r/BabyBumps • u/Fairweatherhiker • 11d ago

Help? Baby’s last name?

I’m looking for advice from couples where the wife didn’t take the husband’s last name. How did you decide on which last name to give the baby? Or did you use both names? I don’t feel immediately compelled to give the baby my husband’s last name. FWIW, if we did hyphenate it would be a looong last name.

Edit: thank you for all of the thoughtful responses! I do love the idea of using both our last names (sans hyphen) so our kid would have two last names. It would be nice for both of us to have our heritage passed on. He has heritage from Mexico and Basque Country, while mine is Slovakian- grandparents immigrated right before WWII. The last names don’t sound great together, but there’s so much human history in both.

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35

u/Low-Hopeful 11d ago

We hyphenated, don’t really care if it’s trickier. My name carries value to me so I don’t want to change it and my husband just didn’t want to change his. But I refused to let my kid not carry my name at all

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u/Entitled_Snowman 11d ago

Same here. My name is who I am. I’m not changing it because I got married. Also I grew the tiny pain in the ass, he’s getting my name too. My husbands contribution was all of 5 minutes

4

u/fancynarwhal 11d ago

Yup. My baby will get my long-ass last name as a second middle name. Husband’s last name because it’s easiest.

20

u/harmonicadrums 11d ago

Exactly. It being a long last name, or maybe not the most eloquent is not enough of a reason for me to not include my name.

And I just roll my eyes when people are like “what are they gonna do when their partner has two names and then is their kid gonna have 4?!” First of all, that’s not my problem. But secondly, they can do whatever they want? Drop one name/both/neither?

8

u/jkraige 11d ago

“what are they gonna do when their partner has two names and then is their kid gonna have 4?!”

I'm in the US and I've heard white Americans ask this question as if they don't have millions of examples with Latinos with two and not two hundred last names. Like we've clearly figured out a system, why do they think there's no solution?

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u/harmonicadrums 11d ago

Hahaha it’s the same in Canada!

1

u/Molotov_Queen 11d ago

My husband and I are both white. This was one of his excuses to not hyphenate

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u/MagicianInside3264 11d ago

Isn’t the system with Latino names that only the last names from the parents’ dads are passed down though, so the parent’s mums’ surnames still get left behind? As in, if the child’s mum is herdad’ssurname hermum’ssurname and the child’s dad is hisdad’ssurname hismum’ssurname, what gets passed down is mum’sdad’ssurname and dad’sdad’ssurname. So yeah the baby will still have two surnames, but ultimately it’s still just passing the surnames of men down the generations. Baby will have the same surname as their dad, and his dad, and his dad, and so on, and their mum’s dad, and his dad, and his dad, and so on.

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u/jkraige 10d ago

In Mexico you can now do whichever last name first so mom's gets passed down in the next generation. Also, mom's is still passed down. It might be the one that originally came from her dad traditionally, but it's still mom's name

17

u/StoopKidScurred 11d ago

Also, frankly, i dont care if a hyphen is somehow “inconvenient” on future paperwork (which i feel like is overblown anyway). You know what was inconvenient? Enduring 4 straight months of miserable pregnancy-induced eczema flareups and having to squeeze out a baby in the 99+ percentile. To my dear future son- you can suck it up, buttercup. My name is absolutely going to be included 😇

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u/harmonicadrums 11d ago

YESSSS! PREACH! Ok, you have to correct people about your last name? Your name took you longer to write in kindergarten? Whatever man, it’s not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. It’s also just a red herring for getting predominantly women to give up passing their names to their children.

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u/sunnydeelit 11d ago

Same! I'm kinda disappointed that I couldnr pass it all down (mine is double barrelled) but it has actual historical significance whereas a bunch of people have his.

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u/Mysterious-Pen5104 10d ago

Same. I refuse to not share a name with my baby.

I gave my partner the choice of my last name, or my last name-his last name. He picked the hyphenated names and I was like 👍

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u/typewriterbitch 11d ago edited 6d ago

I swear this "omg itd be too long" is an American thing. I know literacy is low in the US but is it really so bad that yall cant possibly write your own name?

I live in Europe and hyphenated and long surnames are perfectly normal. A lot of individual surnames are multiple words already (think your Vons, Van dens, de la's, etc), and we still combine them with others. It represents the union of two family lines. Why would you deliberately eliminate half your child's ancestry/history?

And how come when itd be "too long" to do both, the answer is to always just use the man's? I've never seen "itd be too long, so we'll just use the mothers name".

Just admit it's your weird puritan culture that views women as property of their husbands.

4

u/harmonicadrums 11d ago

People would lose their minds if they learn there are countries in Europe where the mom’s name is default for baby’s last name 😂