More Awesome Than You!

It used to be that when I had sims get married, the sim that proposed engagement and marriage kept their last name, whether they were male or female.  Now apparently my game has decided to be cheauvenistic.  The woman always takes the man's last name.  Anybody have a clue of a hack I may have that I don't know about that does this? Thanks.

You probably have J M Pescado's marriage-traditional hack installed they always take the males name.

What's the problem? If the female propose marriage - the male gets her last name; if the male propose - the female gets his last name.
If the female clicks on the wedding arch ("get married") - the male gets her last name; if the male clicks on it - the female gets his last name.

JM hack causes that no matter who proposes the marriage - the female always will get the male's last name. Sometimes it's unconvenient to me, because some family has only daughters, and I need to keep  their legacy.

aha! That must be it.  I did want to keep female's last names for legacy purposes as well.  I will hunt that one down and take it out. Thanks for the help! :-*

WHAT?  Someone is temporarily unsatisfied with one of JM's hacks?  I would change your name, move to a new city, and dye your hair blue.  And don't EVER go to Montana.

ack! shhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Oh my, Oh my - LOL...:)  - "mum" is the word...:).

What's wrong with the tradition in many Asian countries of both parties keeping their last name?  I believe in some cultures, female children take the mother's last name, male children take the father's.

Or also, there's the Spanish tradition of keeping both names.  Perhaps what's needed is an alternative hack which allows the player to choose the name, after all, the household name is already determined and may well be different from either party.

For example, in Sikh culture, the male's lastname is Singh, the female's lastname is Kaur.

PS, offtopic; does anyone know whether there are any sim turbans around?

I recall that as a result, Spanish names get incredibly unwieldy until they're finally truncated for usability. The same problem obviously manifests itself with the new practice of hyphenated names (which I consider to be an abomination!).

Unfortunately, the marriage naming thing is buried sufficiently deeply that it's not practically feasible to go about making a dialog for it. Furthermore, when it comes to determining baby last names, this always defaults to the mother's last name, and messing with that will probably stomp on some more toes. All in all, it's either the inconsistency of it always being the controllable sim's name, the playing the move-in/move-out game (generating a ton of garbage memories and breaking "marry a rich sim"), or the consistency imposed by installing this hack. Up to you.

Exuse me, be all of you are out of the point...:).

The point is - if I play a family which has only daughters, with JM hack I actually DELETE this family name and can't continue the legacy of it, because the girl will get her husband's last name. Only if I have a boy - I can keep the legacy. And if I don't? What I have to do then? Perish the family?

It has nothing to do with the real world (traditional or not). If I choose to play a family, I want at least one of it's kids to continue the legacy.

I want to have the option to decide which will be the last name.

For instance - Lilith and Angela are the only daughters of Pleasant family. If they marry (doesn't matter whom) and get their husband's name (usual Dreamer and Broke) - I perished the Pleasant family legacy, period!

So, as Brandi Broke has many sons, I give Angela to marry Dustin, and he will be Dustin Pleasant - and Beau can marry some other girl, and give her his family name (Broke).
Thus I keep both families' legacy.

The JM hack needs an option of exception, and it hasn't - that's why it's not convenient for me sometimes. "Nothing personal - strictly business"...:).

I think you're confusing the continuation of the name with the bloodline. Like in the real world, this happens. When people become very concerned about this, there's a certain bias towards a male heir.

That depends on how you define "perished the Pleasant family legacy". Unless the house is abandoned entirely, there's still going to be a "Pleasant Family" listed, even if nobody shares that name anymore. For instance, in my neighborhood, there's still a Pleasant family, even though there are now no living sims by that name. The legacy continues.

Ironically and sadistically, in the next geenration, there isn't going to be an actual "Broke" family name either, since none of Brandi's 3 boys has managed to produce any male heir. Oh, the luck and the irony.

And actually, there *IS* a way to preserve a name with the aforementioned hack in place: As I mentioned before, babies always take the mother's last name at time of birth. If the baby is born BEFORE they are married, the child will then carry the name. For instance, in the above case: if Dustin pollinates Angela, who gives birth before the actual marriage, or one never occurs, you'll have a new baby with the Pleasant name.

That may be so in your game, but both Dustin and Beau always manage to produce sons in mine - but they don't usually marry Maxis sims.  On the one occasion when Dustin married a Pleasant, he married Lilith, not Angela, and they had a son.

The only Broke in my game who consistently has daughters is the youngest, Keanu, and he has never married an existing Maxis sim, but frequently ends up in a gay relationship.

"And actually, there *IS* a way to preserve a name with the aforementioned hack in place: As I mentioned before, babies always take the mother's last name at time of birth. If the baby is born BEFORE they are married, the child will then carry the name. For instance, in the above case: if Dustin pollinates Angela, who gives birth before the actual marriage, or one never occurs, you'll have a new baby with the Pleasant name." (JM)

Lol, now I AM the traditional one...:). I don't permit any couple of mine to woohoo,  if they are not engaged first, not to speak about having a baby before marriage...:).
 
I permit it only to Romance males,  without having any other alternative for them - but I have never had a baby if the parents are not married, even the Romance sims - I just force them to marry, even if they pay a lot of aspiration points.

Well, I am on your side now - traditional?...:).

Why not the romance females - they have the same LTWs and Wants - not just traditional but mysogynist to boot!

Until I started following this thread I didn't even realise I played matrilineal n'hoods. I've never understood why people keep getting concerned over their sims names, my kids are named after their mother, end of story. Sometimes sims will get married in my game, but very rarely.

In real life I think the practice of hyphenating names is idiotic, you've only got to look one generation down to see what happens when two hyphenated names get together. I don't believe my last name was a holy gift from God, in fact I changed both my names, first and last, by deedpoll a dozen years ago purely because I didn't like my original names.

Sidenote: My son was about 11 when I changed my name. I asked him if he would like to change his last name to his father's one, or my new one or did he have any other ideas. He said he'd think about it. A couple of days later he said he'd decided. I asked what he would like to be named. 'Darth Vader' he said.  :-\  ;D

Original!

hehehe....sounds like something my son would do.

I wasn't really distressed when I started this thread, was just wondering what was going on.  In one of my hoods I recreated the Mayfair witches (Anne Rice) and they always keep their own last name or they don't inherit anything.  I think the traditional marriage hack is actually a neat idea, at least more realistic.  I just didn't know it existed.  I just put my trust in JMP and installed the whole MATY zip.  I have since taken that particular mod out though :D 

I am just happy that my game works now, even with my monster, character-crowded hoods.

Spanish children's names are built using fathers_surname y mothers_surname.  For instance, Juan de Gomez y Andara would have a father named Gomez and a mother named Andara.  Never call him Mr. Andara unless you want a black eye, because that implies he doesn't know who his father is.  It's perfectly OK to call him Mr. Gomez.

Now, when Juan de Gomez y Andara marries Carlita de Pratz y Edda, their son's name takes each of the parents' father's surnames, such as Paco de Gomez y Pratz.  So even in Spanish names, the patrilineal heritage is maintained.


And yeah, what you said about hyphens.

It actually makes sense even today to use the father's surname for the child.  After all, the child has to have one of it's parent's last names and using the father's shows, in a sense, that the father has recognised his obligations to the child!  And the child of unmarried parents needs this acknowledgement even more since there is no other way a father can show to the world that the child is his if the parents choose not to marry for whatever reason.  Incidentally, by registering the birth in the father's name shows that, if the relationship breaks down, the mother has also accepted that the father is the fathre, which then gives the father some rights too. 

Hey, I'm getting caught up here in a tangle of probably very dodgy reasoning.  I'll shut up!

In Japan, IIRC, it's traditional to take the family name that has more prestige. Male/female is unimportant.

Great, now there's a possibility. Now if you can just find a systematic way that defines the prestige of a family, we're all set.

I suppose you could choose whichever parent is furthest up their career ladder?

There's a thought: Cumulate all of the ancestral parents' current and retired career levels on a weighted scale. The family with the most points is thus the most prestigious.

would different careers need to be weighted differently?  I don't have many sims that die (or even have children for that matter) before they reach the top of their career ladder...

Ness

Or a simpler idea might just be whichever parent has the most best friends!

This prestige based last name business sounds most interesting. Would be useful for when I go on one of my tribal organization kicks.

If a family name that I like (stupid townie names are exempt from this) is in danger of dying out due to having no married couples with it that are having more kids and no unmarried males, I usually have one female sim with the name have a kid before she gets married. (With her future husband, of course, to avoid weirdness in the family tree. I can deal with alien necessitated weirdness, but I avoid any other case of sims having kids with more than one sim.) I got into that habit after it happened accidentally and fortuitously, because I had a couple being weird and not rolling up get engaged wants, so I was putting it off, but the woman (family sim) did want to have a baby.

I've got to start keeping my own records of my sims genealogies. I've got a program for it, and it can output all sorts of different nifty things, not just the Sims 2 tree.

Alternatively, you could have a female sim have a gay relationship and join union, usin her name.  Then you can go into simPE, treat one of them as male, and they can have as many babies as you want with the family name.

I've never tried the 'treat as female/male' option ZZ. Is that all it does, make the sim able to become pregnant? Can you safely turn them back to the proper (displayed) gender when they are done with the pregnancy? I'm always afraid I mess up my sim or my files when trying something out. I probably should do what many players do and build an experiment neighborhood, but I do have so little time to do anything lately :D

G.

Yes, you can just turn them back again.  The only thing it does apart from let them either get pregnant (if male) or make pregnant (if female) is their voice changes!  They look the same and still wear the same clothes - but male sims who get pregnant this way don't get the green alien maternity smock!   And if their partner is totally turned off the opposite sex, it doesn't affect their own relationship, so I guess they are still really the original sex, just with modifications!

I actually think babies taking their mother's name makes more sense, but that is just me.  If a woman gives birth to a child, it is definitely *her* child.  In the days before DNA testing, you couldn't really say for sure who a child's father was.

But with your sims, you know when the music plays!  So you know who the father is for certain!

I think that's mostly as a "standard" case, as sims don't necessarily have an actual father.

That would really depend on who the father was.

That would really depend on who the father was.

And the mother!

Lol, ZZ, you remind me: when my daughter was born, she had the face of her father, and one of my friends said: "well, we know who the father is - but who is the mother?".

Did you hide your bulge that well?

It seems so, lol. I only added 40 pounds to my wieght...:).

You did well, then!  (Maybe too well......!)

Interestingly enough, babies do tend to favor their fathers in appearance, but particularly humans tend to notice their resemblance to their father and remark on it more than their resemblance to their mother.

What in the world would you get for Brandi Broke's kids if you DNA tested them? And what the DNA of alien spawn look like?

I would have given anything as a child to be told I resembled my father!  But all I ever got wss "Isn't she like you Florrie!!"  Needless to say, we always thought my father was the good-looking parent!

That's how I do it in my town.  Just ask Darren Capp!  Dreamer and Goth don't mean nuttin' in this town honey, go back to Pleasantville where someone cares cuz I don't!!  ;D

I do it the way we do it at home, pick the last name I like best. In Germany the bride and groom can pick either name, it's completely up to them. That law has been around for about 15+ years now, and no one seems to be complaining.

G.

I think legally there's nothing in the UK to prevent that, and never has been - often a wealthy family with only a daughter to inherit would insist on the girl's husband taking the family name so the line could be seen to continue!  However, unless the husband has a really awful name (like Sidebottom or Pigg) then tradition is still on the husband's side!

Here in Greece tradition still talks, so only in some cases does the bride keep her last name along with her husband's. In the Sims however you could just go ahead and change the last name after the marriage (or anytime you want for that matter!) with SimPE and still keep JM's mod.

In Korea where I used to live (That is NORTH Korea where The Sims 2 plays YOU  ::)) the children almost always take their father's surname, while the bride and groom keep theirs. Rather practical, considering that most of the population are constricted to a small surname pool. (Rather like the Sims, heh.)

I like to keep every family name intact so I decided against the hack.

Do many couples choose to take the female's name?

Surprisingly, the range is pretty high. I have a friend who works at the county residents affairs office and he tells me the ratio is around 65 to 35 and steadliy balancing out. Germany has a serious problem with population decline, and many couples have only one child. If it's a girl, and the groom has other siblings,, the girl's name will most likely be chosen at marriage. If both are single children then they would have some thinking to do :D

G.

Would they then look to first cousins to see if the family name was being continued by one or more of them?

That would be just about the only other option ZZ. In our case that ship has sailed. My father had 3 sisters and 1 brother. The brother had 2 daughters, one got married and took her husband's name. My other cousin would probably only get married if under threat of imminent death, meaning she would not give up her independence for all the tea in China. I have 1 sister and 2 brothers. My sister also took her husbands name (no siblings or cousins in my brother in law's family). One of my brothers adopted his wife's daughter from a previous marriage and refuses to have any other children. My other brother... well, let's just say that the odds of him getting married are slim to none.  All hope of carrying on the name are on the adopted child, otherwise the family name that can be traced all the way back to the 13th century will be gone. Almost the same goes for my mother's lineage.

Oh well, I don't really care all that much about it, but the families are of some social prominence in the region, so my father is not too happy. Ah, the complications of European lineages.

G.

Well, I think it's much the same everywhere in the "civilised" world!  I'll bet you there's an Ozzie sheep farmer who can trace his lineage right back to the first convict ship who would hate for the family name to die with him!

In the UK it is possible for a woman to not take her husband's name on marriage - she can keep her own one, or make up a new one. The name that you sign the marriage register with becomes your legal name, so it is possible to add extra middle names or even change your first name if you want to. This is somewhat easier than doing a deed poll to change your name.

I can't remember whether the same legal standing applies to however the man signs the marriage register. I haven't paid much attention to it because I've been against legal marriage for the past n years as it's only been available to opposite-sex couples. Now that civil partnership is coming in, my objection to marriage has been removed, so I should find out about things like this :).

That's the way it works in most of the 50 states in the USA.  Massachusettes is an exception, where the wife is required to take the husband's name, but off hand I don't know of any other states that do this.  Nevertheless, marriages where they do something other than having the wife take the husband's last name remain anecdotal anomalies, not a social norm.

I don't think it's so small an amount it can only be considered 'anecdotal anomalies', especially depending on region. In Finland a couple would be considered extremely old-fashioned for the wife to take the husband's name. I also know it wasn't unusual for a couple to take a different option in the Northwestern US.

It's not unusual where I live for the wife to keep her name and the children take the father's name. (Or whichever one they want, once they get old enough.) Of course, divorce usually throws an entirely new wrench into the works, and may be the reason for that practice.

That was what my mom wanted to do, but she changed her mind when Dad said it was okay with him. Changed her middle name to her maiden name instead.

Hyphenated names are demon spawn! They're annoying and difficult to spell, not to mention rather unsightly, and suggest that the couple in question is actually a corporation. Or a law office.

I think it's so often a case of the stronger personality wins the argument!  While a lot of professional women keep their single names for work, they still tend to be known as    "Mrs John Smith" for social occasions - and I personally think that is even more Victorian than just taking the same surname!  But a social invitation will tend to be addressed to Mrs and Mrs John Smith (it's quicker than typing or writing Mr John Skith and Mrs Mary Smith)!

Apparently, if you want to get married in Texas, you just have to introduce yourselves as being married three times.  Done.
http://www.dumblaws.com

Enjoy!

Sounds like the opposite of the Moslem divorce !

Of course, the obvious drawback inherent in the prestige system is "prestige digestion". If this is used as a traditional policy, sims will eventually all have the same last names, because the higher-prestige family digests the smaller ones, becoming ever more prestigious at the same time.

Makes sense!

I'm pretty sure that here in Idaho, if a couple spends the night together and errmm...."consumates"...you are considered married.  So in my case I'm married to several people.  Does that make me a polygamist?

This is fiction.  As in many other states, to have a common-law marriage in Texas you have to live together as husband and wife for seven years and represent yourself in the community as a married couple.

After briefly perusing dumblaws.com, I'd guess that the vast majority of the material there are just silly things that people made up.

Greg

and there's always 'jumping the broomstick', which I fancy should I ever make a long term commitment again.

PS New Zealand passed a civil union law earlier this year, all the legal rights and obligations of marriage, including partner recognition after death and child custody rights, but not known as marriage.

I think laws like that are long overdue in many countries for people who don't believe in traditional marriage but still feel the need to commit themselves to their partner.

Oh, and in Scotland there's still Gretna Green!