Thursday, June 09, 2011

Inherited Surnames - so-called Family Names

There is little more retarded than the concept of inherited surnames. Certainly in the modern era where many people are aware they've been abused as children (because even childrearing has evolved rapidly in the 20th century) and where a vastly greater number of people choose professions and lives disapproved of by their parents.

The whole concept of inherited surnames is absurd and despicable. It stopped making sense during the Industrial Revolution when society gradually stopped looking towards the past (classical education) and started attending to the present (modern education). With our emerging future-orientation, it makes even less sense.

Inherited surnames also run afoul of gender equality. And I will say that nothing showcases the crushing lack of creativity and utter fucking stupidity of humanity than the fact that feminists, who have an abiding hatred of patrilineal surnames, were able to come up with NO solution to the problem (hyphenated names don't count as a solution). It's not like the solutions aren't blindingly obvious either.

The first obvious solution is that when a couple gets married, they exchange surnames. The better solution is that when a couple gets married, they take up their significant other's given name as a surname. How's that for gender equality? And yet, I've never heard it proposed. Probably because feminists are all fucking idiots, as the general run of this pathetic species called humanity tends to be.

The second and obviously correct solution is that when a couple gets married, when they become a family, then they PICK A FAMILY NAME. How fucking obvious is that? The children then inherit this new family name, by virtue of being part of that family until they form their own family. How pathetically obvious is that?

And yet I've never heard of this rather obvious suggestion. A withering indictment of humanity if I've ever heard one. After all, something like 100 million people get married every year on this planet, and how many of them have the minimal intelligence to do something different than all the herd animals around them have done for centuries? How many of them can actually come up with something smart to do? Apparently, too few to be detected.

This whole species you are all proud to be part of is mind-numbingly stupid. Even the supposedly smart people, the engineers, the programmers, the academics, the scientists. They are ALL idiotic in the extreme. They've memorized worthless facts and esoterica so they can show off by regurgitating them to their peers. Like trained parrots and seals. Meanwhile, they're too stupid to wonder for a single minute what to call their own children.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You mean like it happens in many countries?

I know two Finns who did pretty much exactly that. They got married, they wanted to share a surname, so they chose one that sounded good to them both.

Just because you're conversant with a single surname system doesn't mean better options do not exist.

Spanish surnaming has worked very differently since the 1800s. People don't adopt new surnames with marriage. Instead they carry two surnames, one for each parent. They can choose which to transfer to their children and in what order, etc.

Richard Kulisz said...

I'm familiar with the Spanish system and I've always thought it pompous, convoluted and stupid. It's even more beholden to the concepts of tradition and clans than the English.

I didn't know what Finns did regarding naming but it does not surprise me at all that some people in Finland choose to do the right thing. Scandinavian countries really are a lot more advanced psychologically and socially than the rest of the world.

As a corollary, no lesser country (which is all of them) will do the right thing. If you want to prove that inherited surnames are just a quirk instead of a sign of despicable primitive barbarism, you're going to have to point to people who don't have inherited surnames in countries that are less than the pinnacle of civilization.

Finally, I think it's stretching things to call me conversant with "a single surname system" when English, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish cultures ALL use inherited surname systems. And Russian culture devolved away from non-inherited surnames.

Anonymous said...

While I agree that there is something barbaric about inherited surnames, it was my understanding that in -- of all places -- China, it was [and still is] a trend in certain subcultures to do the sensible pick-your-own-surname thing when founding a new family. Or at least a new *clan*.