I fear for the future of this country.
No, not for the many politically unConstitutional crimes being committed in Washington but because the first generation of wide-spread hyphenated named kids are starting to marry. Chaos is just around the corner.
Imagine is Jimmy Rosebud-Pencil falls madly in love with Jenny Furnace-Heep. They marry and become Mr. and Mrs. Rosebud-Pencil-Furnace-Heep. They have a child who falls madly in love with Jordon Thingamabob-Mason-Gruber-Lollipop. They marry and become Mr. and Mrs. Rosebud-Pencil-Furnace-Heep-Thingamabob-Mason-Gruber-Lollipop. Etc.
In only a few generations names will become so long as to be meaningless and the government will mandate that everyone have the last name of Smith. Except for those already named Smith who will renamed Smythe.
Engh, I imagine in a generation or three things will settle into a more regularized system, but clearly there's an impulse to encode more genealogical information in kids' names these days. Americans names are pretty bland by world standards, anyway. I mean, just first, middle, and last? And the only family information it conveys is what your father's last name was? The situation you describe is pretty close to Portuguese naming conventions, and they get along just fine. And then there's Iraqi names, which convey five generations of descent, but hopefully we don't go quite that far.
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