I recently had a conversation with my boss about the impending birth of his son. He and his wife already have a 2 1/2 year old daughter and my boss was excited to find out that the baby-to-be is a boy. He mentioned how it was important to him to carry on the family name. I also recall how important it was to my husband to have a boy for the same reason. Not only do many men feel the importance to carry on the family name, but also their own name (leading to Jr, III, IV, etc).

I suppose I understand the family name thing. It's something that men have that they inherited from their own great-great-etc grandfathers and will be the same for generations to come.

But what about women? When I got married, I changed my name and got a lot of shit about it from my female friends. But why would I want to keep my maiden name? It wasn't really my name. It was my father's name. Even to this day, women are just named after the dominant man in their lives. If you really look at it, the name change symbolizes a change in ownership from father to husband. When it came right down to it, I figured why keep my father's name instead of the name of a man I chose? It would be awfully nice to have my own name to pass down to my children, but where would I start? Even my mom's maiden name was just HER father's name.

Well, at least there's mitochondrial DNA. ;)