Green Tip #108: Change Your Name

Now, it's not often that I write specifically about the things that are currently happening in my life (while I am often inspired by them), but I'm going to go against that with Green Tip #108. Those of you that know me personally know that I am engaged to be married in the next few years. I was speaking with my future in-laws recently and they were asking me if my fiancee was going to keep her name or take mine. Like I do whenever I am asked any question, I thought to myself, "What Would Al Gore Do?" In other words, which would be more environmentally friendly? And the answer is that she should take my name.

Why is that more Green, you ask? Her last name is nine letters long whereas mine is only four. Take a moment and think of all the times that you sign or write your name in a given day. Even if my fiancee only writes her name once a day on average, that could add up to 21,900 times for the rest of her life. Times a difference of five letters, and she'll be saving 109,500 letters worth of ink. I certainly don't know how much ink that adds up to, but I know it's pretty significant. And that doesn't even take into account the amount of printer ink that is used on everything form marriage certificates to job applications.

Alright! We saved a pretty good amount of ink. Case closed, right? Wrong. Let's take it one more step. Let's start a practice of when people get married, the spouse with the longer name should give it up. Yes, guys, I know it's difficult to think that many of us will have to give up our family names and take our wives, but I think it's time we embrace this change not only for the environment, but also to help with gender relations.

I know that this will eventually tend to favor naturally short last named cultures such as the Chinese (Li, Wu, Hu, etc.) and be biased against cultures with long names such as the Polish (Wojciechowski, Kwiatkowski, etc) and the Georgians (Kvaratskhelia, etc.), but surname eradication is a small price to pay to avoid biological eradication due to Climate Change.

Oh, one other thing. If your last names are the same length, pleeeease don't do the hyphenated thing because you can't choose between the two. That's the opposite of what Green Tip #108 is about. So I had better not ever meet a half Polish, half Georgian child some day with the last name Wojciechowski-Kvaratskhelia.