Last names

[est09]

My partner and I are expecting our daughter. His last name is 'de M....' and mine is 'B.....'. We would like to give our daughter both our names - which do you feel is best?

• De M....-B....
• De M..... B....
• or get rid of the de?

What's the "de" for?

I'd go de M B with no hyphen. Or does B de M work?

It will be a foreign surname, probably French. It's like von, van, O' etc.

Partner is of French heritage and the name has been passed down the line (I think his great-great-great grandfather was a Lord?)

Definitely keep the de then as it's part of the family heritage! I wish I had an interesting name. Knew a girl at school who was a de Saint xxx and I always thought it was such a lovely name!

de M-B or the father's surname as a middle name

I would ditch hyphen, but keep de

Keep the de M but definitely do not hyphenate with B. That is the done thing.

I'd definitely keep the 'de'.

B deM works best imo.

Do you live in the UK? The problem here if you don't hyphenate is that people automatically use the second surname. My Latino husband has this all the time (they mostly all have two surnames unhyphenated) he's Axxxxx Rxxxxx but people here always default to calling him Mr Rxxxx. For that reason we chose to hyphenate our kids.

@Goscat , Latino colleagues have the same issue. I was trying to find colleague's email address and had to ask someone. The name was something quite usual like Isabel Fernandez Martin but the email was Isabel.Martin, which just looked so not Spanish.

I'd start with the name which is preceded by the prefix de - so if one of you is de Marigny and the other Ballister and you want to use both surnames for a child, I'd do (for example) Sophie de Marigny-Ballister. I would not capitalize the D in de Marigny, though, if it's not capitalized in your partner's family name - not sure why you have done that in your examples, but I wouldn't.

I think it depends, though. It doesn't seem to have prevented Iain Duncan Smith from persuading people that he's Mr Duncan Smith (to make him sound more "old money", à la Andrew Parker Bowles). Duncan is actually his middle name though, so he's really just plain old Iain Smith!

@MegTheForgetfulCat , the Duncan Smith is the surname, just like Parker Bowles is. Or Lloyd George, Lloyd Webber, Scott Thomas or Bonham Carter.

I had read somewhere that it was actually his middle name and used as a surname as an affectation, but happy to be corrected if I'm wrong. In any event, the hyphen still isn't necessary if you want 2 surnames, like in the examples you give 👍

Hyphenating means both names will be used.

I agree with the above comment that most people/companied in the UK default to just using the 2nd name if the names aren’t hyphenated.

Hyphenating means both names will be used.
Most of the time, but not always.
If one of the surname gets dropped it's usually the first one.

Not the same as when a child I know, but I double barreled without a hyphen initially when I got married because I thought it looked better, and kept getting called just my husbands name, the second one, which defeated the point. So I added the hyphen and now people struggle through the whole thing as intended ;D