Seb - You mean the “Shephard”? Not Mass Effect, that would be Shepard (no “h”). But there is a theme. Guess again!

My understanding is that while some daughters in Iceland take the name of their mother, it is still much more common for them to take their father’s name, as in Mary Ragnardottir. But I could be wrong.

The Icelandics have an interesting naming scheme — sons take on their father’s name, and daughters take on their mother’s name, so there’s no recurring family names at all.

Ragnar has a boy, his son is called David Ragnarson.

Susan has a daughter, her daughter is called Mary Susandotir.

David’s son would be Peter Davidson… And so on.

The only way they can keep track of families up there is with family trees!

I had a high school teacher who gave one of his children his last name and the other one his wife’s last name. The only problem with this is that then the two children don’t have the same last name…

My grandparents had an interesting idea. My grandma’s last name was Shirley so they named their first daughter, my mom, Shirley. Because of this I’ve often thought of naming my son Montgomery (unless I’m a single mother and his last name is Montgomery).

Phew.

“If I ever end up founding and ruling my own society…” hahaha Perfect. Let me know if you do, I could be your vice-Queen! Or at least live there, in the land of equal last names.

Now allow me to go on a bit about names, since it is something I have been thinking about lately. I really dislike our society’s last name tradition. For men, their family name is something they can take pride in, passed down through the generations from father to son. For women, we take on the name of whichever man we currently belong to–father then husband–meaning that our family name is first impermanent and then borrowed. These days, we can choose to keep our maiden name, but that has a couple problems. First, tradition still mostly gives children the name of their father, so it leaves maiden-name mothers with a different family name than the rest of their family, causing much confusion and implying a certain lack of association between a mother and her children. Second, it’s still our father’s name, not our mothers, though our mother’s name is still her father’s name anyway, etc., so we can’t ever hold on to a name that truly represents female equality. Then there’s the hyphenated name. My mom hyphenated her maiden name with my dad’s last name, but the rest of us just have my dad’s name. This also causes confusion because people tend to assume that your mother is “Mrs. [your own last name]“, and she always gets offended when people get it wrong. Some people give their children hyphenated names as well, but this leaves the children the dilemma of what to do when they get married. If Shephard-Ford marries Austen-Littleton, do their children become Shephard-Ford-Austen-Littleton? That quickly becomes too much. I know some people where both husband and wife change their names when they get married. This has a pleasing symmetry, but it ruins any clarity in lineage.

My solution is this. Let’s say my husband and I are Mr. and Mrs. Shephard-Ford. Shephard comes from my husband’s side of the family, and Ford comes from my side (where exactly they come from will become apparent). Our children also take the name Shephard-Ford. When they grow up and get married, our daughter will keep the Ford, and our son will keep the Shephard. My son marries a woman previously called Pace-Dawson (Pace from her father’s side, Dawson from her mother’s), and their shared name becomes Shephard-Dawson. My daughter marries a man called Linus-Carlisle, so they share the name Linus-Ford. And so forth. You follow? This preserves the male benefits of the current system–the family name is passed down from father to son indefinitely, and women carry their father’s name until it is replaced with their husband’s–but it gives women equal benefits. And it only requires two names with one hyphen. Sweet. Now, this is probably not an original idea, and I do not expect it to catch on, but if I ever end up founding and ruling my own society, you can bet this is what I’ll set up.

That said, the question I have to answer to myself is what I will do with my own name. On the one hand, I am already a published author and expect to publish more papers before I get married, so it would be particularly inconvenient for me to change my name. On the other hand, I don’t particularly like my last name (no offense, Dad, but really…), so I would likely welcome a change. On the one hand, I think on principle it’s a bit sexist for me to have to change my name for my husband, but on the other hand, the fact that I have my father’s and not my mother’s name is already kind of sexist. Basically I can’t win. I guess I’ll cross this bridge when I come to it (which, let’s face it, will NOT be any time soon).

All right, I’d better end my rambling sort-of-rant there and go to bed.

Well, i guess i’m a bitch then. And proud of it!

Having said all that, I’ll add that where I was brought up, bitch wasn’t used like you present it, but if that’s the label you are hit with, let’s change the connotation of it. Be a bitch, and be proud!

Nature is the fact that we have bigger muscles and taller frames, thicker bones. Nature is the fact that we react differently to various sensory impetus due to differing hormones coursing through our system.

Of course, anyone can be a good leader of people. Women might even be better in today’s world. God knows we’re not living in the same world that made men better leaders — we’re not still hunting deer and making fires.

Adversity (and necessity) are two of the strongest survival forces. If the world wasn’t the way it is, you probably wouldn’t have grown up the way you have.

I assure you, there have been strong girls in the past, but they were always kind of ‘quaint. Now that there’s a torch burning under your collective asses, it’s suddenly become a whole lot more serious. You WILL be noticed. You WILL stand out. Women WILL be equal!