Not a terribly important question but I have been wondering for some time, does someone know why O Meien does not share the same last name as his brothers Tei Meiki and Meiko ?

Dunno the answer.

From the Nihon Kiin website --
all 3 born in Taiwan, their Taiwanese spellings, and their hometowns:

O Meien, 王　銘琬 (Wang Ming Wan) Taipei.
Tei Meiko, 鄭　銘瑝 (Cheng Ming Huang) Tainan.
Tei Meiki, 鄭　銘琦 (Cheng Ming Chi) Tainan.

They are truly bothers. Notice that they share a common character in their names - 王铭琬, 郑铭瑝, 郑铭琦 - a way Chinese families use to identify the same generation of people. In traditional Chinese culture it is important for a family to have at least one son to take the responsibility of running the family. In absence of a son, there are some practical solutions: to adopt one (often a nephew) from relatives, to have a son-in-law to bear the family name, or to have someone in the next generation to bear the family name. O Meien is carrying his mother's maiden game. So my guess is that his mother is the only child of the 王 family. I find this very difficult to explain

Thanks.

The notion we humans still cling to: to carry one family name.

We now know the baby is "approximately" 50/50 genetically from each of its two parents (there was a recent case with 3 biological parents).
For historical reasons, cultures have chosen to collapse the two branches into only one.
Typically, only the father's name is passed on, wiping out the recognition of the entire other 50% of the genes.
(In some cultures, a child can carry the mom's maiden name as a middle name,
but even this only extends for one generation; then, it's gone. )

If you clone a person, then, fine, ~100% of the genes. You can carry the name. (Boba Fett )

But a baby is a new mixture. 50/50 from its 2 parents.

Oh, the can of worms.

I've forgotten the answer - there is a rational one - but it's actually even more complicated, as I recall, because O Meien has a younger sister Zheng Shuqing (a former insei) who is the manager of Zhou Junxun, to whom she later got engaged (not absolutely sure if they actually married).

This brings to mind Confucius's wise saying: First rectify the names.

Hidden as it's perhaps slightly off topic:

Here in Ireland, it is rather uncommon but if the mother's surname is very rare and the father's surname is common, the children may be given the mother's surname to preserve it. My wife and I have two of the most common Irish surnames but if her's was not, she would have insisted on the above. There are also some double barrel surnames combining the two but it's rare. Finally, women not taking their husbands surname has become a lot more common in the past twenty years.

Hi Mef,Hi Boidhre,

Hmm, I was hoping for a fascinating piece of trivia but I guess I'll have to wait
Thanks for your answers.

One of the other brothers (can't remember which) told me he'd been adopted into a family that (I think) didn't have a son. There was more, but I didn't really understand it so I'll stop waffling.

This was a duplicate message, but I can't see a Delete option....

Thank you. I was about to point out that even among "western" societies the business about patralineal surnames wasn't universal. I can easily think of one where:

1) The father's name is used but this is only one generation and it's the father's first name.
2) Women do not change their name upon marriage.
3) Both of those are not recent developments but traditional.

I'll never forget listening to an interview during the time there was a summit in Iceland and because not enough hotel space news people were being put up in private homes and during a slack news time one of these decided to interview her hostess. Kept referring to her as "Mrs. Haroldson" (or whatever) and the Icelandic woman patiently tried over and over to explain "that's not what we do here". That her husband was Bui Haroldson (or whatever) meaning that his name was Bui and his father was Harold and she was Sigrid Arnesdatter (or whatever) meaning she was Sigid and her father was Arne, that Haroldson wasn't her husbands "surname" nor was Arnesdatter her's and that Icelandic women's names didn't change at marriage. Eventually she had to give up and allow herself be addressed as Mrs. Haroldson because the newswoman's brain couldn't seem to accept the concepts.

Of course there is also the Spanish (and Latin American) custom of a child having two surnames, the father's and the mother's, e.g. Gabriel García Márquez.

P.S.

On the right of the message when you are logged in, a little X.

... where the like button usually is. But its only there if your post is still the very last post in the thread.

*grrrrr*

...but I didn't spot the duplicate until I came back to the thread because I got notification that someone else had posted to it.

I shall grumble and grouch.

Some other naming customs:

In Russia daughters have a family name ending in ...aya. For example a daughter of Kovalevski would be Kovalevskaya. A son would be Kovalevski.

In some Scandinavian countries, similar to the situation in Russia, daughters' names end in ...dottir while sons' names end in ...sen. For example Anders's daughter would be Andersdottir and his son would be Anderssen.

Hiding off-topic reply to Mike:

That's Iceland only, and it would be -son not -sen. There the phonebook is organized by given name instead of surname.

About having two surnames (Garcia Marquez etc), how does it continue? I doubt grandchildren will have 4, great grandchildren 8 etc surnames.

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Right, you take the father's part of your father's two surnames, and the father's part of your mother's two surnames, not both ones from both parents. So the male one does have priority, and when Spanish people register their name in single-surname places they usually use the father's one. So Gabriel García Márquez's dad would be Blah García <paternal grandmother surname> and mum would be Blah Márquez <maternal grandmother surname>, though actually checking wikipedia it seems his dad had only one surname: Gabriel Eligio García whilst mother was Luisa Santiaga Márquez Iguarán. I seem to recall in Portuguese they put mother's surname first, but still father's is the more important.

So...what are you guys talking about?
王　銘琬 (Wang Ming Wan)'s family name was 鄭(zheng), but then he was adopted by 王（Wang) family who had no child, this is why his family name was changed, that's all.

In Minnan-speaking region it was very common at that time for people who have too many children to "donate" children to families who had no child for some reason.