Should children be given their mother's last name?

Written by Neva Mateljic, 03/30/2025

Hey york, 

This article will explore some cultural norms about inheritance of last names.

We all have a last name. Some of us have multiple. It is the name that indicates our family lineage and is passed on from our parents. You can change your last name, most commonly by getting married, but people change their last names for various personal reasons. 

Some people hold great value and honor to their last names. You would be surprised about how much controversy there can be if someone in a place decided to go against the norm of the society and give their child a last name that doesn’t fit that norm. 

Today I will be discussing a topic I saw on the news the other day, and I started to wonder why we as a society have made these, in my opinion, silly norms. 

The Democratic Party Senator Dario Franceschini, a former Minister of Cultural Heritage and Activities in Italy, sparked a controversy by proposing that babies should get their mother’s last name. 

In a post shared on X, he said that his proposal was compensation for a centuries-old injustice". He argued for a break from the tradition of assigning newborns their father's surnames, Franceschini said this convention was a "cultural source" for gender inequality. Thus, the Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the far right Lega party of Italy Matteo Salvini mocked Franceschini’s proposal, calling it “one of the great priorities of the Italian left”. 

Now I’m not here to talk about politics in Italy, but I just found this controversy interesting, and a bit amusing. Since Italy has a norm of children getting their father’s last name, it made me question what the norm is in other countries. 

It is said that more and more people are giving their children the mother’s last name. Maybe they are trying to reverse the usual norm, they think that the mother’s last name fits better or some other personal reason. I tried finding a country that has mostly followed matrilineal lineages in their last names (lineage of name coming from the mother) but I realized that it is a bigger minority than I thought. Examples of matrilineal lineage societies can be seen in communities such as the Nairs of Kerala, India, parts of Indonesia and some African communities like Akan people in Ghana. Yet the Akan people still take the father’s last name, but the first name derives from the mother’s family. I think that's fair. 

In some countries, for example Spain and Portugal, children get both of their parents’ last names. I mean, every Spanish person I’ve ever met had at least 2 last names. I like that. Personally, I don’t have 2 last names and I’m happy the way it is, but I think it's cool to carry the names of both your parents’ sides of the family. It shows both sides of who you are and where you come from. 

However, I do understand that If we all started adding more and more last names from our ancestors to our names that we would just end up having a billion names on our documents and that would be very impractical.

But I think everyone should be able to have a choice on what, how many and which last name(s) they have, at least after your turn 18. I think we should be able to choose how we shape our identity, and thankfully in a lot of places around the world people have that right.

So York, do you think that children should have only their father’s last name, only their mother’s, or both?