Names

So there's this girl in my office who recently got married, but didn't take the name of her husband. When asked why, she simply gets huffy and mutters about it being old fashioned. She also gets the hump when you refer to her as a Mrs. It's Ms.

It kinda begs the question... why bother getting married in the first place? There aren't any tax advantages any more, she certainly didn't get married for religious reasons and it's not like it's a respectability thing any more. (I suspect it was more for the dress and the attention... but that's my opinion)

So, I tried to reason with her. Who's surname were their kids (should they have any) going to adopt.

It's going to be hyphenated, she told me (unneccesarily hyphenated names are a load of old pretention twaddle, by the way. Trust me!).

So... being the pedantic basserd that I am, I took this waaaay to far. What if everyone did this. The hyphenation would double with every generation. So you'd end up with this situation:

G1: John Smith
G2: John Smith-Jones
G3: John Smith-Jones-Bailey-Thompson
G4: John Smith-Jones-Bailey-Thompson-Pilkington-Brown-Blair-Jarvis

As you can see, it doesn't take long for it to get out of hand. And it's only a matter of time before you come across someone who's ancestor also married a Smith-Jones. Do you then double up the combos, so you'd have John Smith^2-Jones^2-Bailey-Thompson-Plikington-Brown-Blair^3-Jarvis-Alcock -Steadman-Fisher^2...?

Oh... the inanities that come out of my head. You all wish you were as inane as me. You know you do...