https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/27/upshot/names-parents-marriage-children.html
Paywall.
I know plenty of families who combined or came up with new last names. We were pretty conventional and I took my husband’s last name which is slightly less boring than my super common family of origin surname (think Williams). I wanted to have the same name for the whole family but we could have combined or come up with something creative. It just wasn’t on my radar.
We gave our younger kid my surname as a middle name and our older kid my middle name as a middle name. Our older kid first name is the same as my mom’s (though they go by a different name now) and our younger kid’s first name is DH’s mom’s middle name. (MIL and I have the same super common classic first name so we wanted something different.)
I like the different last names. Probably makes genealogy a little trickier though. My younger daughter’s girlfriend is from India and her last name is her dad’s first name.
I thought the author was going to be from my hood since she was quoting all these people in my neck of the woods. I wonder if she has moved from California to NC now. It’s common.
As I have posted elsewhere, my daughter and son-in-law plan to use her (my) last name when they have children. It’s a long, unusual, hard-to-spell name of unknown origin (likely changed a bit at Ellis Island when my paternal grandfather arrived at Ellis Island at age 1 with his likely European peasant stock parents) but there are few new-generation kids out there who carry it on–only two that I know of personally, boy-girl twins of a single mother by choice.
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A couple I know gave their (now toddler) child a last name that is a combination of theirs. As an example the last names of “Wilson” and “Smith” to form “Smithson”. I love the idea. D and SIL love that idea, too but their last names (she kept hers) do not combine well. Ironically SIL actually has 2 surnames as is common in the culture of his native country.
I don’t think it’s particularly “confusing” at all. Lots of families do not have the same names. I have HS friends who have married 3 (or more) times and have known them under 4 or more last names. Blended families are not unusual.
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Read the article, but still unsure as to whether or not I can name my kid Bill Gates, Jr.
Since his father was “Bill Gates Jr” (he is “William Henry Gates III”) it might be tricky to convince people…
I knew a family that gave their daughters the dad’s surname, and their sons the mom’s surname. Sounds like an endless headache to me, but they were happy with it!
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Where’s the headache?
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Just the explaining of the different surnames all the time. It’s fine if you don’t mind having to correct/educate people on a regular basis!
We know one couple that took the first syllable from her name and the second from his (kind of like Smithson) but it was not mellifluous.
We know another couple where the father is a best selling mystery writer and I think wanted her to have her own identity (and perhaps not have everyone thinking she was rich or maybe good kidnap material). Her parents gave her a very distinctive name. I believe she is an actress now and her name is a good stage name.
Whatever you do, you have to be polite to people who make a mistake. My sister’s kids have their father’s name as a last name (hers as a middle) and sometimes people (doctors, teachers, coaches, little kids) call her ‘Mrs. Brown’ and she just politely corrects them that her name is Miss G. I worked with a guy ( and our kids went to school together) and his kids had a double last name, not hyphenated, with his wife’s name first. She had a FIT if anyone called the kids by just his last name or even just her last name or heaven forbid made a name tag incorrectly. She’s XXX out the wrong name and put the correct name on the nametag in big black letters and really make a big deal over an honest mistake. It made everyone very uncomfortable and made an otherwise nice person look angry and unreasonable.
My kids have enough trouble explaining to people that they really are sisters and they HAVE the same last name and similar first names.
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Hispanic or Latino people sometimes use a double surname convention, which would only be seen as unconventional to those not familiar with that convention.
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Well, at time, DIL retained her surname when they married. Not sure whether she will opt to change it at some point or just leave it. Sometimes people think more about last names when babies enter picture. That said, two of my nieces retained their last names after marriage but their kids have H’s surname.
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