Personally, I’d love to come up with a new family name with my future husband. Now that is creating a sense of family!
However, for kids, if the create a name ishn’t the way for the parents, its up to the parents to find something they are both happy with.
Why do you insist that they be “your” kids and not “both of yours”?
Why does she not want to go along with “tradition”?
(Frankly I find tradition a silly reason to do anything. I need an actual reason beyond “its just supposed to be like that” to justify something.)
You want the kids to have just one name, in your mind, yours. She wants to express both you and her through your children’s names. This is important stuff, to her you are saying that the kids are your and yours alone. To you, double names are unwieldly or silly to give to kids. Both are valid, but the two of you need to work out what you are both going to be comfortable with. The kids can change them later if they want.
On double names for kids, I never really noticed my friend’s hyphens. I remember having to think very hard to make the stunning connection between Mrs. Rose and her son kid Rose-Molina. Rose-Molina sounded like a perfectly nice family name.
I am with FairyChatMom on this one, since this is exactly what we did with our two kids. And Mrs. ShibbOleth also kept her last name as a middle name since she didn’t have one before that.
Have also seen friends of ours blend their names (part of his name plus part of her name equals new name) and one male friend adopt his married partner’s name instead of the more traditional other way around.
I’m of the opinion it makes more sense for everyone to take their mother’s name. After all, you do always know who a baby’s mother is.
That said, I hated my maiden name and changed it when I got married. If I’d liked it more, odds are that I wouldn’t have changed it and my kids would be using hyphenated names now.
TO those asking why some think hyphenated names sound foolish:
I cannot speak for everyone, but to me they often sound pretentious. An example is a family I met whose name was Carstairs-Smith. That’s not exactly what their name was, but it’s close enough to illustrate my point. Now, I have no idea how long that family had been using a hyphenated name for. It could date back to the ark for all I know. I don’t know why the name was hyphenated in the first place. What I do know is that when I first heard it, I had a slight chuckle to myself over the snobbish Miss Carstairs who couldn’t stand to be plain Mrs. Smith, and tried to make herself seem more important by hyphenating the surname. I visualised her as a sort of Hyacinth Bucket (it’s Bo-quet, dear). To compound my distaste for the family and their surname, they gave their daughter a long first name. I kept imagining the poor little blighter trying to fit all her names on forms, and failing. I certainly hope she doesn’t have a middle name, or she’ll need an extra sheet of paper with every application form.
I stand by my earlier statement, that in the case of wanting to carry on a family name that will be otherwise lost, a hyphenated name is one solution. But I do agree that hyphenated names frequently sound foolish to me, as I associate them with people who think a hyphenated surname is a status symbol. I am very fond of the custom of giving a child the mother’s maiden name as a middle name. Why, in my own family, there are still people living today bearing the middle name Smart, a tradition dating back to the 1750’s from a 5x great grandmother whose maiden name was Smart.
For context I took my husbands last name. Our agreement on naming the kids is that he got last name, so I get first name and he can pick middle name but I can veto if it’s frightfully offensive to me.
That said, I’m not a fan of hypenated names either because they rarely pass the back door test. That’s where when you’re choosing your future child’s name, you go to the back door and shout a test, “Jonathan David Matthews get your backside in this house immediately!” If it rolls off well, it passes. If “Chasity Maria Castro-Nunez-Rodriguez-Jones-Stephens-Hampton-Thinklespin get your backside in this house immediately!” does not roll off the tongue easily, go back to the name list and try again.
Yes, they sound stupid, and, as Cazzle pointed out, pretenious. Are you saying that, to rattle off a few, “Sanders-Schreiner”, “Cook-Lewis”, “Anderson-Robertson”, and so on, are not a mouthful, and stupid-sounding?
Furthermore, it is the father’s right to carry on his surname.
I assume that this was directed at me, as I was the one who referred to having a shared name as creating a “sense of family”. She will be taking my name because that is what we decided was best for us. Our children will get our name, thus our children will be getting their mother’s name.
When I was married, my wife and I chose to go the hyphenated route. Our reasoning was that we wished to acknowledge the union, but yet not forget where it was we came from. Our son hasn’t received any grief from anyone over having the extended name. If he chooses later to go with just one or the other, or even something completely different, then good on him. He will always be our son, and we will always be his parents. A rose by any other name…
As far as carrying on a name as an acknowledgement of lineage or history, that never had any appeal nor made much sense to me. What we leave behind and how we affect others has little to do with names.
Now, I’m an old-old geezer, and I think this new-fangled idea of having a set surname is just confusing. After all, in theday, you’d have Ingmar, who’d have a son Johan Ingmarsson; Johan would have a son Ingmar Johansson, and so on. Gee, everyone would be confused if they couldn’t tell the father from the surname! (Also, all the women with --dottir in the same vein.) And, heck, folks have been hyphenating their names in English for a millenia, so I would expect that society can withstand the strain. Or how about, it’s so confusing if we can’t tell a person’s place of origin from their surname. What it is with these people named Jackson? Why can’t they have a normal name like Disney (D’Isegny, “from the town of Isegny” in Normandy). Or what is it with these people who refuse to have their profession as their surname? If we didn’t know you were a Fletcher or a Baker or a Chandler or a Miller or a Fisher or a Carpenter, we could get confused, right?
For the people to whom your relationship is important, variations in surnames will make no difference because they know you.
But the mother has no right to carry on her surname?
Number Six - actually, I didn’t mean to direct that comment at anyone, really. The “sense of family” idea has been brought up to me before. If your wife saw fit to take your name, then it makes perfect sense to give the children the same name. My thing is - I wouldn’t take my husband’s name in place of my own, so it’s a little less cut-and-dried. If I keep my name, or hyphenate it, I’d like to pass that along to my children as well.
As Medea’s Child so succinctly put it, it’s up to the individuals involved. I personally don’t like the idea of simply accepting the paternal-family-name practice without question.
Forgot to say - I’m not saying that people who follow the tradition do so without thought. To each their own. I do wish that folks wouldn’t presume to know anything about a person or family - that is, assuming the hyphenated-name people are pretentious twits - without understanding the reasons they chose to do so.
Gundy–we’re pretty much in agreement. I think I said in my first post that it should be whatever is right for the particular family. I even put in an example of how in some cases hyphenation is the traditional way of doing things (among some Mexicans).
As a side note, no one has explained why, in many Western societies, the wife traditionally takes the husband’s family name, so I will. When born, children traditionally get their father’s name. Taking the husband’s name when marrying is meant to symbolize that the wife is leaving her father’s family and joining her husband’s. The dowry, or financial gift from the brides family to the groom’s, is also meant to symbolize this transfer; the financial burden of caring for the wife is being transferred from her father to her husband. In its modern form, the dowry has become the tradition of the bride’s family paying for the wedding.
Just my part in the fight against ignorance. If you’re going to observe a tradition, you should at least know what it means. In my case, the future Mrs. Six is literally and figuratively leaving her family to join mine, and she would have been dead set against keeping her maiden name or hyphenating.
I am an only child and for twelve years of my life was an only grandchild on both sides, until my cousin arrived. I feel just as close to my mom’s parents as I do to my dad’s parents, even though I share the last name of my dad’s parents and have no legal name ties to my mom’s parents. I was also close to my (great-)Grandma Austin, and if I ever have a daughter I plan to give her my great-grandmother’s first name.
In the “traditional” model where the mother takes the father’s name, except in some really odd cases at least one set of grandparents doesn’t share the child’s name. Does everyone else except me have one set of grandparents that loves them more, or what? Or are grandparents not included in that “sense of family” thing now?
Corr, who would give her children different last names and love them all no matter what
I’ve hyphenated my last name since the seventh grade, and haven’t had too many problems, other than the usual difficulties of having a long German last name. My mother, incidentally, took my father’s name at marriage then a few years later went back to her maiden name.
On the other hand, if I married a guy with a last name that was shorter and easier to spell and pronounce than mine, I’d take it in a heartbeat!
The future husband that plans to take the burden of caring for me from my father and take me away from my old family into his is going to get beaten with a stick. I like my family and nothing is going to take me away from them. I also seriously doubt I’ll be a burden to my husband’s family. (Well, not finacially. I’m kinda mouthy and I guess that could be burdening.)
This is why I like the idea of making new families. New family names. In my view getting married doesn’t add a girl to the guy’s family or take a guy away from his, it take two people and makes them a new family, with connections to other families.
Boy, you guys worry way too much about this. It’s simple, really. Man and woman keep their own names, no hyphens or any other pretentious crap. The children then take the surname of whichever family has the most money, there by increasing their future prospects.
Symbolism. I was explaining the symbolism involved in a tradition. I made no comment about whether said tradition was a good or bad thing. I was just trying to clarify exactly what the tradition meant, so that those who either support or oppose it would be clear about the meaning of the tradition they were supporting or opposing.
I’ll respond to this, as I was the one who used having a “sense of family” as one reason why my fiancee and I chose to use my name as our family name. What I said was this:
I thought it was clear that I was referring to the nuclear family unit. My fiancee and I have decided that sharing a common name will be one way for she, I, and our children to feel connected to each other. Grandparents don’t enter into our decision about what to name our children one way or the other.
Firstly, I am referring only to my personal values here. Anyone may use whatever name they concieve and think is best, in this great land of ours. Now, on to the challanges…
Again, as I am referring to personal values (and not biblical ones), I cannot.
Yes, that’s about the shape of it. This is not to imply any male superiority over women.
