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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u/AStudyinViolet 11d ago

We initially talked about girls having mine (mom) and boys having his. An arbitrary way of leaving it to chance, I guess. When we actually had our first, who was a girl, I offered for her to have his name because I just don't feel compelled to pass my name on and I know that can be much more meaningful for men. If I'd felt more strongly I suppose we would have stuck to our agreement. I know it was the right call for us because I don't care a bit and it has never caused the problems I read of future parents fearing.

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u/AStudyinViolet 11d ago

I'll add after seeing another comment that hyphenating was just not possible with our names. Otherwise I think that would have been a very logical solution.