缅北禁地 a year before Christine Mallinson gave birth to her first child, she and her husband agreed that all of their children would take her last name. The decision came down to family cohesion: The couple wanted their children鈥攖hey eventually had two鈥攖o share a last name with the only cousin near their kids in age, who was Mallinson鈥檚 niece.
In 2002, researchers found that about聽97 percent聽of married couples passed down only the father鈥檚 last name to their first kid. That proportion seems to have remained remarkably consistent: A 2017 paper studying adoptive heterosexual parents found that they gave a patrilineal surname to their child聽96 percent of the time. Though few studies on the topic have been conducted, evidence suggests that in almost every American family with a mom and a dad, children receive their father鈥檚 last name.
Even in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, patrilineal surnames are a surprisingly new convention. As Deborah Anthony, a professor of legal studies at the University of 缅北禁地 at Springfield, outlined in a聽, surnames in England prior to the 17th century weren鈥檛 standardized. Many signified a profession (such as Potter) or place of residence (such as Hilton, short for 鈥渉ill town鈥�).
This article appeared in The Atlantic on Oct. 27, 2021.