Double barrelling surnames?

[LilPatronum]

DP and I are to get married very soon.
I really do not want to change my surname. Neither does DP. I have a long history with mine including already having been changed once by deed-poll due to having my deadbeat Fathers name.

We have no children yet but planning to hopefully have some in the very near future. I really want the same surname as my children, especially having grown up with a different one to my Mum. DP wants the same surname too. We’re not too fussed about having the same name as each other and if we weren’t planning on children we wouldn’t bother with name changes at all.

Has anyone ever double barrelled their surname legally so say to Smith-Jones but then socially referred to themselves by their maiden name? So my name is Jane Smith and I will still refer to myself as that including on social media etc but legally I will be Mrs Jane Smith-Jones and so will DH. Then when we have children they will be called Smith-Jones and we will all be the Smith-Jones’ on paper. At school we will
introduce ourselves as Mr & Mrs Smith-Jones and for anything important related to that.

My Mum thinks this is stupid and we might as well not bother with the double barrelling if we are still going to refer to ourselves as our original names? AIBU to think this is the best compromise? Or has anyone else done it?

I'd really avoid double barrelled, it just sounds a bit contrived UNLESS it's a cultural thing, that is different. Say you have a DD and she is, for eg, Alice Smith Jones, what about when she gets married? Alice Smith Jones Harris or potentially Alice Smith Jones Harris Brooke. It's just a bit silly. Keep your name, give your DC your name.

Oh my God.

Does anyone have a brick wall for me to bash my head on?

sure you can find one yourself :)

I honestly think on every double barrelled name thread there should be a pinned post telling people how it works when people have children 🤣🤣🤣 do you genuinely think people in Spain are walking around with an exponentially growing list of surnames?

This thread isn’t about your children though, it’s about myself. My feelings are that way and the way your children feel don’t change that and aren’t really relevant to how I felt growing up.

What offensive nonsense. You should be ashamed to have written that post.

No but they have set cultural rules/norms around names (and it isn't just Spain).. in the UK there aren't any set rules. I am from a country where double barrel is actually the norm so I know how it works in other countries but thanks for enlightening me

Which means it's very unlikely that someone would decide to give their child 2 double barrelled last names in England.

@iliketheradio ok fair enough... I know it's not just Spain, but thank you for enlightening me ☺️. I assumed that you didn't understand how it worked, hence you wondering what happens when someone with a double barrelled name gets married. There aren't set rules but I'm sure people can work it out and don't just keep adding names on forever!

@Cloudy718 your posts have been extremely offensive and unpleasant (quite a few people have thought so)
Its interesting that you can call people stupid/ridiculous/woefully chavvy but are unable to answer any of the very simple questions I've put to you... Just resort to insults because you can't answer.

I know a kid whose parents gave their kid the surname Smith-Jones.
The parents then split up and the mum married a new bloke and they tagged his surname onto the kid’s name. The kid is now Smith-Jones-Bloggs.

The sheer TEDIUM of the endless posts on all these threads from posters who think they have the original ‘gotcha’ by assuming that in 4 generations people will have 64 hyphenated surnames.

Just like they do in Spain.

Don’t they? No? So there is actually a centuries old tradition in some countries for incorporating mothers and fathers names and not sounding like a telephone directory???

Or… or offspring might just make their own free choice about what to do with their own names if they marry / have children etc, free of patriarchal tradition , free of the dreadful snobby judgmentalism of MN Matrons…

I wish I’d double barrelled my name - too late now.

re your question, lots of female doctors take dh’s surname but keep their maiden name as their professional name. It’s the name they qualified with and got their GMC reg with. It’s quite common to do that. Slightly different to you but similar premise.

It’s a funny thing that when you ask for opinions and people give them to you based on their experience your response is this.

Do what you want because clearly if we don’t agree you dont want to hear it. Why bother starting a thread anyway.

I double barrelled on official documents (two long names I have to say) but generally use my previous name at work and for anything else. Wish I hadn't bothered and kept my own name to be honest now!

I think pressure from other people (not my husband) made me think this was a fair compromise but it’s actually just a pain now 🙈🤣

As someone with a double barrelled surname please don't. It was such a pain in the arse and left me in the situation I couldn't have the same name as my kids as I wasnt married and I couldn't give them triple barrelled could I?
Just agree on a name and share it with your future kids. If you can't agree on a name maybe don't get married or have kids?
If you don't want to take his and he doesnt want yours then have something new together?

So now people who don't want their child to have just one last name shouldn't get married or have kids? 😂

We didn't want to pick a random name because our last names mean something to us and we didn't want to ditch one either because we would've never agreed which one gets ditched so double barrelled it was.

Why didn’t you just drop part of your name if you found it a pain?

Or give your kids one half of your name plus their Dad’s?

The other thing you could do is give them your surname as a middle name, I think other cultures do this which I think is quite clever. Changing your name seems really antiquated to me!

I know a few couples who have merged their surnames and double barrelled them when they got married, I think it’s good. Maybe only if the names aren’t really long though lol. I took my husbands name but I wasn’t particularly attached to my maiden name anyway

I use a double barrelled surname at home and so does my wife but we keep the previous names for you work. It causes a bit of hassle because then we have to keep some documents in the single name for ID. If we don't like being known by it socially I don't think we'd bother though. But we like using it personally

This is a very strange reaction. I have a double barrelled name, didn't want to change my name upon marriage, so just picked one of the names plus DH names for my kids. So no fretting about not sharing a name, and no kids with 3 surnames!

There we have it again, women ‘not being particularly attached’ to their birth surname, while men seem very unlikely to feel similarly, at least not to the extent of discarding it.l.

What a weird reaction. We have agreed on a name, as i’ve stated multiple times on this thread. We will be double barrelling our kids names. No debate there, totally agreed upon.

I’m asking about ours! If you can't agree on a name maybe don't get married or have kids? - sorry this made me 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

It was such a pain in the arse and left me in the situation I couldn't have the same name as my kids as I wasnt married and I couldn't give them triple barrelled could I?
So why didn’t you give them your name then? If I was unmarried my kids would have my name and my name only.

But I didn’t ask if peoples kids have a problem with names different than their parents. I’m not interested to answers to questions I didn’t ask.

I asked about double barrelling my name but colloquially using my maiden name. Not about about other peoples kids.

This thread has given me a lot of food for thought and I’m not as against the idea of being called Mrs Smith-Jones as I thought. It might be easier for us all to be referred to as that.

Two of my best friends have double barrelled names (with one only adding the second name in his late teens) and have never had any issues. My Mum also double barrelled hers upon marriage to my stepdad but didn’t hyphenate. Will have to give the hyphen some thought. I guess it would be a lot easier to interchange without the hyphen but then people may get confused and leave one of the names out.