Bicycler wrote:I can understand why some people have the desire to have one family name, though that needn't necessarily be the father's. Then again, having different names removes the issue we had where we ended up with three Misters all with the same surname. It's absolutely criminal to address a letter to one of the three male members of the Smith family to Mr Smith. One small benefit of the two women using Miss and Mrs was that there was no confusion with similarly incompetently addressed letters. I wish it was still common to have a 'master' option for boys. This kind of issue is one reason why I would prefer mail not to use a title or to use it in addition to the first name. Using an initial isn't always unambiguous either.
We talked about the advantages and disadvantages of having a 'family' name. We basically felt that disadvantages (changing documentation, etc.) outweighed the advantages.
I had a friend from university, who, when he and his partner married, they threw all of their grandparents' and great-grandparents' names in a hat and drew one out. They both changed their surnames to the drawn name.
As for master... I thought it had fallen entirely out of use, but Littlest was 'master' in a few situations, including his library card. I thought it was a rather quaint, but I liked it.
That'd be enough to have me taking any woman's name.
