kids (and marriage, actually) are also way way way in the future for me too...but it's something I've always thought of as well

I've always thought that I'd keep my own name...and hyphenate the kids' names...and then let them decide what to do when they get married or have kids.

I've also heard of giving the daughters the mother's last name and the son the father's last name.

When you decide it's time to have kids, you two could adopt the same, one, totally new name?

Hyphenation is your friend.

whatsername commented at July 10, 2008 7:59 PM: "When you decide it's time to have kids, you two could adopt the same, one, totally new name?"

...and speaking of adopting, if you adopt your children then maybe you could have them keep their original names (making whose surname they get a moot point)?

I agree with whatsername- take both last names. It's not uncommon.

The boys take the father's last name, the daughters the mothers, and your whole family becomes schizophrenic.

OR...

While you are still drugged up from the delivery he names the child without consulting you (that is how my Grandma named some of her grand children).

-Steven

Stephen- how would giving the children different last names cause the family to become "schizophrenic?" I don't think that is amusing in the least.

Kala- I think hyphenation is a good option, or does one of your mothers have a maiden name you like that they could take or you all could take? That might also be a way to go. I also have always thought that combining your names to make a new one is cool, can sound really great, and starts a very cool family "tradition." How many children do you plan to have? Maybe your first child could have your name, and if you have more children it could alternate?

If you are having biological children and totally sold on having their name be one of either of your last names and need to decide I'd say, only sort of tongue-in-cheek, that you should give them your last name, since you carried them and gave birth to them. ;) Half, joking, maybe.

We are doing middle name/last name...our kids will be FirstName MyLast HisLast.

Steven, I was amused by your comment. And I agree that daughter/mother son/father affiliated last names would be really confusing and also kind of weird. I'd agree with hyphenation, but once you raise your feminist children :) next generation hypens would be more than a mouthfull.

I apologize to Kala for any distraction from the original post, but paigeash, making fun of mental illness is never funny. It is offensive. Period.

My BF and I are planning on, as has already been suggested, coming up with a new last name for the both of us to share, since neither of us believe in just me/him changing. I'd like to dissociate from my parents, too, so there's that reason for changing.

The hard part is coming up with the new name! We're having fun "trying them on" though.

I am posting on a blog/forum with two women across the top giving the finger to the whole world... This forum has some serious content, but with a does have a touch of levity to it.

Personally I thought the comment that would have had peoples hackles up was having your child named when you were drugged up on pain meds.

I know my aunt did not like that happening to her.

There is a difference between being light-hearted and being offensive. I can say with relative confidence that none of the feministing bloggers would think it was okay to make fun of serious mental illnesses. I guess even so-called feminists have a lot to learn.

I have known several schizophrenics and schizoaffective's. They are not bad people, but straight up, they are not normal... main thrust of the comment.

-Steven

Their mental illness does not stem from what their families named them. :\

The comment you made right now with the big old value judgment? The one based on your extremely limited anecdotal experiences? That is not okay. On a feminist site no less. Talk about lack of critical thinking, respect, and intersectionality. I'm out of here.

When my parents (both feminists) decided to have children, they rejected the idea of hyphenation as we all already have long last names. They gave my older sister my dad's last name (as my dad was the last person in his family to carry that name), and when I was born I was given my mother's last name.

It has worked totally fine so far. No signs of mental illness yet. I feel proud to have my mother's last name.

Why not let the kids decide when they're old enough? I just got married, and I'm keeping my name, he's keeping his. I've never liked hyphenation personally-- it seems like an inelegant solution to a tricky problem. We decided that we'll give them his name to start off, but when they're older, they can decide if they want to take on my name, leave his name, or combine the two.

Great question. We are about a year away from having a baby. I kept my last name as a middle name and took his, but now, in thinking about naming the baby, I am conflicted. Sometimes I think I should have not taken his last name, that maybe I should go back to my maiden name once we have the baby so that it can have my last name or we can hyphenate. I have NO idea what we will end up doing, but I like all the suggestions somewhat.

It is just such a messed up situation because giving it his last name just feels like I am caving in to the system (btw, he says I can do whatever I want and will be totally supportive in whatever we name the baby). But, I don't really like my maiden name and never liked my father. In sum, no solution really feels perfect.

biancamarissa

I can understand feeling conflicted about changing your name. If you know you have the choice to change or keep your name, than I think if you choose to change it, you shouldn't feel you are caving to the system. I'm not a huge fan of my last name right now, and I absolutely love my boyfriend's last name (it sounds like a common, easy to pronounce name, but is actually uncommon). So if/when we get married I'd change my last name. But I'm definitely going to be 'Ms' and not 'Mrs.'

The mom and dad that started New Moon magazine had a fun solution - they flipped a coin, then agreed to alternate.

The problem was easily solved when they had twin girls - one got mom's last name, one got dad's.

Personally, I plan on giving my off spring both my last name and my spouse's, then letting them choose how to use them once they reach adulthood. I'm not as attached to giving my children my last name, because my family already has an invading horde and my spouse's family name won't continue far without him using it.

I've grappled with this dilemma myself, and the solution my fiance came up with is to create an entirely different last name.

Hyphenation was out of the question, because both of our last names are 11 letters long and mine is very, very Polish.

I wasn't about to take his last name. I'm not his property and I think taking his last name indicates that I am (nothing against women who decide to take their husband's last name - to each her own). For the same reason, him taking my name was out of the question. I wouldn't feel right asking him to do something that I wasn't willing to do myself.

So, after racking our brains for months, we decided to avert the entire problem and give ourselves a brand new last name. We would be starting a family of our own, this way, it really would be our own. In every way.

New dilemma: How do you choose a last name? It never ends.

Mama kept her beautiful, long, Italian last name. Dad's got an Irish last name.

Legally I'm First Middle Mama-Dad. However, I usually just go First Dad.

Nickname is Dad.

(Sounds awkward with just the descriptives, don't it...)

I always figured, if we ever had kids, we would give a girl my last name and a boy my husband's last name. But then I wondered, what if the child was trans? Would s/he feel comfortable having been given a name solely for his/her sex? Obviously first names are almost always given based on that, s/he could always change to the opposite sex if s/he chose to when older, and last names aren't actually paired with sex like first names are in our culture, but it still made me uncomfortable to think of doing that to my child.

Thankfully, we've decided not to have kids so I don't have to ever come to a decision, but it is something you might want to think seriously about, even if the chances of it happening are small.

waxghost commented at July 13, 2008 2:13 PM: "Would s/he feel comfortable having been given a name solely for his/her sex? Obviously first names are almost always given based on that, s/he could always change to the opposite sex if s/he chose to when older"

Now I wonder, what tends to happen when one transitions and has an Icelandic or Russian surname? I heard that some parents give surname suffixes solely for the baby's sex. Is it a big hassle to get the suffix changed on one's IDs (for examples, going from Tereskovna to Tereskov or from Baldursson to Baldursdóttir)?

My mother's solution to this issue was to give me and my sister her maiden name as our middle names. So our names are:

First Mom'sMaiden Dad's

She didn't like the idea of hyphenation, and although I don't think she would consider herself a feminist (bad connotations got to her) she wanted her children to have a connection via name to both sides of their families.
The only thing I didn't like about it was that I don't have a "normal" middle name, so my future kids will probably just have two middle names.

First Middle Mom'sMaiden Dad's

Apologies for length, but this is something I also struggled with.

I kept my name when I got married. This is really One of Those Things for me; it always has been, and it's even more so now that I have daughters - I really don't like the idea of them growing up in a society where that's still the norm.

When it came to the kids, hypenation was out. My name is dirt common and my husband's is a less-common variant of it, so it would be like Roberts-Roberson but even more sing-songy. So the girls are First Middle MyLast HisLast, with my name being a second middle. This was not a perfect solution, but I'm okay with it. Partly because his last name is far less common than mine, but also because I have a edge on my husband in the bonded-to-the-kids arena, having carried and birthed them and all. :)

It's not difficult at all to have a different last name from my children. There's never been a question in doctors' offices or anything, and all forms I've had to fill out had the appropriate spaces. This actually has reinforced the decision to give the kids my husband's last name: there's no question they're my kids despite the different name, and there's no question they're my husband's because of the same name.

I'm also going to encourage my daughters to choose what they want to use when they get older. I made the decision in high school to use my full name for anything official and that's very important to me. (Oh, and my kids have two middle names because I just have my mother's maiden as a middle, which I love now but did go through a phase of wanting a "real" middle name when I was a kid!)

One of the deans at my school recently had a baby, and ended up combining her last name and her husbands last name into a single, new surname for the baby, presumably to avoid hyphenation. Her last name is Mancini and her husband's last name is Wong, so the baby's is Wongcini (pronounced wong-see-nee). I think it's an interesting solution, but I personally have no idea how I would combine my last name with someone else's.

I'm a few days away from giving birth to my first child. I did not change my name when I got married, and I still carry my father's last name. I notice that few posts here have questioned why they have their father's last name. I had always planned to change my last name to match my mother's, but have yet to get around to it.

After my parent's divorced, my Mom changed her last name to her Mother's maiden name - as an overt act of 1970's feminism, plus it's a great name. I want to have this name for myself and my daughters.

If I have a girl I want the baby to have her matrilineal heritage name. If it's a boy, my husband is a Second, so the boy would likely be the Third. My husband's first and last name is really an awesome name, and his family is well known in the community he comes from.

My sister suggested that when I'm in labour is a great time to really go through the short list of potential names for our offspring... and without a lot of resentment or armtwisting I'm likely to get anything I want. But as she says, for a girl the name must go with "Madam Justice".

Aim high and question the patriarchy!

I have friends who gave their son the father's last name, and their daughter the mother's last name,which I think is a good option, especially if you have a girl first. (Which they didn't.) We're doing it the opposite: I have a stepson who carries his mother's last name. My husband and his ex were married at the time; it was partially a feminist thing, partially the fact that my husband's ex didn't like his last name. I didn't change my name when I got married and we're about to have a daughter in late summer/early fall. She's going to carry her father's surname. Why? Partially, it just seemed fair, that one of his two children had his last name. We couldn't hyphenate our names, they're both German ending in an "er" and sound silly together. We're both proud of our last names so making up a new one didn't appeal. The biggest reason: it's just more important to him than it is to me. I do love my last name, it's the name of an important historical figure, but I have nieces and nephews and cousins who carry it, so it's not as if it's going to die out if I don't use it for my daughter. In the end, I realized that making my husband happy was more important to me than making a feminist statement. And, hey, if she wants to change her name to mine later in life, I'm not going to argue! ;)

I am keeping my name when we get married, and we've decided to give the first child his name if it's a boy and my name if it's a girl, and then to alternate.

I really don't understand people think having two last names in the family causes trouble - I think it underscores the fact that who your family is is not dependent on the last name, which I think is at the heart of the feminist statement. Plus, as many younger siblings will tell you, going through high school already associated with an older sibling is not all it's cracked up to be!

I'm keeping my name, and so is my partner (we're not legally married anyway). We both have short last names, so hyphenation for our kids is a possibility, but I can't help wondering what will happen when my hyphenated kid falls for another hyphenated kid -- it feels like we're just delaying the issue for a generation. :)

I really like the idea of combining the two last names into a new last name, either for the couple/kids or just the kids. So, like, Smith and Jones would become Smione or Jonith. Greenberg and Schoenfeld would be Greenfeld or Schoenberg. Roberts and Clark would become Robark or Claberts. The only problem with that for me is that my partner and I both have one-syllable last names and the options they leave us with aren't great.

FYI, there's a whole message board on indiebride about "Changing Your Name" -- lots of discussion there about hyphenating, combining, and keeping names:
IndieBride: Changing Your Name

I'm somewhat bothered by the "boys get his name, girls get her name" thing, but I can't tell you exactly why.

If you have any Scottish blood (or want to pretend), you can try what my sister did: Both boys are FirstName MiddleName McHusband'sFirstName Sister'sLastName. 'Mc' means 'son of' so they avoid his common last name, keep our rare name, and the attachment to the father is maintained.

Had they had any girls, my suggestion was to use the feminine version of the father's name as teh third name.

My other sister is currently pondering names, as she wants to make sure her kids get our name, she hates hyphenates, but has to appease the in-laws. So, the kids will likely be FirstName MiddleName Husband'sLastName Sister'sLastName. We figured that way they'd end up being called by our last name (we're sneaky, and her husband has no problem with the kids having our name-it's just his parents).

I should add that neither sister took their husband's last names.

What may bother you, and what bothers me, KT, is that it is more likely (still) that the sons will carry on the father's name, while the daughters may lose their name to a husband. That's one reason my sisters have insisted on our rare last name rather than their husbands-we're all girls, so unless we keep the name, it will die with us.

Kt-

I don't like the sons getting the fathers name and to daughters getting the mothers name because it kinda cleaves the family down by gender.

Also, you run the risk of having children of all the same gender. My mom has four sons and no daughters, so by that scheme her last name would have gone no where if she were to start the same family today.

-Steven

I tried desperately to convince my then fiance that we should mash our names together to create a new one (I even had a great one!), but he wouldn't go for it. But he did agree to hyphenate, both of us, which was important to me. Then, about 6 weeks before the wedding, he told me he wasn't sure he wanted to hyphenate. He thought I'd want to call off the wedding as a result! :) I didn't, but I did enter his new name as the hyphenated one on our marriage license. That way, if he ever does decide to do it, it will not require a name change in court. (Nearly three years later, he still claims he will some day, but the paperwork is a little overwhelming to him.)

My mom was married three times and only had the same last name as me until I was 3 years old. I hated that, and it was really important to me to have the same last name as my kids. So that made my name change kind of important - I don't think my husband would have gone for giving the kids my last name only, and me having mine and the kids having a hyphenated name wasn't acceptable to me. So our son and I (and our next one, due in January) have the hyphenated last name, and my husband still has his "maiden" name.

I agree with Lizzie that hyphenation seems like a solution that really only delays the problem for another generation, but maybe by then, our kids will come up with some other creative solution! :)

Strangely enough, I'm looking forward to taking my boyfriend's last name, as I have no real connection to my father's last name and it's really a pain in the ass to spell. While I love my dad and his family, I don't have much connection to his lineage, and I know next to nothing about my ancestors on his side.

If I had my mom's last name, I think it would be different, because I know my ancestry on that side and have a strong connection with all the women from that family, including those who've passed away or who I never personally knew. I wish I had a name connected to them, and if I did I wouldn't be willing to give it up.

I can definitely understand the reluctance to simply follow tradition and copy the essentially misogynistic and patriarchal idea that a woman leaves her family and becomes her husband's property, and any children are also his property.

My family does have a tradition of using maiden names or last names that aren't being used any more as first or middle names; both my mom and I have old family names as first names. My boyfriend's parents gave both their sons his mom's maiden name as a middle name, so that's a tradition on his side as well.

If naming your children something that isn't your husband's last name will cause a lot of strife among family members and you just aren't in love with the idea enough to stick to your guns in the face of a lot of anger, it may work best to give your children a connection to your family in another way.

Naming them after family in their first/middle/last names are all great options, and can let you and your husband/partner honor both families. The most important thing to remember is that it isn't what they're named that matters in the end as much as it is their sense of love and connection to their families and their history. I'm not saying that their names aren't important, but that in the end it's more than a symbol, it's something that's right for your family.

A suggestion someone else may have already made: you could name them after an old family name on one side or another; especially a maiden name that is now gone or something.

All this talk about taking (or no) your husband's last name seems funny to me. Up here, in Québec (Canada's french-speaking province)we cannot, by law, change our name. It was too complicated having a maiden name and a married name, so the government said "no more!" I know women who even went to get married in Ontario just to be able to change it.

So for me, it's clear: my own name stays, and my kids will have both.

When my husband and I have a child, s/he will have hubby’s last name. This is only because his surname will die out with him (and, no, I don’t mean his the last “Smith” in his family – there are literally 3 people in the world, as far as our research has shown, with his very, very unusual surname – him, his dad, and his sister, who will likely change her name upon marriage).

If we choose to have more than one child - though not likely, the next one will have my name. The surname the kid gets is regardless of their gender, btw. If we have a girl first and then go on to have a boy, it’s Girl DadSurname and Boy MomSurname.

Our first-born will have my husband’s name because his surname may die out completely if not and we are only planning on one child. If he had a more common surname, I can guarantee that would not be the case.

BluePencils, this really struck me as very belittling:

In the end, I realized that making my husband happy was more important to me than making a feminist statement

1) This not about “making a feminist statement.” It's about an outdated, patriarchal naming system that some women feel forced to participate in. It’s like you’re saying: “What’s more important: feminism or your marriage?” They aren’t mutually exclusive.

2) My husband and I sat down and discussed the child naming issue and we determined together what name our child will have based on a number of reasons (none of which were to “make him happy” or to “make a feminist statement”). Of course, one of the reasons I married a feminist was so I didn’t have to compromise my values and morals just to make him happy.