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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. An essay in The Atlantic says, "Why does a silly little hyphen make so many people uncomfortable or unsettled, or even, God forbid, uncomfortable-unsettled?" [chuckles] Does that sound familiar? Do people wince at your hyphenated last name? The piece in The Atlantic is called The Least Common, Least Loved Names in America, and it's by Senior Associate Editor Rachel Gutman-Wei, so G-U-T-M-A-N-W-E-I, Rachel Gutman-Wei.

She has a personal stake in this, and says she figured combining her and her husband's last name seemed like a normal thing to do, or at least unobjectionable, but objections have indeed been raised. We'll talk about some of those objections. Because most of the concern about hyphenated last names, Rachel writes, is directed at women, we'll get into some of the cultural factors in this too. Rachel, thanks for the article, and thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Rachel Gutman-Wei: Thanks, Brian. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, you are invited. Tell us about your choice to hyphenate your name upon getting married. If you're on the fence, maybe Rachel Gutman-Wei can give you some advice. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Or maybe you are one of those people who finds the whole idea unsettled-objectionable. 212-433-9692, call or text. You want to introduce this by describing your own experience with hyphenating you and your spouse's last name when you got married? How did you come to that decision?

Rachel Gutman-Wei: It was honestly not that hard of a decision for us. My last name before we got married was Gutman. His last name was Wei. Neither of us really felt like it was a good idea for me to take his name for a bunch of reasons. It's a Chinese surname, I'm not Chinese. That felt weird. I didn't really want to give up my last name if my husband wasn't going to give up his.

It was also really important to me to have the same last name as my future kids. I didn't want to just keep my last name. We just decided, the easiest thing is probably to hyphenate, and it seemed like a perfectly reasonable plan.

Brian Lehrer: How prevalent is this now?

Rachel Gutman-Wei: It's really uncommon. There was a Pew survey from April of 2023 of men and women in opposite-sex marriages, and only 5% of the women had hyphenated their names. Among men, it was less than 1%.

Brian Lehrer: Less than 1%. I feel like I run into it all the time. I'm surprised it's that uncommon.

Rachel Gutman-Wei: I think it probably is different parts of the country, different social circles, you might see it more or less. Also, they stick out more. You're more likely to notice them. It may be that you notice them more, and, therefore, think that there are more of them.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, [unintelligible 00:03:16].

Rachel Gutman-Wei: The Pew survey also found that it's more common among Democrats than among Republicans. There are trends there.

Brian Lehrer: Living in New York City, dot, dot, dot.

Rachel Gutman-Wei: [laughs] Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: Claudia in Miami, you're on WNYC. Hi, Claudia.

Claudia: Hi, Brian. Happy New Year.

Brian Lehrer: And to you.

Claudia: Are you there?

Brian Lehrer: I'm here. Can you hear me?

Claudia: Okay. Listen-- Yes, I can hear. My name is Claudia Berlin-Gallegos. Berlin is German, and I hyphenated it with the Gallegos, which was my father's. For me, it was not very uncommon to do this because, from Latin America, you always carry your father's name and your mother's name, but Claudia Berlin is like Lisa Smith here in Germany. I wanted it for commercial reasons too, to be able to open my-- People recognize a name like that, and maybe I get more customers, German customers, because I speak German.

I lived in Germany for six years, besides the point. Also, I did it for feminist reasons. I also love it because it really makes me stick out. When you come up to a conference or something like that, you can see your name right away because it really sticks out. People when I do it over the phone, and they ask you to spell your name, I can hear them sigh or maybe make a face. The way I look at it is a three-part opera.

There's the Claudia, then there's the marriage, Berlin, and Gallegos, which we go back to our roots when we get old. That's it. I have one question for you really quickly.

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Claudia: You don't have to-- I can take it off. Are you trying to do the-- Was your New Year's resolution to try to get the name of the station at 11? Because I noticed you're doing much better this year. I'll take my answers off.

[laughter]

Brian Lehrer: Wait, Claudia. I don't even know what you're talking about, but I do have a question for you, which is, you said that you took the hyphenated name partly for feminist reasons. Can you elaborate on that a little bit?

Claudia: Yes. I wanted the part that I was born to the Gallegos part to be present and not lost in history. I figure I own only two things in this world; my last name, which is my worth and my health. I wanted to be represented there.

Brian Lehrer: Claudia, thank you very much for your call. Please call us again. To that last point that she was making, Rachel, in your Atlantic piece, you point to a recent study whose finding suggests that people think of women with hyphenated names as less committed spouses. Talk about the backlash against women in particular.

Rachel Gutman-Wei: Yes, absolutely. It's very interesting that women hyphenate more commonly than men do, but they're also judged really harshly for it. Like you mentioned, there's evidence that they're seen as less committed spouses than people who take their husband's last name. Also, they're seen as less ideal spouses than people who take their husband's name. It's not hard to conclude that that's because they're violating a social norm.

The norm in the United States is still very much for women to take their husband's name at marriage. It's 79% of people in that same Pew survey are still taking their husband's name.

Brian Lehrer: Is there a curve there, like women who just keep their own names and don't hyphenate are seen as the least committed spouses in this survey, and if you take a hyphenated name, you're halfway there? You know what I mean?

Rachel Gutman-Wei: Yes. It's hard to say exactly. The study that I'm citing from early last year didn't directly compare women who hyphenated with women who just kept their own name. It's really hard to say, but it very well could be.

Brian Lehrer: Boy, such an old stereotype that I thought was mostly dead, but maybe not as much as I thought.

Rachel Gutman-Wei: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Alana in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Alana.

Alana: Hi.

Brian Lehrer: Hi.

Alana: My name is Alana Krivo-Kaufman. I'm one of only two Krivo-Kaufmans. My sister is also a Krivo-Kaufman. I really love my hyphenated name. I feel really grateful to my parents for passing it on. One's a Krivo and one's a Kaufman. Growing up, I would always ask them, sometimes playfully, sometimes a little judgmentally [inaudible 00:08:07] and my dad would always say, "Well, we figured it out, and they'll figure it out." I always really liked that answer.

Brian Lehrer: Do you have kids yet, or what if you do run into a person who you wind up marrying who themselves have a hyphenated last name?

Alana: I am married and, God willing, will have a kid this summer. My sister, I have a niece, has a kid. Neither of us married people have hyphenated names, but we were puzzled of what we would each do. My brother-in-law solved this idea at a Passover meal and was like, "Why don't we just split them up?" I'm taking one part of the name and my sister is taking the other part, and there'll be two new hyphenated names.

Brian Lehrer: Wow.

Alana: God willing, we'll have a Kaufman [unintelligible 00:09:12].

Brian Lehrer: There you go.

Alana: My sister has a Krivo [unintelligible 00:09:15].

Brian Lehrer: Well, that is one way to do it. Alana, thank you for chiming in. Good luck with the pregnancy. Rachel, this is the question that always comes up. You're going to have two names in the first generation, four names in the second generation, then 16 names, et cetera. There's one solution, split them up for the next generation.

Rachel Gutman-Wei: I think that's absolutely wonderful and really creative. I'd also talk to people who, not necessarily because they have hyphenated names, but just chose other ways than hyphenation to make these creative decisions. I talked to this law professor at the University of South Dakota who smooshed her name and her husband's name together. She was Elsgard. He was Hacky. Now they're both [unintelligible 00:10:04] and their kids are [unintelligible 00:10:05]. Then I talked to somebody else who has two kids with her husband, and one of them has her last name and the other one has her husband's last name.

Brian Lehrer: I wonder how common that is. We just recently had a guest on the show who our listeners might remember. Jodi Rudoren, who's the editor of the Forward. I know she's public about this. Rudoren is a blended last name, part of her maiden name and part of her husband's original last name blended together. Maybe that'll be the next big thing.

Rachel Gutman-Wei: Could be.

Brian Lehrer: Christina in Croton-on-Hudson. You're on WNYC. Hi, Christina.

Christina: Hello, there.

Brian Lehrer: Hello, there.

Christina: My name is Christina Alvarez-Arnold. I'm from the West Coast, now transplanted over here. My Chicana heritage is really important to me, and it's important to me to keep that in my family. Also, I have two school-aged kids. When they started into school, I knew it would be important to show that we're all a unit living together in the same house. It's been a little bit of a struggle because at first the answer was I would keep my maiden name as my middle name.

Then it's always shortened to Christina Arnold, which doesn't really feel like it fits. It feels like an English or German person. It doesn't feel like me. I've started hyphenating it. I'm sure it causes a lot of confusion. No one says anything, but I'm sure it's a pain in the butt.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much, Christina. It's interesting, several of the callers we've gotten already, Rachel, are not about simply wanting to keep your own family's last name, but your ethnic heritage. We've heard that from a few callers already, if they intermarried in that respect. That's a thing worth noting. She brings up something that you're right about, which is the bureaucratic hurdles once you have a hyphenated last name.

Rachel Gutman-Wei: Yes, absolutely. I haven't experienced this myself really, to be honest. Maybe that's in my future. I've only had the hyphenated name for a couple of years now. A lot of people talk about how flying must be a nightmare with a hyphen because your ticket won't match your passport. I've flown domestically, I've flown internationally. The tickets don't match the passport, but nobody stopped me. It really hasn't been an issue. I heard from a reader who hyphenated his name back in the '70s after he got married who said every so often he's run into trouble. It's definitely less now than it was back then.

Brian Lehrer: Let's get one more call in here. Laura in Brooklyn. You're on WNYC. Hi, Laura.

Laura: Hi. Thanks for having me on. I'm married to someone who has a hyphenated last name. I chose to keep my own last name when we got married for feminist and personal reasons. We're going to be expecting our first child. We're trying to make that decision of do we hyphenate again, also because that doesn't feel reasonable given the amount of names. Just wondering the implications of not having the same last name as my child because I'm not going to change my last name.

We're deciding to go with my husband's last name because otherwise that name will no longer exist. There's a lot of implications for carrying on names, but then what that means for kids who don't have the same names as their one parent.

Brian Lehrer: Any advice as we start to run out of time, Rachel, now that you've explored this for an article in The Atlantic, for Laura or for anyone else going through this decision-making process?

Rachel Gutman-Wei: I think what Laura brings up that's really important is that this is a deeply personal decision. What is your name going to be? What is your child's name going to be? It's a huge part of who you are and how you present yourself to the world. No one solution is going to work for everybody. There are genuine problems, is maybe too strong a word, but inconveniences with hyphenation. There are inconveniences and problems with lots of other naming systems too.

Hyphenation tends to, I think, be seen as the odd method out because it's so visible when you do it. Everybody knows what you've done. It makes that choice that each of us has to make really visible. I think all those choices should be a little bit more visible. 90-something percent of men keep their own last name when they get married, and maybe we should be more aware of that.

Brian Lehrer: Rachel Gutman-Wei's piece in The Atlantic is The Least Common, Least Loved Names in America. Thanks so much for this.

Rachel Gutman-Wei: Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: That's The Brian Lehrer Show for today, produced by Mary Croke, Lisa Allison, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, and Esperanza Rosenbaum. Zach Gottehrer-Cohen produces our daily politics podcast. Stay tuned for Alison.

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