I would advise against this. A friend of my wife’s and her husband decided that instead of giving their kids either one of their names, or hyphenating, they would give the kids a *completely different *last name that had a distant connection to both their families.
It’s been a hassle. It’s involved several trips before a judge and has caused trouble at school and when they’ve traveled. Official channels are set up to handle kids whose surname matches at least one parent’s, and if you break that pattern there’s fallout.
If you want to go with probabilities, the odds are that you’ll be divorced at some point and the kids will be living with her, do you could just go with that and give them your wife’s last name.
We had an issue ONCE, and it was very brief. And I don’t think it had anything to do with last names, I think it was the racial mismatch. It was a TSA agent (yeah, I know) and my son was old enough to say “duh, I’m adopted, yes, that is my mother.”
I think you guys are vastly overestimating how often people in the modern world use last names to make judgements about the child based on what they imagine the parents’ sex life to be like. Those days are over. People have all kinds of names for all kinds of reasons.
My personal opinion would be against the idea of splitting the kids up by surnames. It seems too likely to lead to future feelings of “Dad chose me but he didn’t choose you”.
It’s a good thing Mr. Tao and I aren’t having any children: When we married, I noticed on the certificate that we were able to choose whatever names we wanted of each other’s, so…I took his last name for my middle name. Even the clerk didn’t believe me and tried to make it a double-barrelled last name <yes, we’re near Mexico, and the only pamphlet they gave me was in spanish; why do you ask? > until I gave back the paperwork 3 times, insisting that I no longer wanted my unimportant, boring middle name and wanted his last name there instead.
Hey, if they didn’t want to do it they shouldn’t have made it an option.
But yeah, kids would be…aww hell. Probably name them all John Doe just to keep it simple.
Our kids have both our last names…mine first and then the hubby’s.
We are fans of long names so our girls also have two word first names then my maternal grandmothers first name as their middle name and then both our last names.
Yeah…
If our second one would’ve been a boy, then he would’ve had paternal grandpa’s first name as his middle name.
Lets say one parent is a US citizen and the child is born outside the US, so the US citizen parent is of course going to go to the embassy and file for a CRBA so their child also had US citizenship. The immigration officer pretty much has free reign to consider anything and everything in establishing whether to grant it, and I can guarantee a child that has a different surname from either parent is going to be brow raising:dubious: Especially if the parents aren’t married, they are going to think it is a scam and the child’s actual father is not a citizen.
But hey maybe they just require a DNA test at your cost and then you get it granted, so that isn’t much of a big deal right?
I think that is the point people were making, that it could end up being a nuisance down the line.
I kept my name. My oldest son has my husband’s name, the second has my name. I was one of 6 daughters and felt strongly about my own father’s name not “dying” on account of him not having any sons. It’s worked out just fine, in our experience, but we don’t do overseas travel or anything, so it rarely comes up.
I think the only one it really bothers is my husband, because he periodically mentions me taking his name in overly casual ways. It’s been 12 years. I usually tell him he’s more than welcome to take *my *name if he’s so interested in a matched set, and that’s the last I hear of it for a while.
Just name them whatver you want. The irony of many of these posts are people wanting to carry on some semblence of tradition (keeping the maternal name, hyphenating both surnames, etc.) while bucking tradition as they do it. I think you are either traditional (passing along the paternal surname) or not, there’s not really some middle ground.
Since my husband’s last name is awkward and has a space in it, we’re most likely not going to hyphenate. The kids will probably take my last name, but we may end up flipping a coin, or deciding based on the names themselves.
Way back when I visited Iceland, I was surprised to learn how they named children.
If, for instance, the husband’s first name was Paul and the mother’s first name was Anna, they could pick any first name but the boy would have the last name of Paulson (as in son of Paul) and the girl would have the last name of Annatochter (as in daughter of Anna).
I remember thinking you would never find a classmate’s phone number if you didn’t know their parent’s last name! Plus, brothers and sisters would never have the same last name - only other brothers or other sisters.
In you case, I wouldn’t make it hyphenated, I would just use both names and use one as a middle name.
So, if you are Paul Klingenhofer and your wife is Anna Zimbolli your son could be Alan Zimbolli Klingenhofer and your daughter could be Susan Klingenhofer Zimbolli.
Many wealthy aristocratic families use other family names as a middle name - sometimes even as a first name.
Ever heard of the actress Rooney Mara? Star of Girl With A Dragon Tattoo?
Her name is the combination of her two families - one family owns the New York Giants (Mara) and the other family (Rooney) owns the Pittsburgh Steelers (this girl is a billionaire heiress).
I don’t have any new suggestions, I think y’all are just going to have to decide for yourselves how to name your kids.
But even here in backwards, conservative Oklahoma, we never once had any problems because The GirlChild’s name didn’t match anyone else in the house. No one was confused, no hassles, I don’t recall her ever even being asked about it. Everyone these days just assumes it’s some kind of blended family and goes on merrily their way.
My husband didn’t care, so our daughter has my last name. She’s not in school yet, so I can’t speak to any potential difficulties we might encounter. I also know a family where the girls got the mother’s last name and the boys got the father’s; they seemed to like how it worked out and didn’t have administrative trouble with it. I also think it’s a neat idea because society would end up with a differing distribution of last names based on gender if it ended up becoming a popular naming system.
If you want all the kids to have the same name and you both want your name equally, you can always flip a coin.
Not quite. Most commonly, the son would be Paulsson and the daughter would be Paulsdottir. Matronymic names exist, but they too exist for both sons and daughters. Brothers and sisters wouldn’t have the same last name, but they would generally differ only in the ending.
> until I gave back the paperwork 3 times, insisting that I no longer wanted my unimportant, boring middle name and wanted his last name there instead.