<p>I propose ze and zir again lol :)</p>
<p>English does have ungendered pronouns for this application–they just happen to be the same as the masculine pronouns.</p>
<p>I will use “them” before “ze.” Yech.</p>
<p>The women’s movement in the 70s made us re-think the notion that the default human is a man.</p>
<p>Noone nows how to right better then me.</p>
<p>;)</p>
<p>*These are the battles that are fought daily between Catholic school graduates, schooled in the dark arts of sentence diagramming and self-righteousness, and their exasperated prey. *</p>
<p>LOL…Many of us have fond, or not-so-fond, memories of diagramming sentences on blackboards with Sister Mary Fill-in-the-Blank watching over us.</p>
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<p>Which is precisely why they are not really ungendered.</p>
<p>I agree about “ze.” A wretched, bogus, doomed-to-failure coinage if there ever was one.</p>
<p>I’ll have you know I diagrammed sentences in both international (but American) schools and public schools. My kids too. (But really they only got a little taste.)</p>
<p>Don’t like ze, but lots of people hated Ms. and it’s gotten pretty well established. I could never get used to calling girls “it” in German. The ending “chen” which means little - girl was “little maid” literally - meant it had to be neutral no matter how ridiculous that seemed to my American schooled ear.</p>
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<p>You say that, and yet it’s thriving in certain communities. Who would have thought 15 years ago that “google” would be acceptable as a verb?</p>
<p>math, your post reminded me of something. I’m going through old files at my work and the applications go back as far as the 50s. Up through the 60s I had a LOT of applications that said something along the lines of “Mrs. Jack Smith” for the name. I couldn’t figure it out. Then I found some apps from the 70s and the applications says “Married women, it is recommended that you give your given first names.” There are a lot of older patrons who still sign their notes as “Mrs. Jack Smith”. To someone my age, that is absolutely baffling.</p>
<p>Mrs. Jack Smith". To someone my age, that is absolutely baffling.</p>
<p>Even to someone my age, that was baffling.</p>
<p>My mom finally stopped doing that when we teased her and told her she was just an added “s”.</p>
<p>My SIL always addresses my birthday cards to “Mrs. Jack Smith”. But her return address label shows “Mary Jones”. I tell my husband that his wife got a card but I didn’t get one.</p>
<p>“Give up ze papers!” Herr Geist demanded, his face twitching with rage beneath his black satin eye patch.
“I will not give up ze papers.” answered the truculent spy, “Never!”</p>
<p>Shows how rapidly things have changed in the last 3-4 generations. We went from women commonly calling themselves Mrs. Jack Smith to it not really batting an eyelash when a woman keeps her full name- not even hyphenated! </p>
<p>Does lead to some new issues though- what last name do you give the kids?!</p>
<p>^^ I kept my maiden name when I got married, no hyphen. My D has my husband’s last name, also no hyphen. It caused a bit of confusion at times when she was little, mostly that people assumed I was divorced or divorced and remarried, or that she was my stepdaughter. Nothing that was a big deal, though.</p>
<p>I kept my maiden name as well but didn’t want any confusion. My maiden and married last names are too long to hyphenate. I just made my maiden name a middle name and so my name is really long now. I just use the intitials for my middle name for the most part so. </p>
<p>I knew hopefully was wrong to start a sentence so I avoided doing it. The correct way sounded wrong to me anyway.</p>
<p>I guess I don’t really understand the point behind keeping one’s maiden name, if the reason for doing so is to reject the societal message that a woman is her husband’s property. A woman’s maiden name is her father’s sir name, signifying that she is in some way, his property. Either way, you’re taking on some man’s name. </p>
<p>I predict years down the road, some kids will get really teed off by the way their genealogical searches are made confusing because of this. :)</p>
<p>I just really like my name. I have no intention of going through the hassel of changing it simply because I get married.</p>
<p>I’ve done a lot of genealogy research on my family. Almost always the woman is the end of the line because her maiden name wasn’t preserved. I doubt that they’ll care that much considering they already have to deal with that, Ellis island, record destruction by constantly shifting nation boundaries, etc.</p>
<p>poetsheart, I kept my maiden name because I like it, not to overthrow the patriarchy. 
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<p>Plus, it’s an unusual name, whereas DH’s is very common. In my 22 years of marriage, I’ve actually met three women with the name I would have had if I’d changed. DH once had to prove to Blue Cross of Illinois that he wasn’t their subscriber of the same name. Both DH and DD have been billed incorrectly by doctor’s offices. And DD has to be careful that her school is not mixing up her records with those of a fellow student with the same name. I’ve never had any of those problems anywhere.</p>
<p>My husband is Dr. Rap. That seems pretty funny to me, but it’s almost 2AM.</p>
<p>I kept my maiden name because we were leaving for Germany 3 weeks after the wedding and trying to get the paperwork changed would have been a hassle. I’d have been willing for a dashed last name if dh also dashed his, he didn’t want to. Kids have his last names because that seems to be more common (and I think the Germans would have had apoplexy if I’d insisted on my last name - they were horrified enough that my kid had my last name as a middle name instead of something from their approved names list.) Interestingly, I thought, that my Dad thought I should take dh’s last name because we were headed to Germany. My last name is very German, dh’s last name is very Jewish. He thought I should make that political statement to the Germans. I thought it was an interesting point, but really unnecessary.</p>
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<p>Dream on. Likening the widespread adoption of a new, artificial form of grammar, whose usage is driven by nothing more than a narrow and unpopular form of political correctness, and the spread of a commercial brand name who usage is promoted by offering an extremely useful public service for free, is a very poor analogy.</p>