#am i a linguist or am i a muppet i am a very muppety linguist

[ninbinary]

while i basically agree my contrarian nature wants this to be a phantasmagorial synesthetic challenge for ALL last names to do this Black/White/Gray blend, in obvious and/or obscure etimologically bonkers ways. Like, Mx. Smith and Mx. Cooper get married, and become Mx. and Mx. OopsJustBarrelHoops or something.

if we want to stop the patriarchal concept of surnames being passed down the male line, we have a few options options that i’d be 100% fine with:

children get whichever surname is cooler, to eliminate uncool surnames over the generations

children get whichever surname is rarer, to achieve a utopian future in a few centuries where all surnames are more or less equally common

children’s surnames are randomly generated: say, heads for parent #1’s surname, tails for parent #2’s surname

parents pick the first names first, and then a court decides which surname fits it better. so if a couple named mr. madison and mr. liu want to name their daughter alison, she’ll get the surname liu, because alison madison sounds ridiculous

everyone stops having children right now