Reply to Partner and I can't agree on a surname after marriage and now I'm wondering if marrying him is even worth it.

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Reply to "Partner and I can't agree on a surname after marriage and now I'm wondering if marrying him is even worth it."

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don't think the last name thing is a big deal for most couples. But it is for children. What if a double barrel name marries another double barrel name? It gets ridiculous at a certain point.

Social conventions are what they are. I'm sure it would be more efficient if we all had a number. But in the meantime, practical choices need to be made when you have children. How many last names do you want them to have?  [/quote]

Good God! I have a hyphenated name. It has never been a problem. When I married and had children I gave my boy part of my surname and my husband's surname. They've been doing that for centuries in Spain, Portugal and Latin America with no issues. The "what are we gonna do if the double-barrelled child meets another double-barrelled child" issue is a cultural bias, not a practical problem. The US is one if the most liberal countries legally speaking when it comes to naming conventions. You can do whatever you want.[/quote]

No one said hyphenated names are illegal. The point is that they create friction, and pretending otherwise is silly.

Here are the issues:

Longer names hit field limits.
Boarding passes may truncate the name.
Airline tickets may omit part of the name.
Hyphens may be removed.
Hyphens may be replaced with spaces.
Two last names may get merged into one word.
The passport, ticket, TSA record, boarding pass, PreCheck, airline profile, frequent flyer account, school record, medical record, and insurance record may not match perfectly.
Kiosks may not recognize the same formatting.
Mobile boarding passes may display a shortened version.
TSA or airline staff may have to verify the full name manually.
You may get pulled aside because the document and reservation do not line up cleanly.
International travel can be worse because the passport machine-readable zone may format the name differently.
I-94 records can be hard to locate if the name is entered with the wrong spacing, hyphen, order, or truncation.
Schools may alphabetize the child under the wrong half of the name.
Doctors’ offices may create duplicate records.
Insurance claims may mismatch.
Pharmacy records may mismatch.
Sports registrations may not match school records.
Background checks may require extra aliases.
Work email and login names can become awkward.
Professional search results are less clean.
Diplomas, transcripts, licenses, credentialing, and HR systems may not use the same version.
Credit cards and bank accounts may shorten or reformat it.
Legal documents may require constant explanation.
And the next generation has to decide which part of the double name survives.

So yes, you can do whatever you want. But "allowed" does not mean "clean," "common," or "practical." In the U.S., one shared family surname is still the simpler default.
[/quote]

Me and my sibilings are hyphenated. We've never had any of the issues you describe. There's no room for confusion when Smith-Jones is listed in the last name field. It takes a particularly dumb person to not understand under these circumstances that Smith-Jones is a last name.

Airports and travelling agencies serve people from all over the world, their staff is trained to recognize a situation where a traveller has an unusual naming convention. I've seen my name printed on flight tickets as smithjones or smithjon and it's not a problem. Staff understands that this is a system issue as soon as they check my passport.[/quote]

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