Blended surname

[Mrstraditional]

Has anyone created a blended or double barrelled surname when getting married?

I'm not keen on taking his name, like the idea of something that represents both of us, isn't so patriarchal and also want our child to have the same name.

Keen to hear people's experiences when creating something new. Has it caused any issues? Raised eyebrows?

Our kids do (we have each kept our own). Havent had any raised eye brows but it does sometimes accidentally get double barrelled by mistake.

So you created a new one for your children and kept yours? Have you encountered any legal issues with it at all?

Our child currently has one of our surnames as we add yet to marry.

My lesbian friends blended their surnames together after marriage to create a new one. Everyone reacted very positively. I don't want to be too specific, but they were able to find a name that represented each of their original names, along the lines of 'Beach' when one of them was 'Waters' and the other 'Sanderson'.

My husband and I talked about it. Also talked about choosing a surname from further back in one of our family trees. In the end never did but it’s a good idea.

My friends have done this. He was Anderson and she was Wright. On marriage they became Ander-Wright and their children have that surname too.

Friends of mine did. It was second marriage for both and she had exact first and middle name as the first wife so they tagged the first few letters of her maiden name to his surname and both changed their names to that.

I really like the idea,really good to hear of other experiences.

The problem is that our names don't mesh well - everything I've tried sounds a bit silly so far.

I like the idea of using an old family name, I have one that's been passed down the line as a middle name.

Someone I know did it for their kids. They hadn't got married but gave their children a merged version of their names, and it worked well. Wouldn't work for all names though!

We kept our own surnames, the children have my surname with H's surname as a second middle name. They wouldn't have blended or double barrelled well.

I've kept my name and my dh has kept his and we are in the process of double-barrelling our dd's name - we love in a country where we couldn't just do it from birth! I really wish we had combined names though now - ours actually combines really well and makes us sound like a Gabe of Thrones clan so I'm gutted that we didn't do it!!!

We did it 36 years ago. Still sane name today. Still pleased that I didn’t lose my surname. However some people think you’re toffee-nosed. And difficult for kids to do the same.

When our children were born it was in my pre feminist awakening days when it's safe to say I was both highly naive and steeped in unacknowledged internalised misogyny. We aren't married but I gave them his surname, assuming that one day it would be my surname too) . It never really bothered me until one day it did, massively. Over the years of discovering first MN then FWR I learned a lot about where the origins of my negative feelings about my last name came from - the idea that it wasn't really mine but just borrowed from my father, for example. Thanks to the many threads here discussing it (which I lurked on but never contributed to) I had a big reconciliation with my own name and finally claimed it as part of my identity. For many reasons I've since become ambivalent at best to the idea of marriage so it won't be happening any time soon, and even if it did I would no way change my name. So instead we changed the kids names by deed poll to be a double baralled version of both our names. Since my partners name was already double barrelled he chose half to contribute to the surname, and the other half became a second middle name.

Yes, we have given the DCs a new surname which is a combination of both our names. Both names are single syllable so it works well as a two syllable name (along the lines of Jonesmith).

DP and I have kept our own names, although in theory we like the idea of changing to the kids' name but we are too lazy. We do use the kids' name to refer to ourselves collectively as a family.

People often assume it's double barrelled (fair enough, but not when the FiL gets it wrong after 12 years!)

I think it's great, and a really good solution.

Oh and we've not had any problem registering each of the DCs with their new name. The registrar in each case did not bat an eyelid. There's no legal problem with it.

I know a couple who did this when they got married (pre kids). It worked for them to merge half and half from each of their own surnames to create a new one.
I think there was some raised eyebrows initially but more because you don't really hear of people doing it, but no negativity. And years on don't think anything of it now.

I know one person who has done this and i did raise my eyebrows because the surname is ugly but that's meaningless judgement that someone could think of any name. No weirder than taking male surname or double barrel.

My child has my surname as a middle name and people sometimes think we've forgotten the hyphen but no other reaction as far as I know. We used male surname as partly it didn't particularly worry me and partly because we are living in my country of origin so it felt fair to give my partner the chance to use his name as it reflects his nationality.

t will become more usual to blend names as double barrel can only work for one generation really.

I was tempted to suggest it. Me and DH's names blend quite well together into the name of a plant.

I won't give our names but it was the equivalent of him being called "Black" me "Thornberry" and creating "Blackberry", although the real combination sounded more like a surname than Blackberry does.

I didn't suggest it though because DH's dad would have hated it. He is very "traditional" and an added complication is that DH is adopted so it would feel like he was giving up the name that they gave him 🤷‍♀️

Thanks for all the replies it's really interesting to hear what others have done.

So true that for those that raise eyebrows now they'll quickly forget. I have to think quite hard to remember the maiden names of some friends who've taken their husband's names (a bit of a shame really). It is funny how entrenched in certain traditions some otherwise opened minded people are.

We do have the added complication that we are of different nationalities and our child has two set of docs. I think the rules on this are different in my partner's country of origin. However, I think I'd we changed it here the other country would have to just accept the changes. It's the legal/practical issues around this I'm most concerned with,

I can't help but wonder what's going to happen when a double-barrelled kid marries another double-barrelled kid.

Joe Smith-Roberts marries Sally Thomson-Price.
Do they take half a name from each, to become the Price-Roberts, for example? And does that piss off the parent whose name they don't take ?

(Just a silly Sunday musing)

We’ve all got different names in our blended family and it’s inconvenient when making dental check up appointments for everyone at once but otherwise not a problem.

Some friends of mine researched their individual family trees and looked for common names or those with similar linguistic roots or meanings. The one they picked is lovely and the historical element left neither set of parents disappointed. I think they got their parents involved in the research phase so it was a whole-family project.

@NotMyFIrstTIme it happens already in Spain so they have rules about it.

blog.myheritage.com/2011/07/spanish-naming-conventions-%E2%80%93-part-1-the-basics/

The Portuguese do similar but with different rules so they can end up with 4 last names.

As my last name originates from this part of the world my DC having two last names doesn't look odd.

My other half took my name when we got married. Not because of any feminist ideals, more because it's what we wanted to do.

It did cause a few raised eyebrows and comments about breaking tradition but both our families were really pleased that we did it that we and so are we!

We merged our surnames before our first child came along (a few years after marriage) and are really glad we did it. We got some negative reactions from family but they got over it, and friends (and the world in general) were really supportive. People can tell we're done something unusual because they can see our 'maiden' names (it's a bit trickier for husband as there's no word for him!) reflected in our new surname (for example when we are doing name changes etc) and we've both had lots of people ask about it and several tell us they're going to go home and talk to their partner about how they could do it too. I'd really recommend it.

Thanks @ColaFreezePop - I knew, in general terms, about the practice of 2 names but never knew there were rules for it.

We do have the added complication that we are of different nationalities and our child has two set of docs

This is going to be the fun bit. I met someone who was Greek, married to a Serbian, living in France when she had her child.

The child basically had 3 different names (3 different rules, 3 different alphabets). Travelling with him was an adventure for her.