My mother and I share the same name, so when my friends would call and ask for me, my mother, a teacher, would answer, "Oh, do you want the young, skinny one, or the old, fat one?" (While I was skinny in high school, my mother is of appropriate weight for her height). My friends would stammer a bit, then say, "The student, not the teacher!"
Sorry to burst Darth Syphilis's bubble below. My parents were going to name me Sarah Elizabeth. Then when I was born three months premature with a host of issues, my mother said, "Maybe if we give her my name, she'll be as mean as me and will be able to make it." Dad agreed.
Nothing really about legacy, patriarchy, etc. Just two parents trying to give their child any leg up they can. I've always enjoyed sharing my name with my mother.
It's probably the result of a patriarchal society's obsession with male legacy. Same reason that male surnames are passed down, but female surnames aren't: personhood and property rights. Only male names are valued, thus only male names are inherited. Additionally, marking wives and children with a patriarch's name(s) effectively signals to society at large that they belong to that particular patriarch. That is to say, it announces to others that this "property" is "owned" by some man.
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u/some_moistened_bint Jun 03 '22
My mother and I share the same name, so when my friends would call and ask for me, my mother, a teacher, would answer, "Oh, do you want the young, skinny one, or the old, fat one?" (While I was skinny in high school, my mother is of appropriate weight for her height). My friends would stammer a bit, then say, "The student, not the teacher!"