Evolving Surnames In A Community Of Modern Parents

DNA Info recently featured a post about parents, including two Ditmas Park couples, who are finding new ways to share surnames with their children. Elana Karopkin and Michael Rabinowitz and Arastu Chaudhury and Susan Crumchau have chosen to forgo traditional hyphenating or using only one of their given names for their children’s last names, instead using old family names to derive something new, or creating a portmanteau of their current last names.

While this may seem like a thoroughly-21st century way to tackle name-giving, Susan (maiden name Crumiller) explains that her parents, Jenny Crum and Jon Miller, combined their last names after marrying in 1980. Similarly, she and Arastu created the name “Crumchau” to share with their children, rather than passing on only one of their names or the mouthful “Chaudhury-Crumchau.”

Elana and Michael took a different approach, borrowing ancestors’ last names from each of their families and simplifying them to the shared syllable “Gold.”

Ditmas Park certainly has a large population of young families, so we have to wonder: are there creative ways of sharing family names left out of the article? Does a name make a family? How important is it to share a name, and how difficult is it to navigate things like school functions and travel, as mentioned in the article, with many different names?

Image via Prospect Park