Baby with surname of current and ex partner aibu

[smucker]

A friend recently had a baby with her new partner. Wonderful news. She has 3 older kids with her ex husband who have his name only. She goes by her maiden name now. She has announced the baby surname which is double barrelled- it is both her ex husbands name and her new partner (baby daddy) name. Is it just me or is that a bit weird?

It’s the siblings names they’re being matched to obviously. She gave the kids a sibling link and put them first rather than forcing the big kids to go through all the admin drama of double barreling her maiden name.
i think women should just give their kids their surnames it’d save all This drama

I suppose she see it’s as her children’s name, not her ex husbands.

My children have my name. It happens to be my dad’s name who I don’t speak to. I don’t see it as his name, it’s my name. So this is similar except she’s chosen to use her other children’s name.

It isn’t how I’d do it, I’d always give law children I had my name, but people do things differently.

i think women should just give their kids their surnames it’d save all This drama

This. Names are just names, no one owns them, but it's time we moved away from kids having their male parent's surname when something like one in three or four children don't live with their fathers and a large number of dads lose contact with their kids altogether. When relationships break down, for most kids their primary home will be with their mum (and new partner/husband and any new half-siblings who appear).

Makes sense in most cases for mum and all the kids to have the same name.

My mum doubled barreled her new husband's name with my dad's when she remarried as she wanted to stay linked to me.

It's normal to want to be linked to your children, and for all the children to be linked together by name.

Then why not give them all the related parent's name, in this case, double barrel with mom's name which is what she's going by. She doesn't use the same name as her kids, from OP's post.

Giving the baby the surname of her ex that has no relation to the baby and the other kids' parents implies paternity.

Not that simple though is it. She needs the father’s permission to do this-he might not be prepared to give it.

People don’t own a name. It’s a name probably shared by many, many unrelated people.

Unless the ex partner has an extremely unusual surname then thousands of people share the same name, he appears to be able to cope with that just fine.

The only person who owns the name is the person who has it, I have the same surname as our children, their name doesn’t belong to me, it belongs to them.

My surname happens to be the same as my previous partners, just as my first name is shared by thousands of people, that doesn’t stop it being my name and mine only. Its also technically a brand, but it doesn’t make me a business anymore than it belongs to someone else.

Yeah its weird, but I also find it bizarre that so many unmarried women throw out tradition and dont give thier kids their own surname.

True.

But the reason that the siblings have the exact surname that they do is because they were produced by a certain person. The Ex.
The siblings don't have the mum's name, or a random name that sounded good, they have the surname of the man that fathered them. They have that surname for a particular reason.

I don't think it's a problem, or any of my business 😅, but I'm just so curious as to this decision.
I guess it comes down to why the mum wants all the kids to have the same surname. Why is it so important?

It’s really odd. If I was the ex-husband I would say something. All his family of say Johnsons will say ‘David’s ex-wife Julie has met a new bloke, had a kid and it’s got our family name, even when Julie hasn’t’.

Really quite strange.

You hear quite often of older kids feeling squeezed out by a new baby. I think this is a lovely idea, that they feel a sense of connection and family to the new arrival and they all share the same name because they are family.

It isn’t just as simple as the mum adding her name to the older children’s names- she’ll need the fathers permission, but also the kids will probably just continue to just use their existing name and the addition of the new name just becomes and administrative burden