I need last name help... - Page 2

[simplehome]

I would also try to make a new hyphenated name out of part of your surname and your husbands surname. This way it would be clear that you are all connected. If either of you is with the kids at the hospital, for instance, your name, let's say Smith-White, would make sense with theirs, Smith-Jennings. Similarly for your husband, His name Jennings would make sense with theirs, Smith-Jennings.

[HappyMommy2]

My aunt kept her professional name for work, but changed her last name for family and everything else.

[Jenne]

Sigh. So which name do I choose? My mother's given name or my father's given name? As a total aside I don't use the term "maiden" name because I didn't change my name when I dtd for the first time!

I guess I just can't picture the conversation in which I say to either of my beloved parents, "I decided your name didn't mean as much." To me, having a hyphenated last name makes so much sense. I'm half and half my Mom and Dad. Sigh.

I really wish we had a family name that was neither all me nor all my dh. We tried different permutations of our names together but they all just seemed ridiculous. Dh of course wasn't sold on this idea from the beginning. I think unlike being a woman where there is an attempted cultural conditioning that our last name "doesn't mean anything" and thus can easily be dropped in favor of the man's last name, most men don't even consider that marrying could mean changing their name.

Children just complicate everything don't they!?

I just did an internet search about double hyphenated last names and couldn't find any information...

simplehome I just reread your post. Huh. Maybe I misunderstood. Are you suggesting giving the kids a combined hyphenated last name? Again, how would I choose which to pass on (actually, I would choose the first of my two names because I'm the last person in the family with the name...Grampa had one son who only had daughters...) Huh. That might work.

I'll run it by DH. Hmmm....

Wojotanowiscz-Muellerfrudengishun *IS* quite nice! Just kidding.

Jenne

[Jenne]

Originally Posted by HappyMommy2

My aunt kept her professional name for work, but changed her last name for family and everything else.

Yeah, this is what I tried to do at first but since 9/11 their are more restrictions on this. For instance I can't have a driver's license with one name with a SS# with another. Nor can I have a bank account with a name different than what's on my DL. Further I cannot change the name associated with my SS# without also changing all my professional numbers.

I also tried to pursue a "legally known as" which I believe is what movies stars and other people with public and private persona have but I couldn't find any information other than that these aren't done anymore. For instance the bank was familiar with the term but didn't think that they were legal anymore.

Nothing is ever simple!

Jenne

[porcelina]

DH and I have different last names too. The tradition in his country is that each child has 4 names, first name, middle name, then dad's last name (first of his two last names, since all have 2 last names) then mom's last name (first of her two). People pretty much go by their first last name (the father's) in that country.

We gave DS this name
(first name) (DH's last name) (my last name)

This means we are foregoing a middle name, but have his last name and mine in there. Here, he basically goes by my last name; there, they would use DH's last name.

I have to say, I LOVE that he has my last name! I have not run across any strange looks or anything from him having a different name (as perceived here in the U.S.) from my husband. I think it is more important that YOU have the last name as your children than that DH does. Why does that imply that you would have to change your name? Why can't you give them your last name? Use DH's too, and you'd have both names there, but yours is last. If you wanted, you could even add in a fourth name (though with the hyphen that does sound like a lot). It really makes it easier to not have to worry about choosing a middle name

[MacroMama]

Originally Posted by porcelina

DH and I have different last names too. The tradition in his country is that each child has 4 names, first name, middle name, then dad's last name (first of his two last names, since all have 2 last names) then mom's last name (first of her two). People pretty much go by their first last name (the father's) in that country.

We gave DS this name
(first name) (DH's last name) (my last name)

This is what we did as well. I have two last names, as is the custom in my country, so we gave my first last name (paternal) to my son. I do want to clarify that neither last name is a middle name, both are last names.

I've had to clarify the issue for myself and for my DS a few times, but it's worth it.

Good luck!

[RedOakMomma]

Originally Posted by Jenne

Thanks for the suggestions so far. I think if I had a relationship that wasn't so strained and awful with his family I wouldn't have such a visceral reaction to naming our kids that. I do not consider myself as part of dh's extended family and I'm not treated as if I am. Dh and I are our own family. When we file our taxes it is under *my* name. So, I sort of disagree about what our "family" name is...plus sometimes patriarchy just rubs me the wrong way. Sometimes it doesn't. Eh.

You could try not to think about his last name as "his family's" last name. Your children certainly won't think of it that way--they'll think of it as their dad's last name. It's him, not them, that you love and honor in your children's names.

In your situation, I would choose one of your last names and your dh's last name and hyphenate it. That's equitable, balanced, and seems like a great compromise.

I live in a city where a lot of families have different last names (wives, husbands, kids if they're hyphenated)...it's just not a big deal. I chose to keep my maiden name, dh kept his, and we chose to give all our kids his last name. Like you, I have a rocky/unpleasant relationship with his family. It blows my mind that my kids are 1/4 my MIL...or that dh is 1/2 my MIL! But still, his last name is dear because of all the wonderful things he is. I'm happy the kids can share in that.

We chose to keep all the names of all our kids the same (last names, that is). We also considered the boy/girl division, but decided against it because we wanted them to share a family name. We would have considered a combined or hyphenated name, but adding my name to his makes it sound like a phrase. No-go on that one!

[Adaline'sMama]

I suggest that you give the child your husband's last name and keep your own. You may decide to change your last name eventually. In a few years, you may not need to keep your last name for your job. Since your husband seems to want the child to have his last name, and the state doesnt reconize hyphenated names, I feel like 2 people in the family ( DH and new baby) having the same last names is better than no one having the same last name.

[Mrs.Music]

I would personally give all the children his name. End of story. You don't need to change yours. Nowadays it's common enough that a parent doesn't share a last name with her children that it wouldn't be a problem. If you really want to have the same last name as your kids, you could change yours. Just make a huge deal out of it with everyone in your field. JMHO.

[Lucy Alden]

Hm, my perspective is a little different. I was raised by my mom. I had my father's last name and she took back her maiden name when they divorced. My mother then took in my two (unrelated) foster sisters. All four of us have completely different last names. And to top it off none of us (not even my biological mom and I) look alike.

As a kid I remember so badly wanting to be the "Smith" family (or whatever). It sounds weird, but calling someone's house and getting the "you've reached the Johnson's and we're not home" message always made me feel a little sad. I wanted there to be something tangible to identify the four of us as a family. And yes, I know a family is WAY more than a name. But as a kid being recognized as a family unit without all the questions and explanations would have been nice. I can't tell you how many times I had to correct people when they referred to my mother using my last name or didn't believe my sisters were my sisters because of our last names.

When my DH and I were engaged I knew I would take his last name. I wanted that outward sign of having a family unit. The funny thing is I don't think my married last name is particularly unique or beautiful or even goes with my first name all that well but I love it because it is our family name. In some ways I liken it to going to camp and choosing your cabin name. You spend the whole week be referred to as the "frolicking dolphin" cabin and it's kind of cool. It makes you feel a little bit closer to the people in the cabin and everyone else treats you as a unit. I don't know, I just dig something about that.

That being said I haven't a clue what would be best for your family. But I do agree with the PP that said not to think about his last name as his family's last name but as his alone. Good Luck!

[babygrey]

I have sort of a similar situation. That I'll try to explain w/o super confusing anyone

DS's biodad and I were not together. I gave DS a hyphenated my LN-biodad LN, tho, in practical use, he uses DS My LN

I have since married. I hyphenated my LN. Of note, my DH ALSO hyphenated his LN to match. I personally find the hypnenated name a huge PITA, honestly, and it is mostly for solidarity with DH. In common use, I use only my LN most times.

DH's family is not emotionally close, to say the least. He does not feel any strong ties to his family, My father died when I was a child and I am immensely close with my father's family. So, when we had our first "together"- DD, we chose to give her ONLY my LN.

It is nice, bc, even tho DS has a different bio-dad, all of us in the family now have a common name.

The new babies will also have only my LN.

Sure, we get some raised eyebrows sometimes, but we explain that we really wanted to keep the tie to my father's family, and, depending on the audience, we will sometimes discuss how I feel that, as a culture, the practice of the children automatically having the husband's last name is rather antiquated, as we (thankfully) no longer view women and children as property of their husband. Although it certainly is really complicated, I enjoy that we live in a fluid time where surnames are being considered and thoughtfully chosen. (I love some of the thoughts of pp choosing one name to be a family unit.)

OP, I don't know if this is advice or even helpful, but I wanted to share what we had done in a similar situation.

[Jenne]

Thanks for all the btdt stories! I really appreciate hearing how different people came into the situation, made choices that fit their needs, and how they feel about it.

Lucy- I hear what you are saying too. I was the *only* person in my family with my last name. Everyone else had just my Dad's last name. Like I said, now I love my name and it makes sense. But I do have a strong desire for a family unit name. Although I do know that matching names do not a happy family make.

DH and I talked last night and are still at an impasse. I guess when we stumble on or back to the right solution we will know. I did get to express to him how concerned I am that we have been discussing this for years and now we have a definite deadline. Anyway, thanks for the help, stories, and advice.

I truly appreciate it!

Jenne

[~Adorkable~]

Here is a few thought that go thru my head both as I married my dh and thought forward to kids and as i read this thread.

• I do real like the feel of a family unit having a name in common.
• I see no reason in the world why this should defalt to the guys and frankly I'm insulted when folks seem stuck on that or think me silly for being open to other things.
• I had my name changed mostly by me to try to fit into my changing family life a few times in my young life, grew up with my mom and her name, added a hyphen and dads name in middle school when I went to live with him, dropped his and kept just my moms when I got married the first time. Said I might figure it out later before we had kids, kept my moms when I divorced 2 years later. Decided to chug to my 2nd husbands when I got married again 10+ years later.
• I did not really like having a hyphenated name as a kid and even less as a young adult, I think I associated it with having split up parents
• I was strongly voting for my now dh and I to pick our own new family name, but he really liked his name and the logistics with him in the army seemed really hard.
• I really want my kids and both of us to have the same name in some good way so I thought about it for a while and was ok with changing to his name as I sign I was taking him and his gifts into my life.
• Thankfully my first name us so unique and wonderful that most folks don't even pay attention to what my last was or is, I'm very often only known by my first. That was fine when I had my moms and it's fine now.

So with all of that the options for you that I like the best are:

• Keep the part of your name that is dying out and hyphenate it with your dh use that for yourself and your kids, ecurage your dh to consider using it to as a bonus. He might be more into it depending on the order. Some folks feel the first of the hyphenated name seems more important some think it's the ending one.
• Take the dying out name and make it a second middle name, non hyphenated. Then give them dh's last name.
• Work more on getting you all all a new last name and when your changing folks to that make their old last name into a second middle name (I have 3 personally) the last name does not need to be a full combo, maybe start with the 2 or 3 first letters and write them down with some space in them and work on filling in the syllables.

In the end keep in mind that giving your kids a hyphenated name will bring up the challenge again for them and also will have the possibility that they will drop one or the other even before they get married.

[philomom]

Originally Posted by •Adorkable•

In the end keep in mind that giving your kids a hyphenated name will bring up the challenge again for them and also will have the possibility that they will drop one or the other even before they get married.

My kids do have a long hyphenated surname. They are teens and are exploring options to changing their name as they finish college someday. This doesn't bother my hubby and I a bit. My child will be my child no matter what their name is. I did give them a list of surnames from the big, old family tree and told them to try those on for size first. My kids already have first names and middle names from the family tree... I see no reason why they couldn't skip back a generation or two and be an Atlas, Baxter, Kirsch or Brooks if they wanted to.

[Tithonia]

I don't know if you're still looking for responses, but this was a HUGE issue for us, so I thought I'd chime in.

Keeping my last name was very important to me, mostly for feminist-type reasons, but having the same last name as DH is also really important to both of us. He would have actually been willing to change HIS name when we married, but that would have really upset his family, who we are very close to. So we decided to put our names together, his first (so mine is the "more last" name, and it just sounds better). Because we got married and went to Canada to study at the same time, we decided that we would put off changing our names officially until later, and in fact, we've never gotten around to it. We have our separate last names legally, but go socially by our combined last name. I might add that we both have ethnic Dutch last names which tend to be difficult for non-Dutch people to pronounce, and DH's is harder for people than mine. So choosing to combine our names meant that instead of us just having a weird, hard-to-pronounce last name, we have a REALLY weird, long, and hard-to-pronounce last name. Wojotanowiscz-Muellerfrudengishun is only a slight exaggeration!

Then we had DD and had to rethink everything again! We decided in the end that it was really important for her to have both our names (and especially mine, since me keeping my name but not giving it to my DD sort of misses the point for us--she's my daughter too!), but we worried about getting her into the same situation you're in if she gets married someday... so we decided not to give her a hyphenated last name. We finally ended up giving her my last name, with DH's last name as a second middle name. So if you just read out her whole name you can't tell that her legal last name is different than our social last name--which will probably eventually be DH's and my legal last name. In fact, almost nobody knows that that isn't her legal last name. We're likely to do this again the next time around.

And believe it or not, we've had very little problem with any of this!

Good luck on whatever you decide! Fortunately, you and everyone else will eventually get used to whatever you come up with, even if it's difficult for people at first meetings.

[Kirsten]

Originally Posted by finnegansmom

it does get tiresome to be at the doctors or hospital and have to say over and over again, YES I am the MOTHER of this CHILD.

My three kids have their dad's last name - which I do not go by. No one has ever once questioned me or thought they weren't mine. Maybe it is regional?

Originally Posted by Svarupa

Just so you know that families do it all kinds of ways -- whatever you decide won't really be weird or abnormal. What with divorce and blended families and all kinds of things today, lots of kids don't have the same names as their siblings or parents. I don't think people really assume a child isn't yours if he/she has a different last name.

Absolutely. I know TONS of families where the mom kept her maiden name. I know families where the sons got one parent's last name and the daughters got the other parent's last name. I know kids with hyphenated last names. With the divorce/remarriage rate so high there are siblings with different last names and kids with names that don't match at least one parent in EVERY class my kids have ever been in.

I think a woman keeping her name is admirable. I see the value in it. I understand why some women do it - as I did. I also understand why many women take their husband's name. What I wish more people thought about is that men almost never give up their name. It is almost unheard of. My sister and brother-in-law BOTH gave up their last names and took a whole new one - which I thought was super cool.

And although I LOVE it when kids get hyphenated last names, at some point you have to stop and drop something. Your kid has a hyphenated last name then marries someone with a hyphenated last name - their kids can't have FOUR last names!

In the OP's case, I'd hyphenate the baby's name to include ONE of mom's last names (grandparents will understand that you just can't realistically USE that many last names) - probably the one that would die out if she didn't but really whichever one she feels drawn to use, and put it with dh's last name.

[Jenne]

Thank you all for the continued replies (Adorkable )! I really appreciate the variety and depth of the responses. The best part about this thread is that DH is finally talking to me about this again. He had kind of closed down and I couldn't figure out why--he is a really open and sensitive soul so this was unusal. Turns out he didn't see any solution so he didn't feel the need to talk about it. Once we got that out in the air I could say, "Of course! That's exactly why we need to talk it out. This is a huge deal, emotionally for each of us, and will have possibly life long impact on our child. The only way we are going to move *together* towards a solution is by figuring out what our priorities are and working together." He was like ! So, the dialogue between us has reopened anew with our usual bright, loving, problem solving brains back in gear! Yahoo!

I'll keep y'all posted!

Jenne

[Mrs.Music]

Originally Posted by Jenne

Thank you all for the continued replies (Adorkable )! I really appreciate the variety and depth of the responses. The best part about this thread is that DH is finally talking to me about this again. He had kind of closed down and I couldn't figure out why--he is a really open and sensitive soul so this was unusal. Turns out he didn't see any solution so he didn't feel the need to talk about it. Once we got that out in the air I could say, "Of course! That's exactly why we need to talk it out. This is a huge deal, emotionally for each of us, and will have possibly life long impact on our child. The only way we are going to move *together* towards a solution is by figuring out what our priorities are and working together." He was like ! So, the dialogue between us has reopened anew with our usual bright, loving, problem solving brains back in gear! Yahoo!

I'll keep y'all posted!

Jenne

Good luck.

[nashvillemidwife]

Originally Posted by Jenne

We cannot do my last name as middle name because my state won't recongize a hyphenated middle name. I tried.

Whoever told you that is mistaken. I have sent in many birth certificates with hyphenated names of every variety. DH also has a hyphenated middle name. The DMV in his small town claimed it was an issue to print it that way on his license, but it is hyphenated in his birth certificate.

ETA: Jenne and I live in the same state. Hi, Jenne!

[nashvillemidwife]

You got me very curious because the state telling someone what they can or can't go with their names is an issue for me. Here's what curiosity uncovered.

I referred to the official instructions for completing a birth certificate. Most of the instructions are geared toward confirming that the parents are right, no matter what they put on the worksheet. There were a couple of interesting things:

Entries of Jr., Sr., II, etc. following the child's last name are acceptable whether or not the child's name is the same as the father's name. Although these entries are most commonly used for males, they may be used for a female if the parents desire such.

The parents may use as many middle names as they want. When the number of characters exceed the space provided, call the OVR for advice in handling the entries.

So you can call give your child more names than fit on the certificate, and you can name your newborn a "Sr." or randomly name them a Jr. or a III. Whatever you choose to do with your child's name really doesn't matter to them, you say it and they print it (with the exception of the aforementioned legal requirements regarding the choice of last name).

Also, I just spoke to someone in the office of quality control of birth certificates for the state Office of Vital Records and she confirms there is no regulation prohibiting hyphenated middle names. She says if anyone gave you a problem about changing your last name after your marriage it was probably due to not being familiar with the practice, or not know how to fill out the proper forms.

Also, you can have two legal last names that are not hyphenated.

So regardless of what problems you had in the past, you can put a hyphenated middle name back into the pool of consideration for your baby.