Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy. I'm Amy McPhee Allabest. Here's a quiz. Guess how many people in the United States have the last name of Johnson? The answer is about 2 million. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have last names such as Anderson and Thompson and Wilson.

Are you noticing a pattern?

How about this?

Consider the meanings of other common American surnames.

Williams means son of William.

Rodriguez means son of Rodrigo. Martinez means son of Martin. Jones,

from the family of John. This commonality, naming people by their relationship to a father or patriarch,

is no coincidence. It's a deeply rooted tradition

known as patronymics, patro for father, of course, and nym for name, father name. On today's

episode, we are going to be interrogating this tradition and in the process exploring the history of coverture laws,

marital customs, and more, as our guest, Amelia Hapgood, delves deep into the question,

what's in a name? We're so excited to have her here today. To introduce our guest,

Amelia Hapgood is a BYU student, a newlywed, a devout feminist, and a wannabe runner.

She's from Arkansas and loves being in a family of all girls.

Welcome, Amelia.

My name is Amelia Hapgood.

My pronouns are she, her, hers, and I am so excited to be here today.

I want to start by posing a question to any men listening. Imagine if your name was Eric Anna's

daughter or Mark Rachel's daughter. Isn't that bizarre? I know it sounds ridiculous, but that is

literally what Kate Anderson or Sophie

Johnson is. Apparently, the sort of matronomic convention is common in other cultures, such as

in Iceland, that blew my mind when Amy shared this idea with me. When you flip the tradition,

...