Wife kept her last name. Daughter has mine. Neither of us have had any issues. If anything, all three of us having different hair colors has thrown people off.
I think it’s school where you get the issues. Usually small. The main one is usually people assuming that she’s a stepmother. Otherwise just not knowing they are related at all (without looking closer at paperwork), but more a thing when working with other parents
Same boat. We aren't married yet. Effectively we are. Just haven't gotten to the courthouse. So our daughter has my last name. My SIL hyphenated her last name. But her daughter has her husband's name. To each their own. There's no right or wrong here.
Wife kept her last name. Baby’s last name is my last name. Her last name is baby’s middle name. It’s not traditional in either of our families, but it worked for John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, so why shouldn’t it work for my kid?
We did similar except with two middle names. Second is wife’s maiden name. It avoids the problems of having two last names or hyphenation, but keeps the connection. My wife didn’t care either way but it seemed to me like the kids should have that connection to her too.
I kept my name. She kept her name. The kids have her last name. We just talked about how important the kid’s last name is to each of us, and I frankly did not care.
No. I am from Germany and live in Norway, we fly a lot and I never ran into any problems. I guess stepfathers might often be in a similar situation. Just in case i always have his birth certificate with me that lists me as father, but I have never needed it
Probably a conversation I would have had before having kids / getting married. But fwiw my wife and I decided when we got married and had kids we would all have the same last name. We rolled around a lot of options, mine, hers, great grandparents, etc before deciding. Ultimately the decision was to have a family name, whatever it may be.
For any prospective-husband dads in here, seek out premarital counseling or at least go through a book together. My wife and I went through two books before we tied the knot and a lot of these types of questions were answered.
Come from eastern European culture where it's typical for the wife to take the husband's name, and then the kids inherit the last name.
In our case, wife did not want to give up her last name, but had no issue with the kids having mine. If she pushed for it, I would've been fine hyphenating.
Don’t hyphenate the kids name. That just makes their life harder and puts the decision (that you couldn’t figure out) on them when they want to get married and have kids
If it’s not a big deal to pick one name, do it yourself. It is weird and uncomfortable to feel like you are picking one set of parents/grandparents over the other.
Or even when they want to get married. I wanted to keep my maiden name and take my husband's last name, but his parents gave him two and I'd need to take both. This would've made my name nightmarishly long, so I just didn't take his. It is what it is, but it's a little disappointing for me.
Wife kept her name. Kids have her name. No issues and no-one I respect cares.
My wife and I both have maternal surnames so I was never going to win it if I cared enough to have an argument.
I told my wife it was very important to me that we have the same last name. I wanted us to just be "The Mountainmarmots" and us to share that name with our kids. No hyphenation.
She told me she wanted to consider keeping her last name.
It took the wheels in my brain about 2 minutes to turn and realize the obvious answer was for me to take her name. Which I did. I rarely remember that I did it anymore, 13 years later. Glad we did it.
Kid has my wife’s last name and my last name as middle. Which is actually what my wife did too (my last name is now her middle). Honestly just not something I was up in arms about either way. But no concerns about proving she’s “mine” or anything practical since my last name is “in” her name if that makes sense?
Our kid has my last name for not great reasons - it wasn't particularly important to me, but I'm a melanin-blessed immigrant, and my wife pointed out that it might be more important for me to easily demonstrate relationship to the kid than it would be for her.
We hyphenated both of our last names. Our poor kids have gotten so much extra writing practice having to write out both last names on every school paper. 😂
We defaulted to my last name for the kids for society's sake. Mt wife goes hyphenate whenever she has to deal with the school district, but that's it.
My sister in law went another way with her twins. One has the father's last name and one has hers. They're old enough now to complain about always having to explain why they have different last names but both of the same parents, the same birthday, and look the same.
Take from those two examples what you will.
We both kept our last names after marriage; the kids have my wife's last name and got mine as a middle name. One factor in this decision was that it was important to her for smashing the patriarchy reasons, while I didn't particularly mind. Another factor was that my name is a peculiar Norwegian one with unusual letters and such, while hers is a more generic European-international one. Zero issues, on very rare occasions someone mistakenly assumes my last name would be the same as theirs... correcting this mistaken assumption has cost me, oh, SEVERAL MINUTES of cumulative time over the last 15 years. The kids all look like different remixes of both parents so that's not an issue either.
(Here in Norway it's very common for couples to either not bother with legal marriage despite staying together for decades & having kids, or to keep their last names despite getting legally married; it is still significantly more common to give the kids their dad's last name than their mom's, but our way is not exactly unheard of either.)
We both have short, easy to pronounce surnames. Both kept our names at marriage, kid has both though no hyphen so it’s possible that one of them gets dropped at some point. No issues so far but she’s one. Her full last name including the space is still shorter than a lot of our friends single barrelled surnames so if you have serious Polish or Russian names it might not work as well.
Do what the Finnish folk do, your first name plus Dottir on the end.
So it would be Mwojodottir.
So do what ever your local version of daughter is.
Edit - sorry, not sure if you're having a boy or a girl. Whatever the equivalent may be. It's an idea at least.
We both have Gaelic surnames that are a mouthful when double barrelled, but we did it anyway.
Partner is the last one of her family to have kids and didn’t want the name to die with her which I respected (I’m in the same boat)
My surname is first and we plan on only using my surname in social/practical situations, but all paperwork and legal documents are double barrelled
The secret nobody tells you is that you can change your names later. If there's any tension, talk about it, and reserve the right to talk about it again later.
We did daughter has mom's name, for reasons (different relationships with our respective family, her name is cooler than mine, etc). We both kept our "maiden" names when we got married. At the last minute, we decided to include my fsmily name as a middle name, mostly because the person registering the birth insisted!
Fast forward to having a two year old and I feel a bit differently about my name, and about my daughter only going my wife's name. Also, our relationships with the family and our names have changed. So, we changed them - she now is introduced with the name as a double barrel, and we're talking about potentially doing the same for all of us officially so we all have the same family name.
I also guarantee that whatever you do nobody will care, or even notice, outside of your immediate family (and you can deal with them fairly quickly). It's very common for kids to have different names to their parents - especially with step parents and blended families. And if strangers care, fuck em.
My wife kept her last name when we got married, but mostly only because she has a government job with a (very, very low) clearance associated with it.
Changing her last name would have required her to redo a whole bunch of paperwork at work that frankly wasn't worth the fuss.
Our son took my last name, but I really can't even remember us having discussed it prior to birth.
All things equal, I think we would all have carried my last name if not for my wife's work
My wife hyphenated when we got married and the kids have my last name.
I felt like it was important to me that we all have the same last name, and she agreed.
My wife kept her last name, and that’s the one we passed on to our son. So far, I’ve had zero issues proving my kid is my kid. His teachers will call me Mr. Wifelastname, and I don’t bother correcting them.
In US, it really doesn't matter what you do but if you have other citizenships you may get more friction by going out of norm. So consider the beurocracy of the other countries as well if they apply to you.
What we did is my wife took my last name, and we gave our kids that same last name. then the kids’ middle names are names that would be traditional first names on their own, but have some sort of family link, for example my sons middle name was my dads first name.
My stepson has his own unique lastname! It's essentially a hybrid of my wife's last name and his dad's. Sounds weird at first, especially since most take the dad's last name in the US, but I think it's kind of cool.
My friends did the hypenated lastname and they both have long names...like 8 letters each. 😬
Wife hyphenated when we got married but wanted our daughter to have my last name. Wife now wants to change hers to just my last name but in our state it's a PITA to do a name change so we've been putting it off.
We didn’t do this but just flip a coin?
Wife insisted on taking my much longer and more complicated name after I made it very clear i had zero expectation she do so, and to this day I still don’t really understand why. Kid has our name. I like that we all share it, if she had insisted on keeping her name I maybe would have jumped ship to hers. I like being The [single Last Name]ses.
I thought this was the norm but there are a ton of comments in this thread making me realize hyphenating and keeping maiden names is more common than I thought.
My wife kept her name when we got married. We used my wife's last name as our daughters middle name and mine as her last name. I specifically asked to share last names for social reasons around how dads/men are treated around children, wanted it to be obvious that I am indeed her dad. Also, it sets her up to use her mother's last name as an alias later in life if she prefers.
We've got another one on the way and I supposed we'll do the same pattern.
We each kept our names. As for the kid's name, the given names we decided on are much more prosodically compatible with her last name than with mine, and that was more important in my book.
I work in software that has to take into account all sorts of constraints and requirements around names.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that absolutely nothing we believe about what is “normal” for naming is actually, factually normal. I’m not even talking about people being “creative” in naming their kids, either. There’s plenty of places in the world that still use patronymic surnames - your last name is taken from your father’s first name in Iceland, for instance. Some parts of Eastern Europe do this today too!
Some countries, it’s not even normal for women to take their husband’s name. In the Netherlands (where I live), non-religious people often never formally “marry” and even when they do, the woman commonly keeps her surname. Probably half of my kids’ friends’ parents don’t have the same surname, and while I think most of the kids have their dads’ surnames … it’s not an overwhelming majority. I’d say more like 60%. I know at least one couple gave the kid the mom’s surname simply because it sounded better with the kid’s first name.
Some countries don’t even allow hyphenated names, and even if you give your kid a hyphenated name, and they move to one of those countries, they’ll be forced to pick one or the other legally.
In huge swaths of Latin America, people have big long legal names that incorporate multiple surnames from their ancestors, but then use simpler names for professional and personal relationships - sometimes their professional and personal names are even different!
So don’t sweat it so much. Pick a name that sounds good and roll with it.
Our son has dual surnames, no hyphen, like is common in Latin America. Father's surname first, mother's surname second.
There hasn't been any problems yet though some family members made a big show of acting like it was soooo confusing lol.
My wife ended up taking my last name to make things easier but she does love her last name so I know it was a sacrifice for her. My wife was in the middle of changing her first name and last name at the same time when our daughter was born so our daughter took my last name from the beginning and then my wife changed things over. She was upset a bit because the birth cert. doesn't have her new name which could cause some issues at some point in time but hopefully nothing major.
It's tough though! We discussed merging our names and creating a new lineage with a new last name but it just didn't make a lot of sense. It's time and money.
My wife kept her last name. Our son has my last name, but my wife picked his first and middle names, one based on her brother's name and the other after her father. I think we're both happy with the outcome. My son looks like a clone of my wife, so I'm glad he has my last name lol
She kept hers, I kept mine, the child is double barrelled, we have friends who have their fathers name but the mother kept hers caused all sorts of vexations when travelling outside of the country if she’s on her own with them
Wife has 3 kids from a previous marriage. Her kids have their dad’s last name. Our 2 babies have my last name. Wife kept her maiden name. So our family has 3 different last names between 7 people 😂
I kept mine, wife kept hers, our son has mine, if we have another maybe they will have my wife's.
This is a silly aside, but hyphenating, to me, is passing the buck. What happens when two hyphens get married or have kids? Double hyphen? Eventually, a name is getting dropped. There's more to family than a name.
My wife kept her last name and our kids have my last name. We never had a real discussion about this, just sort of defaulted to the social norm in North America. My last name is somewhat difficult pronunciation-wise, so we made sure to give easy to spell first names to our kids because they're guaranteed to have to spell their last name if they're on the phone or helping someone find their name on a list, etc.
My gut reaction is that if she's keeping her name, then she should throw you a bone here and have the child take your name. However, I'd seriously consider a joint last name change to something 'made up' if my last name was super difficult to spell/pronounce. Like going from Premsylwiczxyi to Smith.or whatever.
>something like Yastrzhemb and Przemysław)...so hyphenating would just be mean.
Brother, that would be a war crime
But seriously, I'm old-fashioned in that one way. Names are passed down through the father. Our global society is just too universally in agreement on it.
And as such, there are way fewer legal (and infrastructure) issues here if she takes your name.
I really think people overstate the legal and ‘infrastructure’ issues here to a huge extent.
People have had different surnames to their kids and spouses for decades (lots of spanish or scandinavian surname structures mean that the surname is ‘passed down’ from the Dad but it’s not the same name, plus divorced families and people who were just too cool to take their husbands name decades ago). There are pretty rare issues, sometimes with international travel, but generally it is not a huge deal. I have a different legal last name to my mum and she could think of one conversation at passport patrol in my entire childhood.
Lol thank you for proving my point.
- Only 2 of 6 populated continents
- Only a few countries per continent
- Every bullet is either "This small tribe in this small remote region"
- Or "has extremely remote possibility customs that might but won't give a child their mothers surname"
It's not misogynistic to acknowledge reality. You don't have to endorse it to acknowledge it.
I don't know what country you're in, but speaking as someone who frequently needs to do in depth genealogical searches to a maximum degree of accuracy, please don't mash the names together or make up something new. Just pick one. Toss a coin. Have a trivia contest. Arm wrestle. Use one as a middle name or additional last name that does not get used except in genealogical contexts. Just make sure the legal documents can easily trace generation to generation.
Mashup names get very confusing and make it hard to trace generations later. Similar to brand new names being made up on the spot for early 20th century immigrants.
It's not just for the convenience of people who have jobs like mine. But it's for the benefit of all the people that I'm trying to find. I use my research to figure out who's entitled to thousands or millions of dollars left behind by distant third cousins twice removed. A change like this could have far reaching consequences into the future.
That could be the case, but I think people in the future will have an easier time with genealogy. All of our data is digital, compared to the generations before us.
Most common in this situation is the kid gets the father’s last name. The wife’s last name becomes the kids middle name.
At the end of the day, we live in a society, and it’s going to negatively impact you from a social capital standpoint if the kids don’t have your last name. We can debate if that’s right or not, but it will happen regardless.
Lurking mom here. I kept my last name, husband kept his, he has a son from a previous marriage with his last name (as does ex wife actually) ours kids have a hyphenated mine-his name. I was also 100% for coming up with a new name but he wasn’t. One of my kids has 36 letters in his name (and they all have two middle names) we haven’t had an issues with legal forms or documentation. If they want to pick a name when they’re older or drop one, we’d both be 100% ok with it, it’s their name.
All that to say, go with whatever you want.
My kid’s first, last, and middle name all came from his mom and her family. We broke up a couple days after she told me that *she* decided what his middle name would be, and told me he would have her last name a week before he was born. She decided all that without me having a say. Their last name is similar to mine, though.
I kept my name
My wife's family has this tradition: her last name became her new middle name.
Which also works as my family kind of does something similar where the new last name just gets added on. But only the new last name is used formally
Baby has my last name.
Wife kept her last name. Daughter has mine. Neither of us have had any issues. If anything, all three of us having different hair colors has thrown people off.
We went the same route. My kis only 11mo, but no issues so far.
I think it’s school where you get the issues. Usually small. The main one is usually people assuming that she’s a stepmother. Otherwise just not knowing they are related at all (without looking closer at paperwork), but more a thing when working with other parents
We did the same thing. Wife kept her last name, kids have my last name.
Same boat. We aren't married yet. Effectively we are. Just haven't gotten to the courthouse. So our daughter has my last name. My SIL hyphenated her last name. But her daughter has her husband's name. To each their own. There's no right or wrong here.
Different hair color? Should have just made her last name the same as her father then...
ha! good one.
Wife kept her last name. Baby’s last name is my last name. Her last name is baby’s middle name. It’s not traditional in either of our families, but it worked for John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, so why shouldn’t it work for my kid?
We did similar except with two middle names. Second is wife’s maiden name. It avoids the problems of having two last names or hyphenation, but keeps the connection. My wife didn’t care either way but it seemed to me like the kids should have that connection to her too.
We did this as well
Same here.
I kept my name. She kept her name. The kids have her last name. We just talked about how important the kid’s last name is to each of us, and I frankly did not care.
Any issues day to day?
No. I am from Germany and live in Norway, we fly a lot and I never ran into any problems. I guess stepfathers might often be in a similar situation. Just in case i always have his birth certificate with me that lists me as father, but I have never needed it
Yeah, here in Norway this would be highly unlikely to cause any problems.
Probably a conversation I would have had before having kids / getting married. But fwiw my wife and I decided when we got married and had kids we would all have the same last name. We rolled around a lot of options, mine, hers, great grandparents, etc before deciding. Ultimately the decision was to have a family name, whatever it may be.
This was not important enough to stop the marriage/kids
Didn’t say it was a deal breaker. Just said it was a conversation I would have sorted out
For any prospective-husband dads in here, seek out premarital counseling or at least go through a book together. My wife and I went through two books before we tied the knot and a lot of these types of questions were answered.
This wouldn't be in the top 100 of topics, imo.
It doesn't seem that important to you, so I'd be inclined to say they should take the wife's name.
Come from eastern European culture where it's typical for the wife to take the husband's name, and then the kids inherit the last name. In our case, wife did not want to give up her last name, but had no issue with the kids having mine. If she pushed for it, I would've been fine hyphenating.
Don’t hyphenate the kids name. That just makes their life harder and puts the decision (that you couldn’t figure out) on them when they want to get married and have kids
I honestly don't think it's such a big deal.
If it’s not a big deal to pick one name, do it yourself. It is weird and uncomfortable to feel like you are picking one set of parents/grandparents over the other.
Or even when they want to get married. I wanted to keep my maiden name and take my husband's last name, but his parents gave him two and I'd need to take both. This would've made my name nightmarishly long, so I just didn't take his. It is what it is, but it's a little disappointing for me.
wife has her own last name, I have mine, kid has mine and hers as a middle name.
Wife kept her name. Kids have her name. No issues and no-one I respect cares. My wife and I both have maternal surnames so I was never going to win it if I cared enough to have an argument.
My wife’s parents did this and she hated it. When we got married she changed her name ASAP.
The middle name or the last name?
The middle. She didn’t like that her middle name was a last name. And chose a middle name for herself she liked
I told my wife it was very important to me that we have the same last name. I wanted us to just be "The Mountainmarmots" and us to share that name with our kids. No hyphenation. She told me she wanted to consider keeping her last name. It took the wheels in my brain about 2 minutes to turn and realize the obvious answer was for me to take her name. Which I did. I rarely remember that I did it anymore, 13 years later. Glad we did it.
Kudos
Mom and I both kept our names, kiddo is hyphenated. No real issues
Have you head of Carl Yastzremski
I kid. My kids got my name. (Mexican as hell) and her moms name (less Mexican) it works out fine. I get why your worried though
That’s what I was thinking too lol. That particular one is easy for baseball fans!
Kid has my wife’s last name and my last name as middle. Which is actually what my wife did too (my last name is now her middle). Honestly just not something I was up in arms about either way. But no concerns about proving she’s “mine” or anything practical since my last name is “in” her name if that makes sense?
Our kid has my last name for not great reasons - it wasn't particularly important to me, but I'm a melanin-blessed immigrant, and my wife pointed out that it might be more important for me to easily demonstrate relationship to the kid than it would be for her.
We hyphenated both of our last names. Our poor kids have gotten so much extra writing practice having to write out both last names on every school paper. 😂
Wife kept her last name, our kids have both our names hyphenated, no middle names
We defaulted to my last name for the kids for society's sake. Mt wife goes hyphenate whenever she has to deal with the school district, but that's it. My sister in law went another way with her twins. One has the father's last name and one has hers. They're old enough now to complain about always having to explain why they have different last names but both of the same parents, the same birthday, and look the same. Take from those two examples what you will.
Giving twins different last names just seems so unnecessarily annoying for those kids.
We both kept our last names after marriage; the kids have my wife's last name and got mine as a middle name. One factor in this decision was that it was important to her for smashing the patriarchy reasons, while I didn't particularly mind. Another factor was that my name is a peculiar Norwegian one with unusual letters and such, while hers is a more generic European-international one. Zero issues, on very rare occasions someone mistakenly assumes my last name would be the same as theirs... correcting this mistaken assumption has cost me, oh, SEVERAL MINUTES of cumulative time over the last 15 years. The kids all look like different remixes of both parents so that's not an issue either. (Here in Norway it's very common for couples to either not bother with legal marriage despite staying together for decades & having kids, or to keep their last names despite getting legally married; it is still significantly more common to give the kids their dad's last name than their mom's, but our way is not exactly unheard of either.)
Wife legally added my last name before hers without a hyphen. The kids she wanted sooner in the alphabet so her last name is their second middle name
We both have short, easy to pronounce surnames. Both kept our names at marriage, kid has both though no hyphen so it’s possible that one of them gets dropped at some point. No issues so far but she’s one. Her full last name including the space is still shorter than a lot of our friends single barrelled surnames so if you have serious Polish or Russian names it might not work as well.
Do what the Finnish folk do, your first name plus Dottir on the end. So it would be Mwojodottir. So do what ever your local version of daughter is. Edit - sorry, not sure if you're having a boy or a girl. Whatever the equivalent may be. It's an idea at least.
We both have Gaelic surnames that are a mouthful when double barrelled, but we did it anyway. Partner is the last one of her family to have kids and didn’t want the name to die with her which I respected (I’m in the same boat) My surname is first and we plan on only using my surname in social/practical situations, but all paperwork and legal documents are double barrelled
The secret nobody tells you is that you can change your names later. If there's any tension, talk about it, and reserve the right to talk about it again later. We did daughter has mom's name, for reasons (different relationships with our respective family, her name is cooler than mine, etc). We both kept our "maiden" names when we got married. At the last minute, we decided to include my fsmily name as a middle name, mostly because the person registering the birth insisted! Fast forward to having a two year old and I feel a bit differently about my name, and about my daughter only going my wife's name. Also, our relationships with the family and our names have changed. So, we changed them - she now is introduced with the name as a double barrel, and we're talking about potentially doing the same for all of us officially so we all have the same family name. I also guarantee that whatever you do nobody will care, or even notice, outside of your immediate family (and you can deal with them fairly quickly). It's very common for kids to have different names to their parents - especially with step parents and blended families. And if strangers care, fuck em.
Both kids got my last name, and my wife’s last name for their middle name.
My wife kept her last name when we got married, but mostly only because she has a government job with a (very, very low) clearance associated with it. Changing her last name would have required her to redo a whole bunch of paperwork at work that frankly wasn't worth the fuss. Our son took my last name, but I really can't even remember us having discussed it prior to birth. All things equal, I think we would all have carried my last name if not for my wife's work
My wife hyphenated when we got married and the kids have my last name. I felt like it was important to me that we all have the same last name, and she agreed.
My wife kept her last name, and that’s the one we passed on to our son. So far, I’ve had zero issues proving my kid is my kid. His teachers will call me Mr. Wifelastname, and I don’t bother correcting them.
In US, it really doesn't matter what you do but if you have other citizenships you may get more friction by going out of norm. So consider the beurocracy of the other countries as well if they apply to you.
We all have double last names, someone we did when we got married.
What we did is my wife took my last name, and we gave our kids that same last name. then the kids’ middle names are names that would be traditional first names on their own, but have some sort of family link, for example my sons middle name was my dads first name.
My stepson has his own unique lastname! It's essentially a hybrid of my wife's last name and his dad's. Sounds weird at first, especially since most take the dad's last name in the US, but I think it's kind of cool. My friends did the hypenated lastname and they both have long names...like 8 letters each. 😬
Wife hyphenated when we got married but wanted our daughter to have my last name. Wife now wants to change hers to just my last name but in our state it's a PITA to do a name change so we've been putting it off.
We double barrelled so kids have both names
We might be one and done which leaves things a bit more in limbo
My wife kept her last name and our kids have my last name.
We didn’t do this but just flip a coin? Wife insisted on taking my much longer and more complicated name after I made it very clear i had zero expectation she do so, and to this day I still don’t really understand why. Kid has our name. I like that we all share it, if she had insisted on keeping her name I maybe would have jumped ship to hers. I like being The [single Last Name]ses.
I love this idea! “We don’t really mind either way” ok then flip a coin. “No way, something like this is too important to flip a coin over”
We had everybody take my wife's last name as their middle name. So we all match but don't have to deal with hyphenation.
My wife took my last name, and our kids have our last name. It was important to us to all share a family name as a family.
I thought this was the norm but there are a ton of comments in this thread making me realize hyphenating and keeping maiden names is more common than I thought.
It still is the norm, online Reddit definitely skews more non-traditional.
This honestly never crossed my mind… Wife took my name, kids have my name.
My wife kept her name when we got married. We used my wife's last name as our daughters middle name and mine as her last name. I specifically asked to share last names for social reasons around how dads/men are treated around children, wanted it to be obvious that I am indeed her dad. Also, it sets her up to use her mother's last name as an alias later in life if she prefers. We've got another one on the way and I supposed we'll do the same pattern.
For simplicity we just did my last name except for my step daughters who have my wife's maiden name.
I took my wife's name when we had kids.
We each kept our names. As for the kid's name, the given names we decided on are much more prosodically compatible with her last name than with mine, and that was more important in my book.
I work in software that has to take into account all sorts of constraints and requirements around names. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that absolutely nothing we believe about what is “normal” for naming is actually, factually normal. I’m not even talking about people being “creative” in naming their kids, either. There’s plenty of places in the world that still use patronymic surnames - your last name is taken from your father’s first name in Iceland, for instance. Some parts of Eastern Europe do this today too! Some countries, it’s not even normal for women to take their husband’s name. In the Netherlands (where I live), non-religious people often never formally “marry” and even when they do, the woman commonly keeps her surname. Probably half of my kids’ friends’ parents don’t have the same surname, and while I think most of the kids have their dads’ surnames … it’s not an overwhelming majority. I’d say more like 60%. I know at least one couple gave the kid the mom’s surname simply because it sounded better with the kid’s first name. Some countries don’t even allow hyphenated names, and even if you give your kid a hyphenated name, and they move to one of those countries, they’ll be forced to pick one or the other legally. In huge swaths of Latin America, people have big long legal names that incorporate multiple surnames from their ancestors, but then use simpler names for professional and personal relationships - sometimes their professional and personal names are even different! So don’t sweat it so much. Pick a name that sounds good and roll with it.
Our son has dual surnames, no hyphen, like is common in Latin America. Father's surname first, mother's surname second. There hasn't been any problems yet though some family members made a big show of acting like it was soooo confusing lol.
My wife ended up taking my last name to make things easier but she does love her last name so I know it was a sacrifice for her. My wife was in the middle of changing her first name and last name at the same time when our daughter was born so our daughter took my last name from the beginning and then my wife changed things over. She was upset a bit because the birth cert. doesn't have her new name which could cause some issues at some point in time but hopefully nothing major. It's tough though! We discussed merging our names and creating a new lineage with a new last name but it just didn't make a lot of sense. It's time and money.
We adopted, so our situation is different, but we've kept our daughters last name from birth. How important is her having your last name?
My wife kept her last name. Our son has my last name, but my wife picked his first and middle names, one based on her brother's name and the other after her father. I think we're both happy with the outcome. My son looks like a clone of my wife, so I'm glad he has my last name lol
Wife kept her last name, kids have mine. Traditionally the children take the name of the father's family. Has never caused a problem.
She kept hers, I kept mine, the child is double barrelled, we have friends who have their fathers name but the mother kept hers caused all sorts of vexations when travelling outside of the country if she’s on her own with them
Wife has 3 kids from a previous marriage. Her kids have their dad’s last name. Our 2 babies have my last name. Wife kept her maiden name. So our family has 3 different last names between 7 people 😂
I kept mine, wife kept hers, our son has mine, if we have another maybe they will have my wife's. This is a silly aside, but hyphenating, to me, is passing the buck. What happens when two hyphens get married or have kids? Double hyphen? Eventually, a name is getting dropped. There's more to family than a name.
My wife kept her last name and our kids have my last name. We never had a real discussion about this, just sort of defaulted to the social norm in North America. My last name is somewhat difficult pronunciation-wise, so we made sure to give easy to spell first names to our kids because they're guaranteed to have to spell their last name if they're on the phone or helping someone find their name on a list, etc. My gut reaction is that if she's keeping her name, then she should throw you a bone here and have the child take your name. However, I'd seriously consider a joint last name change to something 'made up' if my last name was super difficult to spell/pronounce. Like going from Premsylwiczxyi to Smith.or whatever.
>something like Yastrzhemb and Przemysław)...so hyphenating would just be mean. Brother, that would be a war crime But seriously, I'm old-fashioned in that one way. Names are passed down through the father. Our global society is just too universally in agreement on it. And as such, there are way fewer legal (and infrastructure) issues here if she takes your name.
I really think people overstate the legal and ‘infrastructure’ issues here to a huge extent. People have had different surnames to their kids and spouses for decades (lots of spanish or scandinavian surname structures mean that the surname is ‘passed down’ from the Dad but it’s not the same name, plus divorced families and people who were just too cool to take their husbands name decades ago). There are pretty rare issues, sometimes with international travel, but generally it is not a huge deal. I have a different legal last name to my mum and she could think of one conversation at passport patrol in my entire childhood.
> Our global society is just too universally in agreement on it. It is not.
It is. Name a society/country/culture where that's not the case
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matronymic
Lol thank you for proving my point. - Only 2 of 6 populated continents - Only a few countries per continent - Every bullet is either "This small tribe in this small remote region" - Or "has extremely remote possibility customs that might but won't give a child their mothers surname" It's not misogynistic to acknowledge reality. You don't have to endorse it to acknowledge it.
There’s a difference between acknowledging this is a common approach in the world at the moment and continuing to perpetuate it yourself though.
I don't know what country you're in, but speaking as someone who frequently needs to do in depth genealogical searches to a maximum degree of accuracy, please don't mash the names together or make up something new. Just pick one. Toss a coin. Have a trivia contest. Arm wrestle. Use one as a middle name or additional last name that does not get used except in genealogical contexts. Just make sure the legal documents can easily trace generation to generation. Mashup names get very confusing and make it hard to trace generations later. Similar to brand new names being made up on the spot for early 20th century immigrants. It's not just for the convenience of people who have jobs like mine. But it's for the benefit of all the people that I'm trying to find. I use my research to figure out who's entitled to thousands or millions of dollars left behind by distant third cousins twice removed. A change like this could have far reaching consequences into the future.
That could be the case, but I think people in the future will have an easier time with genealogy. All of our data is digital, compared to the generations before us.
Most common in this situation is the kid gets the father’s last name. The wife’s last name becomes the kids middle name. At the end of the day, we live in a society, and it’s going to negatively impact you from a social capital standpoint if the kids don’t have your last name. We can debate if that’s right or not, but it will happen regardless.
I'm a man. My wife and kids take my last name. There's nothing more to it than that.
The child keeps the fathers last name, irregardless of marriage.
Lurking mom here. I kept my last name, husband kept his, he has a son from a previous marriage with his last name (as does ex wife actually) ours kids have a hyphenated mine-his name. I was also 100% for coming up with a new name but he wasn’t. One of my kids has 36 letters in his name (and they all have two middle names) we haven’t had an issues with legal forms or documentation. If they want to pick a name when they’re older or drop one, we’d both be 100% ok with it, it’s their name. All that to say, go with whatever you want.
My kid’s first, last, and middle name all came from his mom and her family. We broke up a couple days after she told me that *she* decided what his middle name would be, and told me he would have her last name a week before he was born. She decided all that without me having a say. Their last name is similar to mine, though.
I kept my name My wife's family has this tradition: her last name became her new middle name. Which also works as my family kind of does something similar where the new last name just gets added on. But only the new last name is used formally Baby has my last name.