FNOPs Revisited

I’ve always found hyphenated names to be interesting. A kid will get a last name that typically contains his mother’s maiden name and his father’s last name. If Ms. Jones marries Mr. Smith, the kid will have the last name of Jones-Smith. But what happens with the next generation? Will we see a third name and second hyphen added? That would result in some really long names. Or will one of the original hyphenated names be dropped? If one is dropped, will it be the mother’s name or the father’s?

One solution would be to just drop last names entirely, and that of course is how we end up with FNOPs (First Name Only People). Madonna, Bozo, Cher, Ichiro, Barney. Yeah, those guys. And yeah, I’m still trying to out what happens when two FNOPs marry. If Cher marries Bono, will she become Cher Bono again?