My surname’s fab!
Yeah, well it’s a big deal isn’t it?
I think we always imagine that
all the generations of women before us
were perfectly happy to lose their maiden name
and take their husband’s name.
And I’m sure that’s not true.
So, in Britain, patrilineal surnames go down through the male line,
down through the generations.
Surname systems aren’t the same all the way around the world.
Yes, smash the patriarchy.
I had read about a couple where the husband took the wife’s name
and I thought, “Oh that’s interesting.”
You said, “It’s our choice
and if it means that much to you then I’ll take your name.”
And I cried.
But my dad was really confused, and it’s his name.
He was just like, “Is that legal?” Like, “Yes”.
I was Brian Macken.
And I was Rhona Wells.
And then afterwards we were both Mackenwells,
one word without a dash in between.
And I really wanted us to be all one name, sort of family unit.
I believe there’s a rabbit farm somewhere in the north of England
that is called Mackenwells.
There’s only three of us in the world.
Yeah, exactly, and a rabbit farm.
And a rabbit farm!
So my dad is called Clive, my mum is called Anne.
Clive and Anne… Cliv… Anne
Clyfan – that’s my surname.
Anncliv is a bit gross, isn’t it? Annecliv.
Whereas “Clyfan!” That just rolls off the tongue.
My parents, they didn’t just want me to kind of
lazily take the surname of my dad.
The second thing is that my mum
really wanted people to know that I was Welsh.
My first girlfriend Flora,
we thought if we had a kid that it could be called Flobin.
In Spain, people have double-barrelled surnames.
The father’s surname is also followed by the mother’s surname.
That actually reveals the ancestry through the male line
but from the mother’s side and from the father’s side as well.
Pablo Picasso, his mum’s last name is actually Picasso
and he just used Picasso.
My mum is doing the family tree,
and she has managed to get to the 15th Century, which is a lot.
Let’s look at gender equality in surnames.
So if everyone has a double-barrelled name
and you only pass along the surname according to your gender,
that actually solves a lot of problems.
Let’s say we have, in the far future,
Vivienne Jolie-Pitt married to Levon Thurman-Hawke.
Vivienne, because she’s a woman,
would take her mum’s name, Jolie.
And Levon, because he’s a man, would take his dad’s name, Hawke.
So you get, the Jolie-Hawkes.
So this system has loads of advantages.
It’s really fair to both sides of the family,
It works just as well for same sex couples
as it does for opposite sex couples
because really you can just choose
whichever of the surnames to keep and pass on.
It makes exploring your ancestry way easier.
In 1934,
the law was passed that every Turkish citizen had to adopt a surname.
There was a rush on all these fancy names like Yildirim,
which means flash or lightning.
You have a lot of these names in Turkish like hawk,
wolf,
lion,
brave,
or tall.
So Ozturk meaning “the real Turk”,
I was born and raised in Germany,
and my children, they’re going to be here living in the UK.
I think maybe my grandfather
would have been really disappointed by that, you know.
One surname is used for professional communication.
The other one is for personal.
The online persona might actually be more significant
than our legal documents.
Because it provides much more information about who we are.
People seem to accept a surname not as a matter of choice.
That may be changing.
If so, that’s probably a good thing.
So, it has made me who I am
but that’s part of a much broader picture
about where the name comes from and the reasons for doing it.
Just the fact that we have a choice, I think,
it doesn’t matter what you choose but choose actively.
Yeah there’s nothing wrong with taking your husband’s name.
If you want to.
If you had a better last name I might well have taken it.
If my name was Tolkien Shakespeare
then you’d have had a hard time arguing not to take that name.
Maybe… maybe.
