Emm@ writes:
I have a name question that is only partially about baby names at the moment, but I was hoping you could help me out – it will impact hypothetical future children.
My name is Emm@ V1ctory, and I have recently become engaged to J0nath0n W@rren-Wh1te. His parents each kept their surnames and hyphenated his. He has no middle name; mine is Ann.
My question is, when we do marry what should our names be, and what surname should we plan on for any future children?
I love my surname, and he likes it as well. He would have no problem if I kept my name (his mum did, after all).
I am not in love with his surname, but I think I would like to feel like we were connected in a naming way – I also feel like I would feel left out if he and the imaginary children shared a name that I didn’t. Perhaps V1ctory could be become both of our middle names, and the kids could either be V W-W or just W-W.
Also my initials would be EW-W – not ideal but also probably not a dealbreaker.I’d love to hear your take on what all the options are, and what you’d suggest as the best choice.
Thank you!
One reason there are so many ways to choose a family surname is that the symbolism means different things to different people. Perhaps one woman feels as if giving up her birth surname symbolizes giving up her whole family and being absorbed into her spouse’s family, while the next woman finds it romantic to take her spouse’s surname. Perhaps one man worries that other people will think the children aren’t really his if they don’t share his surname, while the next man is thinking he really prefers the sound of his spouse’s surname and isn’t bothered at all by the difference. One couple might want to make a symbolic statement by choosing to go against tradition; another couple might want to emphasize tradition.
I struggled with this a lot when I was engaged to Paul. I didn’t like the idea of taking his name; to me it did feel like giving up my family and prioritizing his, and I didn’t like that all my children would then “belong” to his family rather than to mine. (I feel like I’m “a MyDad’sSurname” rather than “a MyMom’sSurname,” even though I know I’m just as much a part of one family as I am of the other.)
But I also didn’t like the idea of bucking tradition: I liked it in theory, and for other people, but I didn’t want any of the options in that category for myself. I don’t like having to explain things, and I didn’t like the idea of people assuming, for example, that my birth surname was my married name. We considered coming up with a new surname, but I didn’t like the feeling of THAT, either: I imagined people saying, “Oh, that’s an interesting surname, what country is that from?”/”Oh, are you related to…?” and me saying, “Um. We made it up.” I didn’t want to hyphenate, because it was bulky and seemed like a one-generation fix. I didn’t want to keep my own name and then have one of us have a different surname than our children. Paul was willing to take my surname, but even though that SHOULDN’T insult anyone (no one in the woman’s family is insulted if she takes her husband’s surname), we knew in his family dynamic it would be perceived as a huge symbolic slap; plus, I was back to not wanting people to misinterpret the family tree. I didn’t want to do an option such as giving the girls my surname and the boys his surname. I felt really stuck: NOTHING seemed right.
Eventually what I did was keep my own surname as a second middle name, take Paul’s surname as my surname, and do the same format for all the kids’ names: they have my surname as their second middle name, and Paul’s surname as the surname. It is not a highly satisfactory solution: clear priority is still given to the man’s family, and it’s a one-generation fix. But it was the solution I disliked least of all the options. When there are several preferences that contradict each other, eventually one set of preference has to be chosen above the others.
That’s the long way to say that I don’t know what you should do in your own case, because so many individual factors and personal preferences need to be considered. What are your feelings about the various symbolisms of surnames, and what are your fiance’s feelings? Which options are you both willing to consider? When you look at the consequences of each choice (having a different surname from your children, for example, or losing the family history of the surname, or causing family-tree confusion), which of those bother you more and which bother you less?
In the end, you may find yourself in the same situation as I was: ALL the options were wrong, and I finally had to pick one that felt the least wrong to me. I was fortunate that Paul was flexible about the various options: I think if he’d been stubborn about following tradition, it would have been harder for me to make that choice. It was hard enough as it was, and left me feeling resentful about patriarchal traditions without feeling like there was a better solution for my particular set of preferences.
In your case, you have some very nice things to work with. For one thing, you know that whatever you choose is not going to be perceived as a slap in the face to his family, since his mom kept her own name and his parents hyphenated their child’s name. For another thing, your husband is accustomed to a hyphenated name. For a third thing, because he has two surnames and you have one, there is some room to play around with combinations.
If you’re willing to hyphenate, I might suggest a new hyphenated name, with your surname and one of his surnames. The two of you could be:
Emm@ and J0nath0n V1ctory-W@rren
Emm@ and J0nath0n V1ctory-Wh1te
Emm@ and J0nath0n W@rren-V1ctory
Emm@ and J0nath0n Wh1te-V1ctory
If I were looking at that list for myself, I’d eliminate Wh1te-V1ctory because that selection/order seems to have its own symbolism. I also might eliminate W@rren-V1ctory for sounding like “war and v1ctory”—unless that were my favorite choice symbolically and I were willing to patiently endure the recurring “Oh, heh, that sounds like war and v1ctory!” (which I might very well be, and it makes the name easier to remember). If it were down to V1ctory-W@rren or V1ctory-Wh1te, I’d be influenced by which surname belonged to which of my fiancé’s parents (I’d be more inclined to carry on his mother’s name, since I’m annoyed that it’s often the mother’s name that gets dropped in the next generation of hyphenated names), but also by how he and I each felt about each of my fiancé’s parents (if, for example, one of them had been a poor parent to him, or if I found one of them very difficult to get along with).
Then you could give that same hyphenated surname to all of your own children, and your whole household would share the same surname.
Another option is for you to each keep your own surnames, and use one of those new hyphenated options for your children: you’d be Emm@ V1ctory, he’d be J0nath0n W@rren-Wh1te, and your children could be FirstName V1ctory-W@rren, or FirstName V1ctory-Wh1te. This strikes me as the most confusing of the options.
Another option is the one you suggest, where both of you take your surname as a middle name, and then both use his hyphenated surname. This pleases me less, similar to my dissatisfaction with my own solution: it so clearly prioritizes his names. I think it feels even more that way to me in this case, since you’d both be taking TWO of his surnames, and he has no middle name to sacrifice: you’d be giving up so much, and he’d be giving up almost nothing. But I like it better than the option where you give up your surname completely and he doesn’t change his name in any way.
To me, the reassuring thing is that in the long run it doesn’t seem to matter very much. I still get little flashes of resentment about my surname, but I don’t REALLY care very much, and there’s no solution I wish I’d chosen instead. I’ve adjusted to Paul’s surname, while still feeling satisfaction when I see my birth surname in my name and in my children’s names. I know of other families who made different choices, and the minor hassle of the parents having different surnames than their children, or the spouses having different surnames than each other, or of the family using a surname not previously used in their family trees, doesn’t seem to have greatly impacted their lives: so many people go different routes, I think society has adjusted to it. The two of you can do what you like best out of the options available to you from your own particular circumstances.
Name update!
Hi Swistle,
Thank you so much for answering my question on choosing surnames.
We were married last Saturday and were introduced as Mrs Emm@ V1ctory and Mr J0nath0n W@rren-Wh1te. The imaginary future kid will be a V1ctory-Wh1te so another generation can deal with hyphenation!
Thank you to your and readers for helping out. There are lots of options available and I think for my generation (early 30s) people do not necessarily expect a name change anymore. The general attitude in the comments seemed to be ‘do what’s right for you’ which was really good advice!
Thanks again,
Emm@
Update to the name update:
The hypothetical future kid became a real live baby this year – and was given my surname, at my husband’s suggestion!
I absolutely could have written Swistle’s response, because it so precisely sums up the discussions my husband and I had, and the feelings I had about the whole matter. There is no perfect solution. In the end, what we did: I hyphenated my maiden with his surname, he kept his surname, and our children have his surname. If we have a second son, his middle name will be my maiden name (that is a tradition in our Mennonite heritage, to give a child the mother’s maiden name as a middle name). I love my hyphenated surname, but it is 16 characters long and I wouldn’t burden children with it. For me is a good compromise as I wanted to keep my maiden name and my husband wanted us to have a common name. People identify us as the ‘his surname’s’ and that is fine with me, but professionally I go by my hyphenated name. 9 years in, I love being both a ‘maiden name’ and a ‘husband’s surname’. I completely echo Swistle’s comment that ‘in the long run it doesn’t matter very much’.
My husband and I talked about him taking my maiden name, as his is quite common and mine is more unusual (and I’m one of five daughters). Let me tell you, that went over like a lead balloon with his parents. yikes. I was respectful of his decision not to pursue that option as his parents were so opposed, because we both value family very much.
I love the traditions in countries like Iceland or Ethiopia, where your ‘surname’ (which it isn’t, really) comes from your parent’s name. There are many rich cultural traditions around naming in other countries. I have heard so many interesting stories of how families have approached this. I knew one couple who gave the sons the father’s surname, and the daughters the mother’s surname (I found that quite confusing). I’ve known several who have chosen new names. The great thing is, you get to choose.
Yes him taking mine is an option, but while his parents would definitely support me keeping mine, I’m not sure that they would be happy with us taking it that step further.
Thanks for your thoughts!
In this case I would go for V1ctory as the surname of the children, simply because it makes their life easier when they have children themselves. If they get married and want to use their last name as a middle name, it is easier if there is just one. If they get married and want their partner to adopt their last name, it has a less dominating effect. If they get married and want to hyphenate their last name with that of their partner, then at least there is only one. If you had a hyphenated name and your husband had a single name, I would suggest the same.
If you like you could use W@rren as middle name for child no 1, and Wh1te for child no 2 (or the other way around). Or use J0nath0n as a middle name. Or Bianca, Fiona, … as a nudge. Or the actual first names of the grand parents. Or take WW to be their initials. Wilson Warren V1ctory or Winnie White V1ctory for instance… Kind of moving away from the point here, but what I was trying to say: I’d go for the practical 1-last name solution and then you could be as creative as you wish with first and middle names…
I was going to use Leo’s name — I’d decided that before we were married, after much debate over whether I wanted to give up my name. In the end, I decided that I wanted the same last name as my kids so I would take my husband’s name (and as a bonus, his name was easy to say & spell, whereas my Dutch last name was multiple words, with strange capitalization (for North America) and difficult to spell & pronounce). I was scheduled to publish a scientific article just weeks before our wedding and so I asked my supervisor to list me as “HisLastName, Carmen” on the author list. He did so, but then later confessed to me that he thought it was a bad idea. “Carmen MyLastName” is a very unique name (only one other person, if you believe Google searches), whereas “Carmen HisLastName” is much much more common. My supervisor thought it would be better for my scientific career if I were to keep my name. As I was waffling anyway, his chat ended up swaying my decision so I published using my own name.
As it turns out, in Canada at least, taking your husband’s name is essentially using an “assumed name”; it is not a legal name change so your birth certificate doesn’t change. This means that I am legally entitled to use both names, simultaneously, even. So I use my maiden name at work and my married name at home. The only confusion is when I pick up a pen to sign something; I have to pause to remind myself which signature to use.
Maybe something like this could be an option for you.
The birth certificate isn’t changed here in the U.S. either. However, you can still make it a legal change-meaning your social security card, passport, driver’s license and your name for tax purposes is changed. I do know several women you continue to use their maiden name professionally, even after having it legally changed after marriage. As long as your paychecks and tax withdrawals are taken out using the correct name/social security number it’s not a big deal usually & most employers will work with you. If a professional woman works in a field that requires a license it can become more complicated because states will usually only issue professional licenses under a person’s legal name.
Because when I married I was a single mother whose child had her father’s surname, we were juggling the reality of having 3 potential surnames in our family mix. Not that my husband-to-be would ever have considered using my daughter’s surname of course, but the situation did put me in the position where if I’d continued to keep my surname, we’d have had 3 different ones in the family mix. Along with hyphenated surnames such as your fiancee’s, blended family situations are even more common today that they were 30 years ago.
And Swistle’s right: Because there’s never a perfect solution, if ever there was a case of having to choose what you’ll be least bothered by, this is it. Even in evolution there usually isn’t a perfect or ideal adaptation–instead nature pounces upon what’s procurable and goes from there…
More than 30 years later, having taken my husband’s very accessible & easy Yankee/Wasp surname, I still sometimes feel like an impostor–my interesting Franco-American ancestry is for all intents and purposes completely subsumed by the choice–at least on a superficial level.
I always wonder about hyphenated names down the line. Let’s say you have a daughter and her last name is hyphenated. Some day, she is getting married and her spouse has a hyphenated last name. How big will their last name be?! How many parents will have hurt feelings because their name has been dropped? It feel like it is a rough cycle.
I chose to drop my original middle name and take my maiden name as my new middle. I thought my dad, especially, would be thrilled but he and my mom were pretty sad I had dropped my original middle name. I was dead set against having 4 names and did not want a hyphenated name. I previously had a nice little name and it already was growing a bit with my new last name. I think some of my struggle came from the fact I had a “cool” maiden name (much like you do!) and would be trading it for a name with not the nicest meaning.
I now actually regret my choice a little and have thought about returning my middle name to it’s original glory ;) (still keeping my husband’s last name). Good luck!
This is quite interesting, as I had thought about moving Victory to the middle name slot – and then wondered if I was really happy to give it up that quickly. My current middle name is an honour name from my father’s side though, so it’s not like I’m bumping something from my mother’s side to make room. I’m not sure that I want two middles though, especially with a hyphenated surname!
I second emphasizing the distinction between a legal name change and a social name custom. My last name is Johnson, his is Peterson. Hypenating and my maiden as middle options sounded lame to us and yet I did not want to take his name for, like, all of the reasons there are.
So I’m a Johnson legally, a Peterson when his traditional family writes me birthday checks (interestingly, the bank has never had a problem with this) and we’re The Peterjohns in tongue-in-cheek email sign offs and Christmas cards.
But ahhhh, the kids. This still rankles. They’re Petersons. I fought hard for my son to be a Johnson but decided sibling unity was more important. I console myself in the dark times with the idea that they have my mitochondrial DNA-a secret matriarchy-and middle names that honor my family.
There’s no perfect solution but I think the fact that Warren is also a common first name can give you some wiggle room here. You could easily use it as a child’s first name or middle name.
I love the idea of using Warren as a first or middle name!
Oh my goodness, I’ve been dealing with something just like this.
I’m in a same-sex relationship, so things aren’t so expected as in heterosexual relationships, but I think that makes it more complicated. Her last name sounds exactly like Fifer but it isn’t phonetic. My last name sounds like Broiler but starts with an F and isn’t spelled phonetically (at least in English). So if we hyphenated our last names, they’d end up full of f’s, long, hard to spell/pronounce, and very, very German.
I’ve liked having a surname that ties me closely to every other person in the world with it, because it’s extremely uncommon, and the history of it has been passed down since it became our surname. It ties me to my grandfather’s hometown in Switzerland, too. But it’s been difficult spelling/pronouncing it over and over, especially in conjunction with my unusual first name, and some people, especially in the South, just CANNOT pronounce it right. At all. Even if they’ve known me since I was born. It’s bad.
My SO is much more tied to her last name, and wants to keep it. I’m not really into the idea of us having separate surnames, so we’ve pretty much decided to hyphenate, but keep her last name as one of them and use another surname from my family. The logical idea would be to use my mother’s maiden name, but it’s Luv (spelled the normal way), so if we were to hyphenate it, it would sound either like the end of a letter (Luv, Fifer) or the love of Fifers (Fifer Luv). So then I thought it would be cool/feministy to use the last name of my mother’s mother’s mother’s mother, but all the surnames down that line are very Swiss (and hard to spell/pronounce) and/or worse, the last name of well known assassin.
I’ve finally decided to go with the last Cherokee last name in my family, which is the name of a not-so-well-liked bird, but it ends up sounding something like “seagull fighter” (it’s not seagull) or “fighter seagull.”
Sooooooo we’ve basically decided to use the Tsalagi word for that last name, which is the original anyway. It’s weird, but it’s short, phonetic, and sounds nice. So unless I chicken out and just deal with Luv, that’s what we’ll go with.
But then it brings up a whole other issue of having to deal with keeping our children’s names someone short so they don’t have to deal with a crazy long series of names.
Gah.
Anyway, personally, I think Victory-White makes for a super cool surname. Or Victory-Warren. Or just both using Victory, because that’s a crazy cool name.
…because that’s a crazy cool name.
Thank you for confirming my opinion!
I agree with Swistle: there’s really no ideal option here. I ended up keeping my name unchanged, as did my husband, but we discussed basically all the options (both of us using his name, both of us using mine, changing both our names to a portmanteau, etc.) In the absence of strong feelings toward any particular option, we just did what was easiest, and I’ve been grateful not to have to deal with any name-change hassles.
I realize when we have a child, though, we’ll have to have the whole conversation. We will probably either use his surname with mine as a second middle name, or vice versa, although we’re still half-serious about possibly using the portmanteau name that we use informally to refer to our household (it’s something like “O’Greenolly,” obviously not a “real” surname with ancient history, but it flows well enough and preserves the distinctiveness of both our surnames.) One thing I like about our setup is that we actually have options with our child’s surname: if we’re both in love with a name that doesn’t work with one surname, just use the other! My last name is very common, his is very Irish, so if we want a name like Sarah we’ll probably use his name so it doesn’t sound so plain, and if we want a name like Lorenzo we’ll probably use mine so it doesn’t sound so ethnically mismatched.
So there are definite perks to just having each parent keep their own surname and postponing the decision about kids. Ultimately, I’d rather deal with the social hassles of having people not immediately recognize that we’re all related, than deal with the paperwork hassles of having a complicated name printed wrong on some formal document that you then have to go get corrected (I’ve heard horror stories from friends with hyphenated names.) But I can totally understand how someone else would feel differently.
“Ultimately, I’d rather deal with the social hassles of having people not immediately recognize that we’re all related, than deal with the paperwork hassles of having a complicated name printed wrong on some formal document that you then have to go get corrected (I’ve heard horror stories from friends with hyphenated names.) But I can totally understand how someone else would feel differently.”
This strikes me as a really useful thing to think about in this discussion – which kind of hassle would you (and your significant other) rather deal with? Very well-put. :)
FYI: my experience in Canada was that I could assume husband’s last name or hyphenate our names (not a legal name change) with no problems, but could not retain my maiden name as a middle unless I undertook a legal name change. A legal name change is hugely expensive and required changing all paperwork, including my original birth certificate &social insurance/security cards. Since we wanted our family (parents & kids) to have the same last name I decided to simply assume the new last name. I didn’t particularly care which last name we had and he had a preference for me taking his last name over hyphenating them, so it was an easy decision for us. In the incidence of divorce (which I cannot forsee at all!), I can just revert to my legal last name with no hassle.
My point being, convenience and cost may influence the choice you make as well.
As a Canadian who hasn’t done the name change yet, Vanessa’s comment above is giving me some pause about my plans! But nonetheless, here’s my situation. I love my short and unusual surname. I feel quite attached to the name and the tie it gives me to my family history. I do not want to give it up.
Several years ago, I was engaged to a man with a boring but inoffensive name. I didn’t mind his name, nor did I love it. But he was ADAMANT that I take his name, and having it pushed on me made me feel really resentful of having to give up my name. (Good thing I didn’t marry the controlling guy, huh?) After that experience, I decided that if I ever did eventually marry, I would keep my own name.
Cut to today, and I’ve FINALLY found the right dude. He’s quite progressive and doesn’t really care if I take his name or not. And I don’t like his name… it’s very Dutch and I can’t even pronounce it correctly. But to my surprise, knowing that he is right for me and he’s supposed to be my family… I want to share a family name with him! And with our future kids, too. But… I just can’t let go of wanting to keep my own name too.
So that’s my solution. I’ll take his and keep mine. Mine as a new middle, and his as my new surname. Our kids will have just his surname.
It’s slightly more complex in your situation due to your husband’s double-barrelled surname. In your shoes, I’d probably have a whole new family name of Victory White or Victory Warren and ditch the hyphen for good.
If you’re in Quebec, you cannot assume names. Only legal name changes are permitted… but I think in most other provinces, the assumed vs legal name situation is the same but it might be easier to assume a middle in provinces other than Ontario. Good luck making your change. ;)
I dealt with situation (I have a distinctive hyphenated last name, he has a long distinctive single name. I wasn’t going to change mine, because I have lived my whole life with it. ) The compromise we came to is that the kids have his last name but honor names from my family that I felt strongly about. I thought I would be upset being the odd man out, or that it would be annoying talking to teachers , etc but it hasn’t ever been a problem. I love looking at my sons and seeing their namesakes in them so it all worked out.
Like the commenter above, I am also in a same-sex relationship, so we don’t have the same cultural script to use (or the same cultural baggage with which to contend). We decided fairly early in the relationship that we both wanted to keep our original surnames. I like my last name just fine, and I think her name is a little hairy to deal with because it does not look like it’s pronounced. (It’s also a monosyllable, which always makes people say, “What?” when she says her last name aloud.) She works in a profession where people routinely call her by her last name, so changing it would be as disruptive as changing her first name. We also both have good relationships with our families of origin and like the association with them. And we both firmly believe that a shared last name is not what makes a family.
If we ever have a baby, we have considered a couple of different possibilities. The one I currently like the most is to choose a first name we jointly love, an honor middle name from her side (which is something that is more of a tradition in her family anyway), and then my less-unwieldy surname. That connects the baby to both our immediate families while also minimizing the hassle factor.
I’m not sure there’s a perfect solution for you (or for anybody), and it will be more a process of deciding what you and your fiance value the most and what drawbacks bug you the least. Your fiance might have an opinion about the value vs. hassle of the hyphenated name, seeing as he spent his whole life with one. I think you should also factor in the awesomeness of having the word “V1ctory” as your last name. There are certain nouns that just sound undeniably cool as a surname, and that is certainly one. (Others I have encountered are “Fortune” and “Storm.”) Finally, I agree with Swistle that you should strike “White-Victory” from the list of possibilities because it has unfortunate racial overtones.
Good luck with whatever you decide! As long as you choose something that feels right to both of you and you “own” your choice, you will be fine.
I have read about a custom where a couple and their children all have the same hyphenated surname. When the kids marry, the man drops his mother’s half of his surname and the girls drop their father’s half, and then the couple comes up with a new (but still hyphenated) name for their little nuclear family, which seems sensible. I realize our custom of the wife and kids having the husband/father’s surname is a remnant of our patriarchal past, but it’s interesting that, genetically speaking, we’re all a little more closely related to our mothers than we are to our fathers (since we get all our cell machinery from our moms). If we were doing the logical thing, we’d all take our mother’s surname.
I weigh in on this at the risk of sounding “ridiculously old-fashioned”.
I ENJOY having my husband’s last name because, regardless of any feelings towards my in-laws, it’s HIS surname. It’s pleasing to me to be identified as his wife in every possible way, culturally and socially. I picked this fellow for the rest of my life, for goodness’ sake! I WANT people to see me as the pepper to his salt, the jam to his peanut butter.
And because his surname is now OUR surname, any children who’ve joined this family or are a product of it, we wanted them to have the same sense of belonging, the same sense of security, the same sense of FAMILY that he and I each appreciate.
If my maiden name had been Victory, you’d better believe that my first born would be a Victor or a Victoria… a name that great ought to be capitalized upon!
But say my husband had a surname that had been a millstone around his neck his whole life… pretend he’d hated it. We would have picked something entirely new for us to coin our new family. I’m pretty sure Swistle posted about a couple that had married and chosen the surname of Bond to bless their marriage. Very cool!
I also know of a couple who have a hyphenated surname that has been the family name since the 1500s. Pretend it’s Smith-Jones. The wife gets tired of the whole “so were you Smith or Jones before you were married?” She’s taken to mysteriously answering, “Neither.” As an aside, both of her sons HATED learning to spell the whole thing.
So, don’t feel like you’re succumbing to tradition by taking his surname. If you’ve thoughtfully made a decision to do so, own it proudly!
I do love the idea of a little Victoria!
Not sure about a Victor or Warren, as suggested above, but another suggestion was WW initials, which I think is very cute.
I would just name a child Victory (rather than Victor/Ian) if you weren’t otherwise going to give them your surname. But I like the last name solution you chose even better.
I can a peak with some experience about changing my name as I have done it three times now. When I married the first time, I liked my birth surname and was known by it professionally but was concerned about not sharing a surname with any children we might have. So I hyphenated my surname and his making for a very long surname that was awkward. Especially since I kept my middle name and I have a relatively long first name. We gave our son his Dad’s surname with an honor middle name from my family.
When we divorced, I legally dropped my exs surname and went back to my maiden name. So since he was 4, I have not shared a name with my son and it has never been issue at all. He has always known I am his Mom as has everyone in our lives who matter. (Maybe it helps he looks so much like me. :) ) I decided. I would never change my name again after going through the changing the name on my drivers license, social security, mortgage, credit cards, bank accounts, etc.
When. I remarried, it mattered a lot to my second husband that I take his name. My surname mattered to me more than my middle name so I took his last name and used my surname as my middle name. So I did go through changing everything again but the hassle is a one time event and my husband took care of all the paperwork.
I have come to like this new name (after 3 years) and don’t think I would change my name again. Although I have learned to never say never.
Not sure if someone else wrote this… But if he likes your last name, why not have him take Vict0ry and his last name?? Just because it’s typically the female to change her last name, doesn’t mean that he couldn’t?? My husband had brought up whether we should change his or my last name when we got married. That solves all the problems! Then you potentially don’t have to choose which of his last names he will drop (I don’t know if either of his parents would be offended he choose to keep his dad’s surname but drop his moms or vice versa).
This may be the custom Elizabeth above was referencing..
There’s a somewhat modified Spanish tradition where children get double barreled last names and then when they marry the son keeps his fathers name and the daughter keeps the mothers name, rehyphenating the two into a new family name.
Example: Susan Smith and John Johnson marry and have a daughter: Mary Smith-Johnson. Abigail Jones and Tom Thomas marry and have a son: Joseph Jones-Thomas. When Mary Smith-Johnson and Joseph Jones-Thomas marry they become Joseph & Mary Smith-Thomas. This way all the women carry their matrilineal line and all the men carry the patrilineal line.
If you were interested in starting a tradition like this, I would probably have J0nath0n drop his mothers surname and then hyphenated V1ctory-W@rren or V1ctory-Wh1te. Hth!
I really really really like this idea. It solves the age old hyphenation problem.
I do too!
He should take your name! It is such a cool name, he likes it, you would all have the same name. His parents must have had some thoughts, maybe in a feminist-ish direction, to hyphenate in the first place, so I imagine they would be understanding. Surely they realized that their children would need to make some decisions about what to do with the hyphenation.
I kept my surname, partially because I have a public profile (I’m a writer), but mostly because it was my name and had been for 31 years. My husband was totally supportive (his theory was that he didn’t want to change his name, so why should I?). I was a bit worried about my MIL’s reaction, but when I told her she said “I’m SO GLAD, I wish I’d kept mine”. Our children will have his surname – I’m not at all bothered by this, and don’t feel like it will make them any less mine, or make us any less of a family. I feel like they will automatically be MY children – they come out of me after all, and I want to make a symbolic gesture to my husband to make them HIS children too.
I think these issues will become less important in the future as we shed some of those old patriarchal traditions.
When I got married, I moved my surname to a second middle name, and took my husband’s surname. He agreed that any daughters would have my first middle name as their middle name, and any sons would have my second middle name (my maiden name) as their middle name. So their names will include names from my side and his side.
My biggest priorities were that our future kids would have the same last name as both of their parents, not losing my sense of identity in taking his name, and being able to give as much of my name to our kids as his name…without hyphenating, since both of our last names sound like nouns and it creates weird imagery. It still favors his name since middle names aren’t used much, but symbolically it means a lot to me, and my husband is cool with it. Plus now we only have to worry about agreeing on a first name for our future kids!
Good luck! I was surprised how emotional the decision was for me, but I’m happy with how it’s turned out.
I wrote a whole post about this decision a few years ago: http://doorbellqueen.com/?p=197
That said, I love the name Victory, and I hope your husband takes it!!
This is interesting to me because my wife and I kept our last names and gave the kids a hyphenated last name. I’m aware it’s a one generation fix. I think I was hoping society would come up with a better one in the meanwhile and this would be a stop-gap solution, but it doesn’t seem like we’re getting there.
Anyway, I do like the remix the hyphenation solution, maybe with the paternal grandmother’s half of the hyphenated name in order to pass down the mother’s father’s name and the father’s mother’s name. There’s a pleasing sort of balance there.
Thank you so much to Swistle and commenters. There are some really great ideas here, but everyone seems to agree that the right one is what’s right for us, which is lovely!
We’re approaching our first wedding anniversary and I’m still not quite used to my new name. Even though I never thought I would change my name, when I finally met my husband we knew that we both wanted us to share a family name. We both moved my surname to the second middle name slot and I took his surname, so we both have four names and our kids will too. He goes by his original two names, but I go by three — Rachel Surname Surname (no hyphen). The only problem is that our two German names (kinda like Urnst Steelhat) are a bit choppy together and I sometimes miss the simplicity of my old five-letter-one-syllable name. The nice thing about my husband taking my name into his second middle name slot is that we do refer to ourselves as the “Urnst Steelhats,” so I don’t feel like that piece of my family identity has been lost.
I love this. I kept my maiden name as my middle name and dropped my old middle name, and now my children both have my maiden name as their middle name. My oldest, who is two, asks sometimes why her dad doesn’t have the same name as the rest of us. I think that in the spirit of “family unity”, my husband should change his middle name to match the rest of us, which he would be fine with doing. But it would require a lot of work at this point to complete a legal name change, so we’ll probably never do it. I wish we had the foresight to change his name when we got married when it would have at least been less work.
The whole surname thing is really hard. I also struggled with it and took over a year after we got married to make a decision. I’m mostly happy with that decision, but I still feel a certain amount of regret.
The first thing that jumps out at me with the surnames you have to choose from are that 2 of your surnames seem like they could work really well as first names. So you could decide to name your first son Warr3n, with the surname V!ctory-Wh!te. Or perhaps your first daughter could be named V!ctory with the surname Warr3n-Wh!te. You could just keep your name, he could keep his name and then you’d let the gender of your oldest child decide the surname for the children. I think the biggest drawback would be that only the oldest child would actually have all 3 names, while younger children wouldn’t. And this option would probably require a little more explaining than some of your other options.
Because Victory is so name like, I do think it would work really well as a 2nd middle (or even the first or only middle) for everyone in the family. I think this might be my 2nd choice. It would make Victory a less obvious part of the name than my other choice above, but it would also require less explaining.
I got married last year and kept my last name. I didn’t want to go through the administrative hassle/confusion/expense, and I don’t hate my surname (I haven’t been dying to change it), but the bigger factor for me was that although I have meshed well with my husband’s family and love them dearly, calling myself “Calla HisSurname” didn’t feel right – I just felt like that wasn’t/isn’t my name. I know this isn’t the case for everyone, and I’m sure that if for some reason I was required to switch to his surname I’d be able to get past it, but since it didn’t feel natural and also changing it would require effort, I opted to keep my own. (Also, we each have three-syllable surnames and a hyphenation of them would never fit on forms, and I imagine that would be a problem administratively.) I am perfectly content for people to call us “the HisSurnames” – so long as it doesn’t cause any administrative problems I don’t object or correct people on it, because it doesn’t bother me. He likes his surname a lot (I agree it’s pretty great), and if we have kids they’ll have his surname, largely because if they didn’t, his would be the last generation to carry it, whereas that’s a lot less likely to happen with mine. Future kids might get my surname as a second middle name.
I have a friend who kept her surname when she got married and who’s having her first baby this summer. The baby is going to have her husband’s surname but will have a middle name that starts with my friend’s surname’s initial (for example if her surname was Adler, a baby’s middle name could be Abigail or Andrew), and she feels her side is sufficiently represented that way. Like Swistle feels, I think in many cases there’s no perfect solution to this question and it becomes “what can you best live with?”, or as another poster mentioned above, “what kind of hassle would you rather deal with?”
I kept my name for the same reason–I already have a name (first, middle, last), so . . . I was all set. No reason to upset the apple cart.
The compromise we struck is that (so long as I’m gestating our shared children and/or am their bio-mother) our children get his last name and our pets get mine. (The vet always lists the dog with both our last names, though.)
I think as far as given names, I may mention that his side is already represented in the last name, so it’s not the end of the universe if we end up using honor names that are primarily from my side and are less “equitable” on that front. (Especially when it comes to honoring his dad’s side.)
I kept my last name for a multitude of reasons. 1. I use it professionally, 2. I really really hate my in-laws, 3. My husband doesn’t know his bio-dad, and ended up taking the name of his mother’s husband who eventually adopted him at 12. But his dad is a douchecanoe. NO THANKS. 4. I’m really lazy and was not looking forward to filling out paperwork. I tried to convince my husband to take my name, but apparently he was attached to it. He would prefer we all had the same last name, but we don’t.
I did end up giving our son my husband’s last name, which to be honest still irks me a little bit. BUT the middle name of our son is my dad’s first name. And I intend to give honor names from my side of the family in the middle spot to balance it out a little.
For you, I’d probably keep my last name and then be inclined to give my kid a hyphenated name with one of them being your last name and the second belonging to your husband – whichever name he prefers, in that case.
I am also in a same-sex relationship, and my wife and decided to keep our name and hyphenate our children’s. We are close to both of our families, and in the absence of any gender-based expectations about which name should be chosen, we thought that choosing one name could be seen as weakening the ties to the other family. It helps that our last names hyphenate pretty well.
I don’t really have any advice since this is such a personal decision (and for us, it was definitely a symbolic rather than an aesthetic one), but I do like the idea of Victory/Victoria as a daughter’s name if you end up using one or both of your fiancee’s surnames!
I kept my last name, and our kids have my last name as a 2nd mn. Since they share a last name with their dad, I picked out their first names. When we disagreed about our daughter’s name, I told my husband he could pick her first name or her last name, but not both. So far (oldest is 10) it hasn’t been a big deal.
We included my name in their legal names mostly to make travel easier (not that we do much of it with 3 kids…) –to show they share names w both parents.
Hello all what an interesting conversation! Upon marriage, I felt strongly about not letting go of my names and not having hyphens, but also wanted our family to have the same last names. It took me 5 years to make the decision and I chose to have a double first name as I moved my middle name in to the slot with the first and put my maiden name as my new middle and my husbands surname as my new surname. My husband and I felt he should change something too so we both stared going by our middle names. We never really liked our trendy first names anyway! So I ended up going by my second first name, so it just feels like a nick-name for my now longer first name. The bonus is that no one has been able to find me for almost a decade! I do not recommend this complicated solution, but it was the right one for me.
First off, I do agree that there is not one “right” answer to this question and you have to decide what is right for you.
That said… I dislike the hyphenation trend, because of this exact thing. It is just not sustainable. If you decide to give your kids essentially three last names, or two middle and two last, then they will face the exact same dilemma down the road when they want to get married. It is just passing the problem onto the next generation… just my thought.
I, too, feel like I went through Swistle’s entire surname mental struggle. I quite liked my maiden name (a not-too-common but common-enough-for-familiarity British surname) and was ok with but didn’t particularly care for my husband’s surname (an extremely common surname that contain some syllable sounds I find less than pleasant to the ear). I never really considered taking his name when we married — it’s been my name all my life, why change now? And I like mine better than his! And I felt bothered by the idea that it was assumed by so many that a woman would take her husband’s name but his taking hers would be outlandish and wrong.
So then we had a baby. And we didn’t want to hyphenate, because it would be long, and I felt bad picturing my future kindergartener having to laboriously spell it out. And again I came up against, my surname sounds nicer! Why should his “win” just because he’s got the penis? (Which makes me sound petty and silly, but really, why do so many automatically follow patriarchal naming conventions?) Plus, my name is dying out in my family (sisters both changed their names upon marriage, and my husband has a billion+ cousins carrying on his very common surname). And my husband didn’t care about her carrying his name or not.
So our daughter has my surname, and two middle names, the second of which is my husband’s surname (we thought it would be good to have it included in official paperwork somewhere, in case he ever travelled alone with her or something). We do occasionally get mail (birthday cards from his side of the family, mostly) addressed to her as FirstName HusbandSurname, which is fine, of course.
And now we have baby number two. I thought that since the first baby got my surname, it would be nice if the second had my husband’s surname. There are so many blended families these days, so it wouldn’t be uncommon for siblings to have different names; and the age gap was big enough that we didn’t think they’d be constantly explaining their relationship to teachers at school or whatever. But my husband ended up liking the idea of the two of them sharing a surname, so they both are FirstName SecondGivenName HusbandSurnameAsSecondMiddle MySurname.
There’s certainly no ideal; this was what worked best for us. No regrets for either my husband or me.
Victory is a pretty cool name! Ho
Ack, hit Post by mistake. That was to be: Hope you figure out something that works well enough for your family.
Chiming in with my story.
I was the last unmarried woman in my generation, the daughter of an only son of an only son of an only son, with no sons. There’s no one I know of with my maiden name except my now elderly parents.
He is a junior, with a name with widespread use in our area, with historic, racial, and cultural ties that are important to him. It’s also important for him professionally since he works in an area where the name’s significance has shared meaning. He has about a billion male cousins, several of which with his same first/last name combination.
Both names were 3 syllable mouthfuls, so hyphenating was out for usability, and I wanted the same last name, not an appendage version. So we ended up smooshing our names together. We have the first syllable of my name, plus his entire name. Something like O’Merryweather. I added my maiden as a 2nd middle name. I got to keep my monogram and the cultural indicator of the first syllable, he got to keep the full name but with a permanent modifier.
There are ups and downs to this. It’s still a long name. It’s completely unique, we’re the only 2 in the world, so there’s no anonyminity online. People assume I married someone whose name sounded like my maiden name. People have to ask “Wait, like the Merryweathers O’Merryweather?” He usually glosses over questions from casual acquaintances with “there was a name change back there somewhere.” He has faced real antifeminist shaming for it when he’s explained it – “pussy whipped” jokes. It’s a good way to filter out some jerks.
From a fairness standpoint, I like this solution because it means both of us had to do all the same paperwork and the hassle of changing things over, versus it being an assumed burden on the woman. Name changing with marriage isn’t always a 1 form easy thing for men, depends on the state laws – it was for the state we married in.
There’s really no perfect solution, only what you decide is best for you as a person and as a family.
Congratulations on your little one! It is refreshing to see a dad encourage the baby taking the mom’s name.
Oh I loved this second update!
Hurrah for Baby Victory! Welcome, sweetling.
Food for thought: ALL THE SOLUTIONS ARE ONE-GENERATION FIXES. That is, even if you “do the traditional thing”, your children will still have to decide what they do when it’s their turn. Doing the traditional thing is equally a decision, and equally a decision that is made each time. I am baffled how Society has convinced us every other option is a one-generation fix but that one is somehow Magically Exempt or Good Forever.
I did what Swistle did and have identical lukewarm feelings.