people of color & Hispanic & so forth

[Lynne Murphy]

--On Wednesday, February 7, 2001 4:28 pm -0500 Bob Fitzke <fitzke at VOYAGER.NET> wrote:

> Isn't it customary in some parts of the Spanish-speaking world for kids
> to take their mother's name? I always thought that makes a lot more
> sense. After all, she KNOWS, the father only believes.

Yes, but the mother's name is secondary--it's the father's name that you're
alphabetized by.  But the reason why using 'Spanish-surnamed' is a problem is that I use it of people in the U.S. who generally just have their fathers' names.  Of course, surnames carry a lot of weight in ethnic identification.  I both am identified with and tend to identify as Irish-American, when I'm just as German-American.  (Of course, the freckles, the Catholic upbringing, and the (now suppressed) double-barrelled Christian name help too.)

Tráthnóna,
Mary Lynne Margaret O'Murchada

M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

phone +44-(0)1273-678844
fax   +44-(0)1273-671320