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Hyphenated last names (maiden and husband's) were in fashion among upper-middle-class white women in the eighties. It does seem that only black women do this nowadays. I don't know why this fell out of favor among whites.
I was at a wedding a couple of weeks ago and hung out with a friend I hadn't seen since college. He and his wife (both affluent, young California professionals working in media) just made up a new last name for the two of them. I didn't quite know how to feel about it. On the one hand, it's an elegant solution to the problem of infinitely expanding hyphenated names that doesn't require an asymmetrical sacrifice by only one party to the relationship. On the other hand, I had a (somewhat surprising) visceral disgust reaction at the idea of a man giving up his name. I guess my sense of filial piety and traditional gender roles are stronger than I thought.
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As another data point, in my affluent blue bubble, hyphenated children's names are everywhere, partly because of the relatively large number of same-sex couples, but not remotely exclusively.
This includes mine, and while I have to admit that hyphenated names can be a mouthful (paving the way for endless jokes about fitting names on, e.g., swim caps), I love them for surfacing family history. I've always loved the extravagance of Spanish names for that reason, even if they are usually truncated for daily use.
Ideally we should all use Hispanic naming conventions- five first/middle names, two last names, you only pass on the father's and fathers have the absolute right to veto or change any name, but the kid just goes by "rambo" or "bandit" anyways regardless of what his name is on paper.
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There's a secular cycle of naming conventions covered in Freakonomics about how the upper class adopts a certain set of names, the striving middle classes start using the name because it's "high class", but on a decade or so delay. Sometimes the working class picks it up, and the names just slide down the socioeconomic staircase, forever replaced by new ones at the top. So, for instance, it's important to know when a "Crystal" was born to get the signal.
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I've got a hyphenated last name. We liked both of our last names and didn't want to get rid of either, so we kept them both.
I agree it seems uncommon though.
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It seems more common in the UK (yes, there are ancient double or even triple barrelled names in the aristocracy, but the majority are recent maiden + husband ones), but the practice has now started to acquire a reputation as a bit trashy or performatively trying to appear of a higher class than you are (Hyacinth Bucket style), which is the biggest faux pas in English society.
I don't think it's primarily that though, it's that in the 1980s, when keeping one's maiden name as a woman was very radical and uncommon (in the Anglo world), the hyphenated name served as a sign of feminism while also making a concession to social mores, making sure you had the same last name as your children etc. So the man would be Mr Smith, his children would be Jane and John Smith, but his wife (and their mother) would be Mrs Miller-Smith, or something. Enough for the school teacher or the airport check in official not to raise their eyebrow or cause problems. If the mother worked, it also made things easier there, of course, so this practice was common in some upper-middle class professions like medicine or law.
Today, a combination of mass immigration (often from cultures with different family name practices) and advancing feminism means the 'middle ground' of the hyphenated name is no longer necessary for women. They can keep their original name and everyone knows what they mean. The kids usually still get the father's name, but this is less of an issue for mothers now that high divorce rates have been a thing for 30+ years and single motherhood is more common.
I think this is correct.
We are at the stage now where people named in the eighties are prime age adults, but I don't see the hyphenation as much anymore. I can tell you from growing up next to an Indiana trailer park in the eighties, hyphenated last names were for queers (in context, presumably, trend-chasing middle class strivers).
Yeah, I do still see it for some gay couples who have kids (because there's more of a debate about whose name the kids get). In general it's rare for children to get marital hyphenated names, I know a couple but it's often where the mother comes from a reputable family (like I know of a hyphenated maternal Rothschild, for example) or where the family are ultra-progressive. I've heard of cases where daughters get mom's name and sons get dad's too, there are more weird combinations today. But I think the paternal surname for children is still something that even most progressive men insist upon, and most women are willing to accept it.
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