Cork-Kerry region at any rate) is the use of parents first names. Because there's too many young fellahs with the same first names e.g. Dan, they get their fathers names added on, say it's then Dan-Paddy - and if that isnt enough to diferrentiate them from the others, the grandfather name (which the father probably already has added) gets added: Dan-Paddy-Andy. These new combinations tend to stick for life then - I've no idea how they're spelled though (with hyphen or not? Probably without.)

[CWuestefeld]

Since my family name -- Wuestefeld -- is all but unspellable, my wife (fiance at the time) suggested we use her family name instead: Yu (pronounced like the word "you"). But while it's much shorter, it also caused great confusion. She'd always get into a "who's on first?" kind of thing:

"What's your name"

"Yu."

"No, I need to know your name."

So she started to answer "Yu: y - u", spelling it out to make it clear that she wasn't saying "you". She thought that was working until she got something in the mail addressed to "Cathy Uyu".

In the end, we mostly did the traditional thing. But since she was going through immigration at the time, and had the opportunity to make official whatever she wanted, she took her full Chinese name as two middle names, so now she's officially "Cathy Cen Yu Wuestefeld".

[Stoic Joker]

so now she's officially "Cathy Cen Yu Wuestefeld".

Hay, now that's clever!