So for people who have decided to hyphenate last names when they get married where does it end? For example if Bob Allen and Sue Baxter get married and they change their names to Baxter-Allen. They then have a child name Mary Baxter-Allen. So Mary grows up and marries Mark Anderson-Lewis and they decide to hyphenate as well. So we have Mary and Mark Baxter-Anderson-Allen-Lewis. This continues for a few generations and people have 20-30 hyphenated last names.
So do you drop some of the names? How do you decide what to drop? Birth certificates will have to be continued on the back.
If we’re talking about last name conventions as observed in the U.S. (assuming since this tends to be a U.S.-centric messageboard), then Bob Allen and Sue Baxter made a deliberate choice to go against social convention based on what they were most happy with.
Mary Baxter-Allen can then grow up and make a deliberate choice based on what makes her most happy.
Individuals actively making choices based on their own happiness, all in all I’d say it’s preferable to the common convention of the woman taking the man’s name simply because that’s what you’re “supposed to do”.
In my marriage the wife hyphenated her surname. We agreed in advance that any offspring produced would have his un-hyphenated name alone. Problem solved even before the actual marriage.
Because in the real world adults sit down and discuss things like this, and in any case, when the kids grow up they’ll decide what makes them happy anyway, which may or may not involved keeping part or all of their birth name.
We kept our names and hyphenated the kids. We told the kids that once they hit 18 they could do what they wanted with their last names. I’m sure they’ll make whatever decision is best for them.
Quebec has a law on this (Quebec has a law on everything). When we moved here, it was illegal for a married woman to use her maiden name. Now it is compulsory. If Mlle Tremblay marries M. Choquette, she becomes Mme Tremblay and he remains M. Choquette. (Actually the change from Mlle to Mme is based on age not marital status.) They have a choice of names for their children: Tremblay, Choquette, Tremblay-Choquette, or Choquette-Tremblay. Now Mlle Tremblay-Choquette marries M. Beliveau-Lemaire. They have a choice of four single names or 12 (since order matters) hyphenated names, but may not use more than one hyphen. And when you fill out official forms, they insist on your using the name on your birth certificate (a requirement I have routinely ignored, however, since that is not a name I have ever used).
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