In talking with my husband’s aunt, she mentioned that when people hyphenate a combined last name, they always put the mother’s or woman’s last name first. I had never heard this, but when I asked my students who has hyphenated last names, it turned out that all of them had their mother’s name first. I looked around the internet but couldn’t find any evidence that this was the “proper” or accepted way to do it. wikipedia, for whatever it’s worth as a source, says it’s acceptable to have the names in either order.
Is there an established custom or tradition where the mother’s last name comes first in hyphenated combined last names? Not aesthetics, but actual rules about whose name goes first.
Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Book of Etiquette from 1995 says (p. 655), “it’s customary for the woman’s name to come first”.
However, this is by no means universal, as in the case of this blog description of how the author and his wife decided how to divvy up the pre- and post-hyphen space.
I don’t think you’ll get anything more authoritative than various etiquette book descriptions of what is “customary”.
I don’t have any cite, but I do have a hyphenated last name, and FWIW my mother’s last name is the first bit (and functionally the only bit I use). I am not aware of any sort of hard-and-fast rule or even social standard for hyphenated last names, and I imagine that the tradition of multiple last names has been common in many cultures, making coming up with any sort of standard nearly impossible. Additionally, there are any number of reasons why one might wind up with a hyphenated surname.
I do know (er, I’m pretty sure at least) that in many Hispanic cultures, where you can get stupefyingly long compound names, the first name is traditionally the paternal name. So Maria Gomez Chavez’s father’s last name is Gomez, and Chavez would be Maria’s mother’s maiden name. If Maria got married to Whoever Ortega Peralta, tradition would see her name change to some variant of Maria Gomez Chavez (de) Ortega, taking her husband’s father’s name as an indicator of being married.
WAG – maybe it comes from the custom of given children the mother’s maiden name as a middle name, ie, Jacqueline Lee Bouvier, so the mother’s name comes first when said in full. My brother and I are in the category (although I actually have my maternal grandmother’s maiden name), but our names don’t sound nearly as elegant.
The earliest example I can think of of a hyphenated last name was Irene and Frederic Joliot-Curie, Irene being the daughter of Marie and Pierre Curie (and there’s a brainy family for you: The two generations had three Nobel prizes between them). So there is precedent for the woman’s name coming last.
I’d like to know the etiquette of when a gay or lesbian couple does it (although I suppose that’s still in the process of being worked out, marriage equality being a fairly recent phenomenon). My girlfriend asked me the other day how are we going to hyphenate our names when we get married. I would go with alphabetical order in the absence of any other protocol. Either that or a coin flip?
I don’t think there’s a true rule on this. Some cultures that hyphenate have a traditional order, but if you’re outside of one those it comes down to whatever you want to do. As far as same-sex couples, I suggest you talk about/negotiate the matter.
I just wish I could convince people that yes, the hyphenated combo really is my last name and it’s not a matter of choosing one or the other, it’s both. The first one is NOT my middle name, it’s the first half of my last name.
I have trouble being convinced of this, although I see this argument often. It seems to me your children will simply have to decide instead of you if you take the position the whole hyphenated thing is your real last name as opposed to a social convention to link you with your marriage partner.
If you are Smith-Watson and your kid marries Johnson-Gomez, and their kid marries Petersen-Mtumbe, is the grandchild Timmy Smith-Watson-Johnson-Gomez-Petersen-Mtumbe?
At some point it becomes a matter of practicality to start dropping someone’s last name, hurt feelings or not. When those names are dropped–or truncated, if the choice is to uncouple them–the argument that the hyphenated name is “both” and not a matter of choosing becomes weaker. Somebody gotta choose eventually…
Hyphenated names seem to me to be yet another way of foisting off difficult choices onto our children. I like the practice of everyone keeping (or creating) their own surname, but where I see them hypenated, I confess to seeing indecisiveness and weak egos. Kimstu’s link is a classic for demonstrating the impossibility of making a decision when both egos involved are too weak to actually make a decision.
The appeal in the OP to find a “rule” where the most obvious rule is that everyone gets to choose their own name exemplifies nicely our collective inability to simply step up to the plate and decide for ourselves once we figure out we can’t all be first and we can’t all be last.
The husband and I, through a process called “negotiation”, decided prior to marriage that in the event of children they would have his name alone.
Now, what is the issue again?
Yes, I recall - because I have a womb I’m not allowed to be called by my legal name, I must submit to having it distorted or abbreviated by intolerant jerks who wish to impose their narrow-mindedness upon my identity.
I hyphenated my name because at the time of my marriage I was working in a field where obtaining additional work was dependent almost entirely upon my reputation, which was attached to my maiden name. By changing my name to my husband’s I would have had to start entirely over in my profession. This would have been stupid. But for reasons that are none of your business I also agreed to take his name. I’m sorry if protecting my income strikes you as being a sign of a “weak ego” and “indecisiveness”. For me, it was at least 50% pure practicality and a desire to maintain my income.
I vote alphabetical order, unless that results in a combo that’s more awkward to pronounce or comical (if Ms Noz marries Ms Moking, they should definitely stick to alphabetical order and be the Moking-Noz family).
For what it’s worth, when the woman (alone) on entering a marriage determines to hyphenate her maiden name with her husband’s surname, the custom seems to be that she places her maiden name first: Marcia Plumb marries Jeremy Pudding, and adopts the surname Plubm-Pudding.
When the couple together conjoins their surname (as, for example, when to only children marry and wish to continue both family names), the custom seems to be for the bridegroom’s surname to lead: Henry Thorsen IV marries Dorothy Vanderrijn, and they decide to become Henry and Dorothy Thorsen-Vanderrijn.
There are no doubt exceptions to both usages, but they seems to be the generally preferred customs.
The Plunkett brothers (the fantasy writer Lord Dunsany and his brother Adm. Reginald Plunkett) furnish an interesting example of a quadruple-barrelled surname: Admiral Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax. Also interesting is Sir Winston Churchill’s actual surname: Spencer Churchill – not hyphenated, and alphabetized as if it were just Churchill. This dates from the First Duke of Marlborough, John Churchill, perhaps Britain’s greatest general before Wellington, whose sole surviving child was a daughter who married one of Princess Diana’s collateral ancestors. Thereafter the males in direct descent used Churchill for a surname but always bore a “pre-surname” of Spencer as a second middle name. Churchill himself was Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill; both his father and son were Randolph Spencer Churchill. This preserved the ‘famous’ ancestry from Marlborough while acknowledging the male descent was from the Spencers.
As to what one’s ‘real’ name is, it is always what the law provides – which in general is what one chooses to use as a formal name, barring fraud and complying with any legally mandated registration of such name. What etiquette deems to be a ‘proper’ name must give way to what the law requires – and the law has generally been accommodating to an individual’s wish to designate what he or she chooses to be identified by.
I’d always thought I’d go with the order that just sounded better. However, my girlfriend and I both have rather long and difficult to spell names already, so I imagine, should we ever decide to go down the marriage route, that we’d just keep our own names.
Out of interest, is it a common practice to double-barrel wives’/husbands’ names in the US? It’s really not that common in the UK and is seen as rather a posh people’s sport (happens particularly if the wife comes from a more notable family than the husband).
Well, more and more often these days, when a journalist or other writer needs to impart information rapdly about a maried woman, the custom is, when the former Mary Ellen Waters married Thomas McKenzie and took his surname, to refer to her as “Mary Ellen (Waters) McKenzie”, with the parentheses serving to indicate “This is her maiden name which she does not customarily use” to anyone who cares to know.
As for me, I get confused as between Maria Gomez Gonzalez, Maria Gomez y Gonzalez, and Maria Gomez de Gonzales, as to what is being specified by the two surnames and the presence or absence of the “y” or “de” in linking them.
María Gómez González would be the only legal and customary name in Spain. No other. The “y” just means “and” and is meaningless today. In very old times when there was no legal structure for names and many people just went by a single family or place name the “and” was used by those who were of two noble families. Like he was Vanderbilt and Rockefeller. Wow! Impressive! Nobody would use it today except to show how pretentious one can be. Legally it does not exist.
The “de” is also an outdated social convention which has no legal validity. It is mostly outdated but may still be used rarely when a woman is invited or attending due to being the wife of her husband rather than on her own merits. The wife of the ambassador may be listed thusly when she is there because she is the wife of the ambassador.
It is not complicated not difficult and, again, these are just social conventions with no legal standing. The name of a woman in Spain does not change throught her life (which seems quite logical to me).
So that’s why they keep putting my second last name as my first last name when addressing me!
When I was in Florida, I decided to start hyphenating my last names, so I went by Grenze-Secondlastname. I’m guessing since Florida had a lot of Hispanic students, they caught up on that, and learned to address me as either complete Grenze-Secondlastname or just as Grenze (which is what is usually done, to use the first last name).
Then when I moved to Louisiana, and also now in Georgia, people keep addressing me as “Secondlastname” despite that being the last name of the hyphenated pair. In fact, my vet school email address is “secondlastname” because that’s what they thought was my “real name” when they set up the account for me. My LSU email (not the same), though, does have “grenze” in it.
Pedant, usually only the first two last names of the couples are passed on the kids (typically the paternal granparent’s last names).
IF Smith Watson is a man that marries Johnson Gomez, their kid traditionally and doesn’t matter with respect to gender, will be Smith Johnson (in Spanish countries). IF Smith Johnson is a male and marries Petersen-Mtumbe, their kid, traditionally, will be Smith Petersen.
You can tag the rest of the last names as follow if you’re playing genealogy, but legally is Smith Petersen. Four names will be Smith Petersen Johnson Mtumbe.
The thing is, provided you have the two last names of your ancestors, you can go back real far with little difficulty, by going through that pattern.
Other possible solutions include both partners merging their name into a single new name, both partners taking on a completely new name, or the husband taking the wife’s name. It doesn’t have to be sexist.