Yeah... it can be interpreted that way. But even as a feminist myself, it is a dumb performative sort of protest. Paternal surnames are the least important fixtures of our patriarchal society, and, unless it was created wholecloth, there are no surnames that aren't patriarchal historically, as the meme points out.

That's the point, but satirically. The fact that homelander is the second frame immediately means the take is bad.

I think the point of the joke might be more that an attempt to start a matrilineal naming scheme is foiled somewhat from the fact that the maiden name of the mother is derived from her father, i.e. you can't escape that the last names all come from patrilineal sources for generations.

We should use uuids

A coworker of mine did this. He and his new wife took parts of their last names and blended them together to create a unique new last name for both of them.

A lot of last names here are frozen patronyms (e.g. at some point some dude named Hans had kids; now there are lots of people calling themselves his son, Hansen) or place names. I kinda like the place name bit: Just give kids last names to a place they have a connection to. Where they were born or conceived or something.

Terrible idea. People clearly already struggling at naming kids. Coming up with a family name will be endless letters making the wrong sound, random sections being 'silent', so many puns or references to things, corporate advertising "oh it's the X.com family!"... Terrible, just terrible.

My wife and I actually did this, sort of. Not a completely new name, but we took her grandmother's name, rather than either of ours. Or, her great grandfather's name, I suppose.

Yeah I've always thought it was weird that women are supposed to give up their identity to a man to be married. I'm not really sure why hyphenated names aren't as popular in the western world or why people don't occasionally chose to take the woman's name. I know that women don't have to change their names, but then often you'll have the kids as the same name as the father anyway but not the mother. So I've heard many women say that they did it so their kids would share their last name.

Hell, I don't even like my father. But my name is who I am and I like it.

On Spain we have two last names, one for the father other for the mother.

And while before the father's was always the first, since many years couples of newborn babies can choose the order of the surnames.

Reminder that surnames didn't exist before the middle ages, you just had a singular name that people shouted to get your attention. Since you lived in a community of several dozen people, you didn't need to do much to differentiate yourself from the other "John" in your town because everyone knows each other. You lived and died just as "John" and would be remembered by your kids for a generation if you were lucky. There was no need to keep track of genealogy, you were a pair of hands and legs, you were supposed to get out there and plow that field and that's all your baron or lord cared about.

But somewhere after the black plague ravaged Europe and we lost a sizeable chunk of the human population, suddenly workers became in high-demand. Industrialist lords and landowners suddenly didn't have people smithing their horse shoes or making their bread, so they had to go poach people from far away towns and suddenly workers had power and options. As a way to get noticed for your family's tradeskill, you would have been wise to advertise this to wealthy employers, the best way was to attach your trade to your name. You were now John Baker to differentiate yourself from John the Drunkard if anyone came looking to hire someone who could cook bread.

So surnames are advertising. It's all it's ever been. There's nothing ancient and special about your name, it was just how your ancestors tried to make a buck.