Doing this might take some effort however. A married couple I know did this. They each kept their own last names when they got married and they gave their three kids a last name that was different from either of theirs. (All the kids share the same last name, however.)
They were eventually allowed to do it, but not without going to court over it. Definitely more trouble than just filling out a form at the hospital.
My lovely stepson has his mother’s last name, which is a shame because he lives with his father and I and it would make things easier on this end. I would say consider who’s going to have primary custody and give the household surname, if one exists.
Yeah, my cousin had a baby with a guy who is in the baby’s life but not in her life anymore (if that makes sense). So while the baby is his son for sure, the baby has her last name because she has custody and she finds it much more pleasant for her son to share her last name than to have some other last name that no one she deals with would recognize.
Not claiming to be 100% accurate but I looked into this when my daughter was born, since her father is Japanese. From what I understood, the koseki (family registry) lists a lot of information about a person. Their parents, their spouse, their children, their address (past and present), all sorts of stuff. It’s a government document kinda like our birth certificates but that is constantly changing and has a lot more importance. If a child isn’t listed on a person’s koseki pretty quickly, it becomes difficult to ‘prove’ to the government that the child is yours. In my case, since we weren’t married when she was born, she wasn’t added to his koseki. We would have had to petition within 30 days (I think) of her birth to have her added. Since we didn’t, at this point for her to ever get on his, he’d have to basically adopt her through the Japanese legal system.
Also, from what he told me, the koseki is what is used to determine who gets what when someone dies. There are no wills, per say, in Japan. Basically it all gets divided up among the spouse and children on the koseki. Of course, it’s been over a year since I researched all this so I might be wrong on a few things.
And on the topic, she has my last name. Mainly because her father isn’t in the picture and his last name is very ethnic and I felt it would be easier for her and me to have the same last name.
This was in the U.S.? Who gave them trouble about it?
I knew a married couple who gave their daughter her father’s middle name as her last name. He used it regularly in his business, as it was, I suppose, a cooler name than his real last name.
So he was “Firstname Coolname Ethnicsoundinglastname” and his daughter was “Girlname Coolname”.
It really is personal preference as far as I can tell. There are many reasons one might chose the father’s name or the mother’s and married or not doesn’t make much difference as many married couples have disparate names. My children have my last name, which is also my maiden name, which is a decision I made when I was a child. Luckily for me, my partners are not very attached to their original last names, so there was no conflict.
I realised later I misspoke. In my country, you can give your child whatever surname you like merely by filling in the form they gave you at the hospital with the surname of your choice. This process is different from place to place.
I couldn’t have my daughter’s father listed as her father on her birth certificate* because we’d never been married or lived together and he refused to acknowledge paternity but if I’d wanted to, I could have given her his surname regardless.
My unmarried coworkers gave their newborn baby the mother’s last name, because the father is going to change his last name to “Dang” at some point (because he hates his parents and Dang is funny). After he changes his name, they’re going to get married, and the mother and baby will be Dang too.
As in the whole Dang family?
Yeah…I like the mom a lot, she is very smart and funny. The dad is…weird. Sometimes he is really nice to me, and sometimes he comes into the office when I am counting the money and farts on me, and I can’t get away because I can’t get away from the money. Lately he has been offering to bleach my hair (?).
I explained to my son’s exgirlfriend that it was important to me that my grandson have my last name. I wanted there to be no doubt that he was my grandson and a part of our family. He is now 14 annd a blessing to our lives.
I can only use myself as an example. My parents weren’t married when I was born…I’m a bastard. They married five years later.
I got my mother’s maiden name for my last name, and it’s stayed that way ever since. My father’s last name was not used in any way by me, not even a middle name. I have had no issues, though it can be confusing for others sometimes…especially since my younger brother got my father’s last name (they were married by then)
I’ve never really considered changing my last name, nor has anyone else. It is what it is.
should have said that Taiwan does not allow foreign last names in its family registries. As I write below, you don’t actually change your name.
I think, though, that if you were to move to Taiwan with the name ‘John James’ that it could cause problems if that name didn’t match your passport. 
Sort of a hijack, but since the OP asked, here goes.
Japan started these things. They serve as evidence of births marriages, divorces and deaths.
Each household has its own registry. Adults who live on their own count as a household. When a couple gets married the wife is usually added to the husband’s registry. When children are born, they get added as well. If the couple gets divorced the wife’s name is crossed out of the husband’s registry. Which gives a slang term for a divorced person batsu ichi (literally “crossed out once”.) Child get crossed out when them move out either to get married or to form their own household.
The registries will show if a person is married or not. In order to get married in Japan, the law requires you to present a family registry, so people who are already married would be caught.
Foreigners are not given registries, but can be added to a Japanese spouse’s one, as I was when I was married previously to a Japanese woman.
Taiwan also has a similar system (imposed by Japan during its colonial rule) as does Korea (ditto). The difference with Japan is that there isn’t a way of writing foreign names phonetically in Chinese as there is in Japanese using kana. Thus, when a foreigner marries a Taiwanese, they have to pick a Chinese name which then becomes “official”, but only for family registry. You don’t actually change your name.
We used my middle name as a source of the sound of the characters for my “official” Chinese name, which was added to my wife’s family registry.
Our daughter could have been given either my made-up “official” Chinese last name or my wife’s last name for her Taiwanese name, so we went with my wife’s name.
If I understand correctly, she wouldn’t be able to legally take his last name, and the children part is answered above.
My cousin moved to another country following a girl; they lived with her parents in the equivalent of the apartment over the garage. Two years later she bore his first daughter. She refused to marry him or let him give his lastname to the little girl because that way, by claiming single-motherhood, she could get a lot of time paid off work (two years IIRC).
It took her request to make her pregnant again so she could have a second baby just in time to stick the two maternity mega-leaves together to make him realize what kind of crap he was sleeping and trying to raise a kid with. His other three daughters are from a normal woman.
Missed this.
I don’t know that for sure, but it sounds right.
From what i’ve heard, the law does dictates certain things, including precentages to spouse and children, but there are wills and I don’t know how much leeway people have.
I was in grad school with a guy whose last name was “Rockefeller”. Turns out his parents just decided to give him that name. His sister had a different last name that they picked out for her.
The parents in this case were a lesbian couple, and I don’t know if they shared a last name with each other or if the kids were adopted, the result or artificial insemination, or what.
“Dang” is a fairly common Hmong name, and I think Vietnamese too. If I heard of a Mr. Dang I’d assume he was SE Asian.
Hmm you might be right although he had NO idea how wills worked or even what they were. Then again…this is the same man who didn’t know what the hell I was talking about when I pointed out many people at a local Japanese festival here in America were wearing their kimonos wrong. They had them right over left instead of the proper left over right. Got a blank stare from him and basically had to explain it to him. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he was faking being Japanese lol
Parents are allowed to give their kid any last name in our state. Many unmarried couples around here hyphenate their names to create the kids’ last names.
My husband and I were not married at the time our daughter (now 16) was born. I gave her my maiden name at birth. Her dad and I married earlier this year; I took his name and we changed our daughter’s name to our common last name.
It was in Tennessee. I don’t know all the hoops they had to jump through, but it went beyond the normal “fill out the form in the hospital … that’s your name” routine that most people go through. It involved a trip to a judge.
Legally they were allowed to do it. But the standard procedures didn’t accomodate it.