How to choose last name for children.

Suzhou, China
November 22, 2016 4:35am CST
In china, most people's last name is inherited from there father, so in one family ,father and mother have completely different last name, when they have a baby, they should name children after father's last name,and the first name does not matter. However, a few exceptions to the general rule exist, if a family only have one daughter and very traditional, they will look for a visit son-in-law for their daughter ,and change the last name of son-in-law to their daughter's,so the new baby's last name will be same as mother's.But According to old traditions in china, a man change his last name to their wifes is a humiliating thing, people would think this man useless, good-for-nothing gigolos. Now i also met this question, my father-in-law hope my son' named after him, i am not willing to accept it in my mind but don`t like to refuse a old man either. so i'm a little distracted.
1 response
Just an Ordinary Owl?
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
22 Nov 16
In the West the tradition is usually that the child takes the 'family name' or 'surname' of the father (and also, on marriage, the wife also takes the family name of her husband). Sometimes, because of people's wishes to keep family ties memorable (and possibly because the wife's inheritance is more than the husband's), the husband and the wife change their names on marriage to a name which hyphenates both family names into one, so, if a Mr John Smith marries a Miss Emily Price, for example, they would become Mr & Mrs Price-Smith and their children would take this family name as well (but with different 'given names', of course, so a son might be named Edward Price-Smith and a daughter mighr be named Rebecca Price-Smith). I know that naming traditions in China are very different and that the name you are talking about is not really the same as a 'family name' or 'surname' in the West. However, might it not be acceptable to give your son a name which has both your name and your wife/father-in-law's name joined together in some way?
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Fred Ren
@Coldfront (76)
• Suzhou, China
23 Nov 16
That maybe a good direction to solve this problem .
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