Hello Swistle,
I’m about 14 weeks away from my first baby’s due date. At this point, my husband and I have a general plan for first and middle names (we do not know what the sex of the baby is). My question is about last names.
My husband and I both decided not to change our last names when we got married. Interestingly, we both have rather uncommon last names. I’m an only child and do not have any first or second cousins that share my last name (though distant cousins do exist). My husband has a sister but like me, they do not have any cousins or 2nd cousins with their last name.
I’m really excited to give one baby his last name and another baby my last name. While I don’t think my husband would have come up with this idea on his own, he is warming up to the idea.
I’m curious to hear how other families have done this. If life goes as we’ve planned up to this moment, we’ll have two children (one at a time) and the first will share a name with their dad and a second will share a name with their mom. What happens if there are twins with a second pregnancy? Or if parents decide to have an uneven number of children? Or if a second pregnancy isn’t possible? We could expand it even further to families who welcome older children.
Thanks for your insight,
Molly
Oh, this is so fun to think about. I think I can tell you how I would have done it if Paul and I had gone this route:
• The first baby would have had my surname, because if we ended up having only one baby, I would NOT have been pleased to have it look as if our plan was to give kids their dad’s surname. And also because I would want to counteract any feeling that the dad’s surname was more important and should be used first. And also because I would want to make sure the plan went ahead as planned—as opposed to getting pregnant with the second child and having my husband argue that at this point it would be easier/simpler/better to just keep giving children his surname. I wouldn’t want to have been counting on getting my turn, and have my husband change his mind.
• While not specifically locking down what we’d do if we had twins (unless fertility treatments made multiples highly likely, I’d consider that a bridge to be crossed when we came to it), I’d want to at least touch on the topic ahead of time to make sure we were thinking similarly. I find that while my first impulse is to name them just as if they’d been born singletons, so that one would have my surname and one would have Paul’s, my heart wants twins to have the same surname. I don’t know what I’d do about that.
• The possibility of an uneven number of children is another reason I would want to use my own surname first; I would keep that reason close to my chest, but would think of it as putting the teeniest tiniest weight on the mothers’ side of the balance scale, for all the vast number of children who have been given their fathers’ surnames. I think if the couple KNEW ahead of time that they would have, say, three children, they might want to compensate for it in some way with honor names: that is, if the mother’s surname would be used more often, use more honor firsts/middles from the dad’s side. Since even careful/certain plans are uncertain when it comes to having children, I think my plan would be to try to balance things as we went along: when we used my surname, we’d err on the side Paul’s preferences and Paul’s side of the family for first/middles, and vice versa. That way, even if we had three children or, say, five, things should end up roughly balanced.
• If we were to later have welcomed older children into our family, I think what I would want to do is (1) add them into the pattern as they would have been named, but (2) if we welcomed a sibling group, perhaps give them the same surname as each other. So for example, let’s say we had our first baby and used my surname; then we had a second baby and used Paul’s surname; and then when those babies were 3 and 1 we brought a 5-year-old into the family: I would think we would use Paul’s surname for that child, since then their name fits into the family pattern. (I would likely want to use my surname as the 5-year-old’s middle name.) But if when the babies were 3 and 1 we brought 5-year-old and 7-year-old siblings into the family, I would be stymied as I am with twins. Maybe it makes the most sense to give the 7-year-old my surname and the 5-year-old Paul’s surname, but I feel the same reluctance as I do when considering different surnames for twins. Well, again, unless there was a strong likelihood of this possibility occurring, I think I would check in to make sure we shared basically the same feelings on it, and then put it into the Cross This Bridge If We Come To It category.
I am having a lot of fun thinking about this now. Rob would have had my surname, and so then we would have used the name William for him: Rob was an honor name from my side, used to balance the use of Paul’s surname. Well, except we were much less motivated to use the honor name William, and used it almost entirely to balance the use of the name Rob, which I VERY MUCH wanted to use. And Paul had almost no desire to honor any of his family members (except William), and I had a LOT of good people I wanted to honor, and Paul didn’t feel strongly about balance. So ACTUALLY I think Rob would have had my surname and then we still would have used Rob. And then William would have had Paul’s surname and we still would have used William. Oh but then twins!! Okay, if we had KNOWN we would later have Henry, which we did NOT know, then I would have felt perfectly happy using my surname for both twins, knowing we would use Paul’s surname later for Henry. But NOT knowing about Henry, I would have been pretty stressed: it’s one thing to have an odd number of children, it’s another thing to have three kids with my surname and only one with Paul’s!
Well! What does everyone else think THEY would have done, if they had decided to alternate surnames? And of course, those of you who DID alternate surnames (or know people who alternated surnames), we are hanging on your every word.
[Edited to add: A note to commenters: The question is how it would be done / how we would do it / how we have done it or heard of it done. The question is not whether we personally like the idea / whether we personally would do it / whether we personally think patriarchy is good, actually.]
My husband and I have decided to use my surname for any female children and his surname for any male children. Our first (and only so far) is a daughter, so she has my last name. We ideally would like to have three children. We hope we have a son at some point so my husband’s surname gets to be used, but if not, then all the children will have my last name. I know at least two other families in our friend circle who have done this as well. I think it’s becoming more common to not assume children will have a male parent’s last name!
Ooh, this is my ideal system! Matrilineal and patrilineal surnames. It truly makes my heart sing. I don’t have children but this is how I want to proceed, and my boyfriend is open to it. I’m so glad to know it is being done (it is certainly not common around where I live, in fact I thought I’d come up with the idea! haha).
Oh man, this is isn’t something we’ve done but it’s something we’re considering. When we had our first child we fought constantly about the surname! Neither wanted to change or hyphenate when we got married so it carried over to having our first child, which is the only thing we fought about. We ended up deciding on his surname for a boy, mine if it was a girl. We had a boy. So he got his dad’s surname , an honor name from my side for the middle, and my husband’s preferred first name (which I’m a still a little bitter about)
For our next child my husband offered to give me full control over the first and middle name (within reason, nothing he absolutely hates but thankfully our tastes overlap nicely) in exchange for it having his surname. Which, not gonna lie, is a very tempting offer. I’m not sure what I’m going to doing, it’ll depend on how I feel once I’m pregnant with the next kid.
Part of the issue for me is I’m not interested in “passing on my family’s surname”. My surname, while not very common, is common enough (I share it with a certain 80’s action movie star) AND and I more or less have no contact with that side of the family, including my dad. So wanting to use my surname is about honoring Myself and how I made it My Name rather than honoring my family of origin. Also to challenge patriarchal norms by saying that I Matter Too in a visible, lasting way. (cause let’s be honest, honor middle names aren’t visible or matter in the way a surname does) (I also got A Lot of shit for Not changing my surname at marriage because if I’m estranged from my paternal family then I should take my husband’s name. This mostly from women who immediately went back to their maiden names once they got divorced too…)
My husband on the other hand it IS about wanting to honor his father and passing the name on for traditional reasons. It’s an extremely uncommon name and he’s the only one in his family to pass it on at this point.
So it’s always kind of a complicated matter and I wish you luck on how you handle it! And respect anyone else who handles it.
My husband and I decided to do this if we end up having multiple children. We both have very uncommon last names. For our first we decided that sex would determine the last name. A girl would get mine, a boy would get his. This seemed the most fair should we decide to just have the one. So our daughter has my last name and her middle name is his last name. For a possible second child we would swap them regardless of sex.
I had a sociology professor do this. They let the baby’s sex determine whose last name was used first and then the other parent’s last name used for the next baby, and so on. She ended up with a daughter with her last name and a son with her husband’s last name.
She would have been doing this 40+ years ago, so she probably got more pushback then than you would now. I remember she told me a story about having to prove she was her son’s mother at his school because they found the different surnames so odd (Again, I don’t think this would be an issue today–I kept my last name but my kids have my husband’s last name and I’ve never had any issues). And no one at the school knew her kids were related without that surname linking them, which led to a few minor misunderstandings.
This woman didn’t regret the alternating surnames; I think her only regret was that their families weren’t more supportive. I think having the son have the father’s last name was a concession that they made to family; she would’ve preferred things more random and not determined by the child’s sex at birth.
Congrats on your baby and good luck!
Interesting that the commenters so far have chosen “girls get moms name, boys get dads” -interesting because that’s the opposite of what happened in my family! I have my dads last name, my brother got my moms.
I dislike the idea of using the baby’s sex to determine their surname, as it introduces another layer of “gendering” into names in this world of increasing gender fluidity.
I agree absolutely with this. I would not have made it about sons and daughters, I would have made it about birth order. I would actually feel fine about different surnames for twins; it would help them get to be their own person in systems (like classroom assignments and the like) when they would often be lumped together.
If older children were joining the family, I think I would be tempted to keep the surname they had from their family of origin, depending on if there was an ongoing relationship with the birth family. If they were joining a family where kids already had different surnames that seems like it would potentially be nondisruptive.
If an older child joining the family were coming from a situation where there was a particularly strong reason for not keeping the name (like if it had been assigned at random by an orphanage or if the birth surname reflected a particularly abusive relationship) then I would seek input of the kids in chosing– and consider criteria like which goes best with their given names, which are presumably not changing if they are older and associate with their call names. I would probably seek to keep the adopted sibling group having the same name: it seems like a different situation from twins.
As to the twin issue, I know a couple who gave one twin one moms last name and the other twin got the other moms last name. It seems to be working out so far.
My neighbors did the girls get mom’s boys get dad’s. I personally fought hard for the opposite-girls get dads (only because I really loved MY (deceased) dad despite hating the patriarchy so I wanted any girls to have that same connection to her dad) and boys get mom’s (same deal-I loved my dad, and loved the idea that my son would be a little guy just like my dad was once a little guy).
As a family we are socially a “smush” name. Think Simonsen and Thorsson are the Simonthors.
I agree though with the above commentator about gender fluidity entering more strongly into this. I will say though, in the neighbors above, one child is gender fluid and loved choosing a new first name that skewed masculine and kept their mother’s surname. It was the ideal identity “fit” in the end.
I know a family with the following system, odd number of children
First child – ethnic first from mom’s ancestry, dad’s last
Second child – first name not from that ethnicity, mom’s last
Third child – same formula as first child
This becomes more interesting (and sometimes easier?) when it’s not a cis-hetero couple involved as mentioned in the two Mom’s comment above.
What we are currently debating (not yet pregnant/trying) is what to do when it comes to blended families. I want to keep my last name, my bro doesn’t plan to have kids and my side is the only ones with that name to move it forward. So in a lot of ways I’d love to pass on my last name to a child. That said, using my partner’s last name for a future child may provide a link and “family tie” to their older brother, my partner’s son, who carries his last name. In what definitely feels like potential for a difficult situation, having a shared link to being siblings seems like it may help the bond and acceptance of a new family member. Counter to that, we live in a community/culture where half and step siblings, blended families, being raised by aunties/grandparents/etc. Is very much the norm so our family won’t look any different than anyone else’s regardless of names. No one outside our family unit would bat an eye at whichever surnames we chose.
Beyond my deep desire to f*ck the patriarchy, I don’t have a deep history to my own name (or keeping it or changing it, or passing it down to kids). Beyond my immediate family (M/D/brother) it’s the surname of my Dad’s biological father, whom died when my dad was young, and not the father who raised him, the grandfather we grew up with.
Anyway, turning all these options over in my head and with no idea what I’d want to do. Luckily partner is very supportive of any option and open to choices.
I always thought it would be kind of neat to give daughters their mother’s surname and sons their father’s surname.
I knew sisters whose parents had done this for them. Both were common Chinese last names and I was acquainted with both of them and had no clue they were sisters for a very long time! This was in the early 2000s and I thought it was cool but also I was very very confused.
I am having a hard time contemplating this for my personal children because there are two different dads across three children. What I WISH I had done is given my oldest my surname, and then when my husband and I got married, I think that if my oldest and I had my surname we actually would have ended up all taking my surname and giving the remaining children that surname as well. Hmmmmm.
My husband and I seriously considered combining our last name into one name – first syllable from his, second from mine.
I think in our case we would have done first born – my last name, and switch each subsequent pregnancy so twins would have the same last name. If we had older kids come into our family, I think I would let them choose!
I also think I would give the children a second middle name the surname they didn’t get, just so everyone has each name somewhere in their name.
I think about the twin example of Barbara and Jenna and am just a little hesitant that one last name might be considered cooler than the other and the children might have a little resentment there.
For me, I think the easiest would be to simply alternate names. In the case of twins, I would give the same last names as if they were singletons. Doing otherwise seems to lump in together as “the twins” and not as individuals and it’s easy enough to find a connection in first or middle if matchy or coordinated twin names appeal.
In the case of adopting older children, I think it would depend on their age. If they were old enough (say, at least school age) I might allow them to pick which name they wanted. I’m not sure what I would if I had to pick as far keeping the pattern on birth order or not. I can also see an argument for the pattern being “order they came into the family.”
I agree with Swistle that I would want my name to go first and not my husband’s-for exactly the reasons she explained. Also, I think it would be easier to address questions & negative comments from the start as opposed to giving his last name first, which would allow people to make certain assumptions. I suspect the negative comments would be even worse if mom’s surname wasn’t used until kid #2.
If I’d kept my name and we planned to use my surname for at least one kid, I probably would’ve insisted on using it for our first one after I found out he was a boy. That is because my favorite boy name of all time is Jack but it does not work with our family surname (starts with Hof). So I’d have pushed for using my surname so that we could use Jack. But if it weren’t for my love of the name Jack, I’d have deferred and let my husband’s name go to our firstborn because I think he’d care more about it than I would.
It’s interesting that most are saying they would give girls the mother’s last name and boys the father’s, because my first thought is that that still feels patriarchal to me in a way. I would have done it the opposite. I would give girls the father’s last name and boys mine. (In my family this would have been a nice little symmetrical thing, as just coincidentally my son looks like me and both girls look much more like their dad).
I had a friend whose parents did this. They had three kids, kid one had last name a, kid two had last name b, kid three (who was much younger) had last name a with last name b as a middle. My friend is 40 now, so when I realized her sister had a different last name – I was maybe 10 and had known her since I was 5 – it was a marvel to me. I’m pretty sure I addressed her mom by the wrong last name for awhile because I just assumed she was Mrs same last name, but I don’t remember her mom ever correcting me. Today with blended families and moms keeping their names I don’t think my kids would blink an eye at this.
I personally think it is much better than hyphenating last names.
I actually knew twins who had different surnames! They were Chinese-American and in Chinese culture the woman doesn’t change her name when she gets married. Usually the kids would just take their father’s surname, but I guess their parents decided it would be nice to do one of each.
I love to see all the people doing things this way, and supporting it! This is our plan (with the opposite last name as a second middle), and we have one son so far. We decided to start with my last name (Mom’s) to smash the patriarchy a little more, but we do intend to alternate. I think it was a hard pill to swallow for some members of my Husband’s family as my son is the first born son of a first born son of a first born son, but we never heard anything negative to our faces. We also promote a “smash” up last name for other’s to use to refer to us as.
I have no strong personal opinion on this, but if this is the solution that a family is going with, I’d do the father’s name first and the mother’s second, then flip from there. This is mostly because I’ve seen a lot of people, in my region, assume that a child with the mom’s maiden name is a step-child. Including calling the actual, biological dad “Your step-dad.”
Being a step-father is a wonderful thing, but the men I know are put out that this is the consistent assumption. But when there’s a _younger_ child with mom’s maiden, everyone understands what’s going on much quicker.
For twins I’d assign them in the order they were born, continuing the pattern. They’re twins, lord knows there’s going to be enough bonding them.