Hyphenated last names

[Anonymous]

None. We did two last names. No big deal.

[Anonymous]

My husband, son, and I share the same last name which is hyphenated. I haven’t ever wondered what people thought of us. We felt it important to all share the same name vs dealing with all the confusion around kids having one parent or the others last name and the other parent having another last name... We just did what worked for us!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband has a hyphenated name, which is lovely and common in the European country that he’s from, and our kids have it. I haven’t adopted it bc omg what an administrative pain. I feel sort of bad for my kids!

I should mention the reason it’s a pain: filling out any sort of online form. Checking in for a flight. Spelling it by phone. Ugh.

This is my thought too. That they must be a huge pain for computerized forms and such

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That the parents couldn't decide. And they need everything 50/50

This bird pretty lame IMO.

[Anonymous]

I’ve always like the way hyphenated names sound (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross) and probably would have done it if our names weren’t so long.

[Anonymous]

I guess my thought would be that it’s a little old-fashioned? But then I would never give it a second thought.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That the mother is proud of her surname and is not the property of her husband, so she wants to give the child her name as well.

Hard eye roll.

I’m proud of my surname and not the property of my husband - so all three of our kids have MY surname, not my DHs. And he was 100% happy about this because he’s a feminist who doesn’t need to give his kids his name.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband has a hyphenated name, which is lovely and common in the European country that he’s from, and our kids have it. I haven’t adopted it bc omg what an administrative pain. I feel sort of bad for my kids!

I should mention the reason it’s a pain: filling out any sort of online form. Checking in for a flight. Spelling it by phone. Ugh.

This is my thought too. That they must be a huge pain for computerized forms and such

It's really not that bad. It became too much for me when I became a teacher and 80% of kids, parents, and colleagues struggled with my name. I got tired of having it butchered literally 50x a day.

[Anonymous]

I was born in the 1970s and have had a hyphenated name since birth-- both of my parents' last names. Same for my brother.

Don't relate at all to the other poster who felt it was a huge pain and dropped "one of" the names. I don't even think of my last name as two last names at all.

It's a minor pain, sure, but nothing disastrous has come of it in 40+ years. And it's unique, and it's mine, and it's weird and not at all sonorous and it's totally fine. I get checks made out wrong, some credit cards run it all together or cut part of it off, plane tickets can be weird... and it's basically never been an actual hassle. First of all, because those things only happen about 5% of the time, and second because even when they do happen, only 1% of people or machines even flag it, and only 1% of THOSE interactions are not very quickly resolved. I lose about 10 minutes a year of my time to any hyphenated name issues.

(Interestingly, most of those 10 minutes are figuring out quickly that my ~whatever~ has been misfiled under the first letter of the "second" last name instead of the "first" last name. IMO this is because my name is imagined to be My Maiden Name-My Husband's Last Name and it "should" be My Husband's Last Name, so they very very occasionally misfile it that way.)

I feel like those without experience are overstating the issue with computerized forms and such. This used to be a little bit more of a problem in the 80s and 90s but it rarely is flagged as "you can't use special characters" or whatever anymore. Too many people, especially younger than I am, have hyphens in their names. Let alone O'Donnells or what-have-you. It's so, so not that serious IME.

I'm completely outing myself here on DCUM, but I even gave my totally weirdo hyphenated last name to my kid, on her birth certificate, as her second middle name. (She has my husband's last name for a reason having nothing to do with patriarchy or spelling/hyphenation.) She is very proud of her extremely long name.

Not meant in a snarky way, but maybe I just have a lot of pride in my name that overrides any incredibly minor inconvenience? I'm 100% convinced only me, my brother and my daughter (as a middle name) have ever had my last name in the history of the world. And I'm not 100% convinced of almost anything, it's just that much of an oddball name.

In conclusion-- ha! If I saw a kid with a hyphenated last name, I would think nothing of it. Actually, I'd kinda think it was cool, since we would share that experience. Especially since it was pretty rare when I was growing up. I would think their parents are most likely either left-leaning, British or from a Spanish-colonized culture. And move along with my day.

[Anonymous]

I wouldn't think anything, but I know forms are a challenge for some kids. Sometimes the name doesn' fit in space provided (like SAT, with not enough boxes for each letter). And I guess admitting to laughing about the idea of Joe Jones-Smith getting marryied to Lisa Taylor-Johnson and having kids Larlo and Larla Taylor-Johnson-Jones-Smith!

[Anonymous]

I think nothing. At all. This doesn't even register as a thing to me. People have all kinds of names. Some are more familiar or pleasing to my ear but the vast majority of last names don't register as anything to me. I wouldn't even assume the double-barrel name is one name from each parent. As PPs have mentioned, there are naming conventions in other countries where double-barreled last names are the norm.

If you are drawing conclusions from this, what else are you drawing conclusions from? The ethnicity of the names? When you see a Jewish name, what do you think? Or a very Anglo-Saxon name? What random conclusions about people are you forming based on nothing but their name?

You need a hobby that isn't judging people based on dumb sh$t.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It is just a different naming convention. I mean, if you were an expat in Spain, everyone would ask you for your second last name, get confused when you don’t have one, then they assign you one from your middle name. Or you give them your mother’s maiden name, so sometimes your last name is Jones but sometimes it shows up as Smith and sometimes Meghan. Also people don’t really have middle names so now your middle name is your first name, Martha. Bienvenjdo a España, señorita Martha Jones Meghan!

So confusing! How do people get by with only one last name? The hyphen would make it so much easier.

This. I don't make assumptions about people who hyphenate their last name, or hyphenate their kids' last names. It's just a different convention, and one which really doesn't justify people's strong reactions to it. But I know people from all kinds of different countries, with different naming conventions, and it's just...not that hard to deal with.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wouldn't think anything, but I know forms are a challenge for some kids. Sometimes the name doesn' fit in space provided (like SAT, with not enough boxes for each letter). And I guess admitting to laughing about the idea of Joe Jones-Smith getting marryied to Lisa Taylor-Johnson and having kids Larlo and Larla Taylor-Johnson-Jones-Smith!

Except that they mostly don't. I mean, Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries have dealt with the "four last names" issue forever, and it's not actually a problem. You pick one last name from each person and voila, a new last name. Ditto for the Brits, where double-barreled (or even triple-barreled) last names have a long history.

And the computerized form problem is vastly overblown. This is not a reason not to hyphenate a last name.

[Anonymous]

Love it, the father's name, and then the mother's father's name. #feminism #slay

[Anonymous]

Kids have a hyphenated name. The “computerized forms” and “airline check in” reasons are always trotted out—- this is a non issue- we’ve done it for 10+ years.

Both of my kids have had a few others in their class with hyphenated names so it’s not an anomaly at all

For us, our respective names reflects our kids’ two ethnicities/cultures and wanted them to have that growing up.

When / if they get married and have children, they’ll decide what to do then, same as everyone else.

Not sure why people are so invested in attacking hyphenated names.