Surnames (姓, 姓, 성)

One of those things that humans have always just done but may not apply anymore is taking the husband's surname. It's common in almost every civilized society: in the U.S. most women take their husbands' last name upon marriage, and then their kids take the man's last name. In China most women keep their name even after marriage, but the children take their fathers' last name. My last name is Yan because my father's last name is Yan, and it's just always been that way. 

In older times, a practice of coverture, women were considered the property of men, which nowadays would just be completely wrong and frowned upon at least in western society and especially in America. Most people in my friend group don't have the wife taking the husbands' last name, and neither did MJ and I. It's also just less paperwork to have to change all of MJ's bank account information, school records, passports, social security accounts....seems like a hassle to me just to take someone's last name. (In The Sopranos, there's a big scene where Richie Aprile tells Christopher Moltosanti to give Adriana his name, as in to marry her..... another outdated reference). I get it was a big deal back in feudal times or fictional Game of Thrones times (based on the War of Roses England time) because noble families married with other noble families and had "legitimate heirs" so giving someone your name as a noble family was important to legitimatize the marriage. 

One of my lifelong friends recently introduced his 2-year-old son to me as First name..... last name of his wife, which I was a little surprised by at first, but then realized it made a lot of sense....the woman does most of the work (if not all, really, let's be honest gentlemen) and if she wants the child to have their family's name, that's definitely something that can be negotiated and not stuck by the tradition of always taking the husband's last name. That's actually the best way of liberal thought working by the way, not some of this "woke" ideology that goes way far to the extreme. I'm not against liberalism, it's just that it has to be applied correctly and actually make sense... this is one of those examples where a age-old tradition that was established based on principles of a different moral system and understanding about family strucutre no longer applies and should be replaced by a new system. I fully sign off on this being a new development in society, unlike some of the other proposals that we should pump the brakes on. 

In our case, (if we ever have a child and get the honor of naming him/her), MJ's name is easier for Americans to say anyway. Yan is just difficult. Americans just don't know what to do with that -an at the end (they have no problem with the Y!) and they never get the Chinese intonation right anyway. Lee is a much more universal name (Americans, Chinese, and Koreans all have the surname) and Americans say it much closer to what it actually sounds like in Korean. Plus, it's my only shot to ever be related to someone named Bruce Lee!