family names

Tricky business, this with family names.

my mother - Nilsson

my father - Näslund

my sister - Angermann

my brother - Söderberg

me myself - Forsman

...asking myself - how did this happen? Start to believe that we are collecting names. This has some cons sometimes:

• phone calls can be interesting - people never find numbers and they get confused by all the names;
• your snail mail is for sure lost every now and then since you can not put that many names on the mailbox;
• children in this position have a living hell in elementary school when forms are to be filled in and signed by one or both parents - names never match;
• all registers have multiple entries for your phone number, i.e. if someone uses the register to call doing some marketing related then you get one call for each entry...
• Try making a reservation for a "family event" - I can remember one of the times when "we" tried to have a "family dinner" at some place. Of course arriving in different cars from different locations, having some "additional" family members (girlfriends/boyfriends/husbands/wives/children) with us as well. We are kind of a distributed family. FUN. Four of us arrive and enter the place, the guy working there asks us if there is a reservation and if so in what name. This was followed by four of us looking at each others asking "who made the reservation? I did not this time". It all ended with us telling the guy "it is kind of a bigger group, around 25 or so". Have to admit that all of us laughed at this comment;
• ...

...and some pros:

• phone calls again - if you don't want to be found this with multiple entries can be good since people get confused and give up thinking that there has to be a mistake;
  
• snail mail - you tend to not get some post, some annoying things tend to disappear;
• you get the pleasure of seeing a surprised face when you try to explain these things to other people;
• people don't "associate" to your parents/brothers/sisters when they see/hear your name, i.e. you are not compared with them all the time;
• ...