What are the conventions if any? I’ve seen couples where the children have their mother’s last name and others where they have their father’s last name. Is it just a random decision within the family or is there some subtlety I’m missing?
I think the baby is more likely to have the father’s last name if the parents are together when the child is born. I think the conventions are changing so fast in this area that there really aren’t any.
Legally, in most countries, you can give your children whatever surname you like. It does not have to be either parent’s surname.
As for conventions, well I guess that comes down to the individual. May as well as if there’s a convention behind the first name that’s chosen. I gave my daughter my surname because her father did not want to be named. In almost any other circumstance, I’d have given her his surname and I will support her if she wants to take his surname when she is older.
Typically, if the father is in the picture, even if the mother and father aren’t together, the child gets the fathers last name.
However, as previously stated, there is no legal requirement as such.
In Alberta the naming differs depending on if both parents sign the registration of birth or not.
If both sign, it’s the same as if you were married and both signed. You can name them the mother’s maiden name, the father’s last name, a hyphenated or combined version of the two or a last name culturally or ethnically significant.
If only the mother signs, it’s the mother’s current or maiden name.
So it depends on how much the father is in the picture when the baby is born (you fill out the registration of birth at the hospital, and have ten days to get it in… they really recommend you fill it out and leave it at the hospital to be sent to Vital Statistics).
Similar to Flutterby’s info. In New Zealand you cannot give the child *any *other name but the mother’s if paternity is questioned. It requires legal confirmation (approval from father, adoption papers etc) for any other name to be used.
My daughter was born in Greece. We could have chosen either surname (not sure if we could have gone with something else). We went with mine as its rarer than her mum’s. When she grows up she can choose whatever she likes and it won’t bother me.
My son had both our names.
I’m not actually sure what happens in Japan, but I just dropped to comment on the title. “Unmarried children? Kids having kids?” were my first thoughts.
I think this is probably true.
I gave my daughter her father’s last name when she was born, a concession I wasn’t terribly comfortable with at the time (and in retrospect pretty much the *only *one I made), which was kind of dumb, since it was a pain in the ass to undo.
I changed it back to my surname when she was two, because she had no contact with her father and it seemed silly and impractical for she and I to have different names.
In South Africa, you are required to give the child the surname of the person named on the birth certificate as the father. (Or at least this was the case in 1998 when my son was born there.)
I checked and found out that:
For unmarred parents, if the father acknowledges the child, the parents can file in the Family Court to have the father’s last name. The baby then is entered into the father’s family registry and cannot be entered into the mother’s. If the parents go with the mother’s last name, then the child is entered in the mother’s registry and not the father’s.
Foreigners do not have family registries, so there may be more flexibility. We’re married, but my wife kept her last name. We registered our daughter with my last name in Japan as well as for the US consulate report of a birth abroad, which is the equivalent of a birth certificate. IIRC, we could have used either of our last names for both Japanese and the US.
I’ll have to ask my wife if she knows the answer for unmarried Taiwanese. Taiwan doesn’t allow Western last names, so we went with her name, but again, this was for a married couple.
Easy; here the kid always gets the fathers first name as a last name. Unless there is no father, then it gets the mothers first name as last name.
With -son or -daughter after the name, of course.
Oh, to bother with those family names 
Whaaaa?
So if I was to move to Taiwan with the name ‘John James’ I’d have to change my name? 
I gave Hallboy my last name when he was born. (His father and I were not, nor were we ever, married.) This was the same last name I’d obtained when I married 10 years earlier, but kept when I divorced. (It is also the last names of the Hallgirls, whose father I was married to when they were born.) Confused? My maiden name was P. --> married H. and my last name became H. --> divorced H. and kept the last name H. --> Hallboy born 10 years later and takes my last name, which is still H.
Although both Hallgirls have their father listed on their birth certificates, Hallboy’s does not have a father listed on his (my choice).
Damn. That should have been “Unmarried couples naming their kids”. I’ll contact a mod to change it.
As you noted, this is not a custom in America. What exactly is a family registry and how does it work?
A friend of mine in Montreal had an agreement with her husband - if the first child was a girl, all the kids they’d have would get the husband’s last name. If the first kid was a boy, they’d all get her last name. They would have gone with hyphenated last names, but my friend’s name was already hyphenated, which would make for a very awkward name!
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Done.
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Yes, please do post, because now I’m curious - a (South African) friend of mine lives in Taiwan and just married a Taiwanese woman. I have no idea whether she took his last name, but does that mean that even if she did, they wouldn’t be able to give their (hypothetical future) children his last name, even if they wanted to?
I only personally know of two, in two separate households, both girls, and each got her father’s last name. If the father and mother remain together, I think that’s the most common practice.