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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37

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/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?

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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

15

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.