Most of the discussion on here seems to be about first names / middle names, but my real question is around surnames.
When my wife and I married, we each kept our own surnames. This was exactly as we wanted and expected -- we both find the long survival of the custom of a wife taking her husband's surname rather odd.
However, now that we're expecting a baby we face a problem of what surname to give him. We don't like newly-minted double-barrelled surnames (and our surnames would be very clunky if put together anyway), so what to do?
In terms of our own parents' views, my father has a strong expectation that the baby will have my/his surname (he is always wittering on about "continuing the line" as if we were aristocracy or something), and I think he'd be very upset if it didn't. I don't think my wife's family have any particular expectations, however.
In terms of my wife and me, we both want the baby to have our own respective surnames, but I think it is more out of a general desire to stake our claims rather than trenchantly-held views for either of us!
How do we solve this?