Childrens' surname - What did you do?

[Laurel543]

I have a 2 week old with my partner of 20 years and we are struggling to agree what surname to give the child.

We had planned to get married this year but I unexpectedly (and happily) became pregnant instead. When talking about the marriage, we said we wanted to share the same name and had very loosely agreed that we would both change our names (probably to a name we both liked from one of our family trees). I thought that this neatly sidestepped the problem of choosing one of our surnames and was very happy with the plan. We had talked a little about choosing a name before the baby is born and I have been researching potential names.

Since the birth of our child, my lovely partner, who has never shown any patriarchal tendencies, has decided that he’s not in fact prepared to change his name and is also insisting that the child has his surname. Ideally stand alone but he will consider double barrelling if absolutely necessary.

I am obviously surprised and disappointed!
He has a few reasons for his stand, the main one being that “this is what everyone does” (to be fair, all of our friends and family have given their DC the fathers name, married or not).
I feel pretty deflated about the whole thing. FtI am perfectly happy to change my own surname and feel strongly that I also want to share my child’s surname but I am equally unwilling to change my name to his.
Our names are both pretty clunky and do not double barrel well. There is also no easy way of amalgamating them.

We have reached stalemate

Both names here, no hyphen as convenient Spanish heritage.

In our group of friends, it’s interesting how many couples were set on challenging the status quo regarding naming before the birth of their child but how few went through with it.

I found the same thing, but with marriage - a lot more people talked about doing something other than woman changing her name to his than actually did it. It would be interesting (though obviously hypothetical!) to know if OP's DP would have gone through with their name plan if they had got married first as they initially planned - I presume not!

I have to say at this point I would be absolutely furious if DH wanted to go back on our name plan for the baby - not least because everyone keeps asking me about how we're going to handle the fact we have different names, so I've already had to go through the tedious process of justifying it to incredulous (/rude) people!

I did actually come at this from a feminist perspective, I figured there was no more rational argument for passing down my father's name than my partner's!

You mean your father's name Vs your partner's father's name? My pet hate is people saying that men have their own name but women just borrow their dad's.

There is only one name I would ever have taken and that is Skywalker. Didn't marry one so have kept my name (agree though with person who mentioned the Christmas cards).
My other half wasn't too bothered about taking my name, but his dad would have been upset so we double-barrelled. As our kids have dual French nationality, they had only then just permitted children to take the mother's surname or have both surnames. The order is proscribed so we had little choice. It's long, clunky and not ideal but like you, it was important to me. I gave them short first names to compensate and no middle names and of course when they are older they can do what they like.
As they have both our surnames, we've never had an issue travelling on our own at the airport with passports either, which I know has cropped up for people sometimes. We also live in a very diverse area too, so there are some quite unusual surnames anyway at their schools. Some of the kids from Sri Lankans backgrounds in particular have longer single surnames then their double barrelled one.

No name changes on marriage here. DD shares her dad’s surname and has mine as her second middle name.

I expected to double-barrel my name on marriage, and DC to have that version too. But DH's surname was just plain risible linked to mine, so I never changed name.

DC have his, because both surnames are equally 'meh' and he was more bothered about it than I am.

If we had not been married, DC wouid definitely have had my name, though.

We are married now but at time of DDs birth we were not. DD has my husbands last name as a middle name and has my last name. It’s not double barrelled iyswim. I also kept my name after marriage. DH likes my name and isn’t crazy about his. I felt strongly about it and I suppose he didn’t although he remarks on it from time to time in a wistful “it’s not right” kind of way.

We had this dilemma when we married (pre dc) but DH was very happy to change his name. The problem was that my surname really didn't work with his first name. We did ask a few people what they thought of him using my surname and were greeted with gales of laughter. It just sounded like a conedy name. It was a non starter. As was double barrelling them for the same reason.

So we both kept our surnames but double barrelled them with another surname we picked together. Dc then had new surname. So I am Emma Grundy-Smith, DH is is Ivor Baker-Smith and kids are Horatio and Hortensia Smith. Obviously not our real names but you get the idea.

Works for us

We've gone with one each (we always planned to have more than one child)

I did refuse to call DS1 by the same first name as his father/grandfather/greatgreatgrandfather too because it already causes issues with the generations getting muddled on official stuff, so he got that as a middle name, and DP's surname (it went better with the first name we chose together).

Then I chose DS2's middle name, and DS2 got my surname (which in turn, also goes well with the first name we chose for him).

We travel a lot, and have had nothing more than a raised eyebrow/comment that it is unusual, and DP gets to share the mild annoyance at schools/services mis-naming him (MrScrambleEgg) rather than just me getting all the mis-naming (depending on which child they're referring to, they tend to assume both parents have that surname)

Blended families are so common, and people from countries where the traditions are different, it's just not an issue to have different names - and it's considerably less hassle for a baby to have a different name from birth than it would be for my 40 year old self to have to change all the names on all my paperwork (or for DP to do the same)

Baby had his surname. Was engaged but found out I was pregnant. Relationship deteriorated post birth and became abusive. I left and child lives with me but does not have my surname. Wish I had double barrelled at least.

I had been married previously and not changed my name but wanted us all to have same name as a family.

I'm married changed my name and the children have that name. However I wouldn't do this now. I would create a hybrid of our two names as my first choice or double barrel as a second.

I would say that maybe 10% of my friends the husband has changed name on marriage but only when he had a surname which was obviously inferior.

Married. Didn't change my surname. Both children have my surname.

Not married, DC have his surname. It meant a lot to him for them to have his surname; it meant absolutely nothing to me, so for us it was an easy decision.

My two have DPs surname, and mine as a middle name.
Is something like that an option?

We agreed, in advance of knowing the babies sex, that if it was a boy it would have my surname and if a girl it would have his. That way it's a 50% chance for both. We also agreed any further dc of either sex would have the same surname as the first.

However in your case baby is already here. I would go for the double barrel. Who cares if it's a bit clunky. Names often are. After a few months of hearing it, you ll be used to it and it will sound fine.

We have her both surnames, not hyphenated. If it can work for the entire Spanish speaking world, it can work for us. I would never ever have agreed to his surname and I would never change my name on marriage anyway. If DD finds it too unwieldy as she gets older she can choose one for everyday use.

I never liked my name, my exH had a much better surname do when we married I took his and DS has his name. When we divorced I kept the name because I liked it and shared it with DS.

When I had DD I wasn’t married to her dad and would have liked to have given her my name but her dad objected as it was my ex’s name which I could understand. I wish I had insisted on double barrelled now though

Married, neither changed names, giving an unwieldy double barrelled name to children.

DH was actually up for both of us double barrelling too but I didn't really want to at this stage professionally.

Actually quite a few of our friends have done it this way. I would have been v disappointed if DH suddenly got all traditional on me.

His argument for this is what everyone does could work if you were married. After all people get married long before 20 years have passed "everyone does,"

Not sure if this will be helpful but my mother gave me her surname as my parents weren't married, fast forward two years they had got married and had my little sister who got my dads surname.
They never officially changed my name, but always referred to me by my dads surname, and this was a right headache when it was discovered when I went on my first overseas trip.
I never changed it to dads name just because of the fuss, and I was actually glad when I got married to have the same name as someone else!

My maiden name was lovely, my married name of 26 years is vile. But I'm glad we all have the same surname. I like to think we'd be easy to find by future generations tracing their family tree.

Grown up DS21 agrees that our surname is rubbish and we should all have taken my maiden name. I think this would've hurt FIL as DS is the only one to carry on his line in his name. So old fashioned, but that's how he thinks.

Dd surname is double barrelled, my surname is last because it sounded better. We will both double barrel unofficially when we marry later this year. I'm the only person I know not to give baby the dad's surname and we get lots of comments on my name being last. It drives me mad!

We're married, both kept our names, and ds is myname-hisname. Name changing, or ds only having dh's name was never on the cards, and if dh had suggested it I really would have thought differently of him.

There was a bit of a comedy moment a couple of weeks before we got married when someone at work asked me what my new name would be. When I replied 'Dibbler' in a slightly confused way, they asked what DH thought about that. I had to go home and ask as it just had never been discussed. NowDH looked confused at me and asked why it would be anything to do with him