Does your DCs last name go perfectly with their first name?

[nocooking]

Hello MNers, we have managed to agree on first names for our baby who is due in a few weeks. He or she will have a double barrell last name as its important to me that they have my name aswell as DHs.

My name will go first then DHs. Trouble is that our chosen boys name doesn't sit well with DHs name and if we were to give baby just DHs name, we would have to chose a different first name.

So DSs name would be something like: Harry Smith-Ham (only eg I could think of!). Harry Ham would clearly sound silly. Do you think it will be ok given that my name breaks it up - IYSWIM!

I only know a few people who were given double barrelled surnames by their parents, and all have ended up just using the last name with the first part becoming almost like a middle name. I think personally I would want a name that went well with it as a stand alone surname, but obviously that's based on what my friends have done :)

I also find with the children I know at school who have a double barrelled surname often get the first of the names missed out. I would try to make sure the name goes with both surnames although saying that, my son's full name doesn't work with our surname at all! I didn't want to change it but he's always known by his nn anyway.

Rockchick and survivingwinter - thanks for your advice thats very useful. I don't really know how double barrelled names work in practice so it looks like we need to have a rethink.

Surviving - could I ask what it is about your DS full name that you think doesn't go well - just to give me an idea of what I should be looking out for!

Could you give DH's as a middle name and yours as surname? With another middle name to break it up a bit? Eg Harry David Ham Smith, would be known as Harry Smith?

I agree that the first name needs to go reasonably well with the last part of the surname. He/She will inevitably end up being called this quite often, whether by choice or not.

Could you merge your surnames instead of double barrelling?