I have my mom’s last name as a second middle name.
People often get confused that it is a hyphenated last name, even though there is no hyphen.
It didn’t happen until I moved to california and was forced to put all four names on my license because they were on the birth cert, even though they weren’t on the SS card…
Daughter has mother’s last as second middle, and we are trying to figure out whether to make it a hyphenated name instead, as the wife just took my last name added to hers with a hyphen…
Depends on the jurisdiction, actually. Québec puts restrictions on the child’s legal name, though I assume the OP isn’t from Québec, and our laws here are somewhat particular.
I didn’t hyphenate my kids’ names- but sometimes I wished I had. You know why? Not because of ego - because it was a giant pain in the ass for them not to have hyphenated names. For every time you encountered confusion on the part of a bank, pharmacist, etc. I encountered someone who decided that this caucasian woman couldn’t possibly be the mother of these clearly Asian children with the Asian last name.Giving them my name instead of my husband’s would have resulted in an equal amount of confusion. And it’s not entirely a racial issue- every parent I know with a different last name from the child(ren) has encountered confusion due to the non-matching names.
My older kids are adults. They seem okay with hyphenated last names. It’s not a lot different than having a really long last name, which many folks pass on to their kids without a qualm. We have to spell our last names anyway, so when we are on the form it’s just “W-e-i-r-d-hyphen-Odd.” Truly, not a huge deal so far for any of my kids. (And the younger ones definitely think it’s cool. Again, it’s not uncommon here, though.)
My last name was hyphenated during my marriage. Meh. It’s just one of those things. If this is the most difficult thing kids ever have to deal with they’d be lucky indeed.
Good luck with the divorce dealings, btw. It can be difficult and long, but if you can keep your focus and keep civil, things will be fine in the long run. Again…speaking from long experience here.
Well thanks for all the responses…there are some that I’d love to comment on, but time and other constraints don’t permit. Yes, Argent Towers, I saw your very large and very red response
For now, visitation etc. is ‘settled’…50/50. I know that could change at any time before the process is complete, but I don’t think it will.
Giving in, as I said in the OP, because I can’t reasonably disagree. She did change her name when we got married. While it is indeed tradition that a child assumes the surname of the father (every time I type ‘surname’, I think ‘Surinam’…) that doesn’t give me any real grounds to oppose it, other than ‘nuh-uh.’
You are absolutely correct, I do need to meet a few more upper-class English folks. Know any in the American mid-west that I can hang out with? Especially if we share a name…perhaps that’s an ‘in’ to an inheritance.
I did indeed! I agree with you…why mess with it. As much as I appreciate the support, technically I was asking about hyphenated names
Bolding mine, you’re absolutely right…much worse things than having to spell your name all the time. Good to know that your kids aren’t horribly scarred by having to say ‘hyphen’ on a regular basis.
Fact is he does have two great parents..separately. The civility is hit or miss, but I think we’re doing an ok job all things considered.
I just want you to know, when he grows up, his hyphenated name is going to be a pain in the ass. This is totally about making you (in this case, your ex wife) feel good and nothing about making the kid feel good or doing anything to help the kid. It’s 100% an ego thing. I’ve already said my piece; I just don’t understand why, if you have the ability to make one of two choices, and choice 1 will make things harder for your kid and choice 2 will not make things harder for the kid, and neither choice hurts you in any way, why on earth you would choose choice 1. But it’s up to you. Just know that it’ll be a pain in the ass for Junior.
My mom never took my dad’s last name, but I can’t say there’s ever been much confusion as to parentage…though I can imagine the “obviously asian kids” would throw them through a loop. I know a caucasian lady who married an Asian friend of ours, but she took his last name, so there’s never any confusion, even though they both look way more like him, IMO.
ETA: Also, both of my parents last names are long. And ethnic. And impossible to spell. I already bitch enough about people not getting my FIRST name right, that a hyphenated name would make me cry.
Because I don’t have the ability to make one of two choices, and it isn’t up to me. Oh, I suppose that I could spend quite literally hundreds or thousands of dollars trying to make a different ‘choice’…and, in the meantime, squander any good-will that remains. But, while your post was certainly the most emphatic, there are others that indicate that your experiences, while not unique, are far from universal.
Sure, my preference is that he keeps my name (solely). But he is his mother’s child as well, so I don’t really have any place to say that he shouldn’t also have her name. And, as several posters have pointed out, he is free to choose when he is older.
My son has my maiden name (and my current name, I changed it back after the divorce) for his middle name and his father’s name as a last name. It’s been this way from birth. We did think briefly about hyphenating it,but didn’t seem to work. My ex has a tough to spell, tough to pronounce German last name that wouldn’t go with my bog standard, easy one of Irish heritage.
Now that he’s older - 16 last Monday, good lord, when did that happen - he is saying he’s going to drop his dad’s name when he gets old enough, cause he hates to spell and pronouce it. He wishes I had hyphenated so it would be easier (in his mind, no idea why he thinks that.)
I wish mine had been hyphenated- it would have given me more choices as an adult. As it turns out, my father and his family have not really been a part of my life, AND someone with my exact name became famous in an embarrassing way when I was around 11. So now I have an embarrassing, career-limiting (I use a fake name on job apps so they don’t think I’m my alter ego) name of a guy I have no attachment to that doesn’t reflect my family or identity at all. If I had my mom’s family name as well, I could have just dropped my dad’s when I started getting official IDs, which would be much easier legally and psychologically than the prospect of changing my last name to some name I’ve never used.
Obviously the situation will be different for your kids. But still, IMHO, more options are better than fewer options.
Before my girl’s dad died both The Girl and her sister had hypenated names (and yes they were new age off the grid hippies who unschooled and were vegetarians, why do you ask?) Now The Girl goes with her dad’s last name, and the sister has her mom’s last name.
When the kid grows up, he can pick his own name. To me, keeping the name he’d had all along or going with the Spanish tradition would have made more sense. But I’m not involved in the situation & the OP is trying to handle things decently.
Right now, there are serious matters to settle. If the OP continues to focus on things other than scoring points against his ex–like continuing to be close to his son–I wouldn’t be surprised if the kid picks his Dad’s name, in the long run.
Change it. Take your mother’s surname. (Or take a completely different one). Its pretty easy to do. (You are in grad school now? Do it before you finish grad school just so your diploma matches).
(Your real name is Monica Lewinsky?)
Two things…
No matter how you name your kids, most kids have fantasies about having a different name. Some will change it. And as an adult they are free to do so. I know at least three people who dropped their last names completely and became first middle as a legal name.
I have my doubts that any solution at all is uniformly “easy” (or for that matter - really impossibly hard unless you insist on spelling your name in Cyrillic.) A common name easily spelled gets you confused with others. Hyphenated names are long an unweildy. Mom have a different name than the kids leads to questions (that’s our situation, and I 've never really found it hard), two middle names sometimes turns you into two last names. Long names don’t fit on forms. etc. Friends of mine intended to name their daughter first middle mother-father. For some reason the kid ended up being firstmiddle mother father.
Most people I know have mother-father in terms of hyphenation - most drop the first eventually. I have a friend with an unwieldy hyphenated last name who used her initials except on official forms.
I agree that this is a good reason for them to have a hyphenated name but have an exception.
IMHO, if you are getting married and you are having kids, you should both have the same last name. I don’t care if it’s his name, her name or something you make up. You are a family now and should share a family name.
So, really, it is an ego thing but from when you were married not when the kids were born (since neither of you could possibly give up your existing last names).
Technically, as I’m registered, on my SSN card and on my birth certificate, I don’t have a hyphenated last name, I have two last names. No middle name.
I hyphenated here, because one or either tends to be dropped in some documents, and personally, I don’t want to get in trouble with someone saying I’m not using my “full legal name”. Turns out, in Florida, they understand/understood the paternal last name-maternal last name (lots of Hispanics). In Louisiana and Georgia, the reverse has happened, and I keep getting called Dr. secondlastname. In Florida, they understood: Either use all of it, or use the first part. Everywhere else, it’s usually “use the second”. Bah…
BTW, coming from a culture where people have two last names at birth, and we have a set system, and women don’t change their names upon marriage… all this confusion, desperation, annoyance, and almost chaos that some people show in regards to using two last names (instead of one)… is… somewhat… weird.
Prime example of my point. This attitude is something foreign in many cultures, many with worse record keeping systems, less technological advance, less “progressive” than the US. Yet nobody there raises an eye if the kids don’t have the same last name as the mom. Because that is the norm. It may be the tradition in the US, and in many other parts, but really, the idea that this should be universal everywhere is very annoying to me.
Plus, having the two last names and never changing at marriage makes it easy for geneagolists.
Really? It had to be ego? It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with avoiding the need to provide a marriage certificate to every potential job - since my name wouldn’t be on my diploma or school records. Nor could it be the fact that I had a professional history under my own name, or even the possibility that I just wanted to continue using the name I was used to.
Or just the frankly “pain in the ass” it is to change your name. I said it was easy to do…and it is easy to do. But it does create challenges with record keeping going backwards. And it creates issues with people finding you should someone from your past decide to look you up. I changed my name for my first marriage, changed it back after the divorce, and didn’t change it for my second marriage.
On the other hand, my kids have my husband’s last name. My son is Asian, the rest of us are White. I really can’t think of any time when I’ve had a “problem” that wasn’t just “teachers referring to me as ‘Mrs. Hislastname’ instead of ‘Ms. Mylastname.’” I don’t consider that a problem. (We did have a problem with airport security and my Asian son for about fourteen seconds, but it had nothing to do with last names and everything to do with a security guard who was apparently unfamiliar with interracial adoption. Fortunately, he was old enough to step in and say “duh, I’m adopted, these are my parents.” Which got an immediately apology from the TSA person who I think then felt REALLY STUPID.)
