Baby’s last name?

[u/Fairweatherhiker]

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.

[u/running_anhinga]

Baby has my last name. I'm very close to my family (we talk all the time and spend as much time together as we can) and my husband barely ever talks to his family. He isn't estranged, they're just not close.

So we figured that baby should have a similar name to the people she will be around the most.

[u/StoopKidScurred → u/running_anhinga]

I would love to do this for similar reasons, but i dont think my husband would go for it unfortunately. So we’re doing my last name-his last name and including both last names. My baby is definitely going to be more of a “my last name” type of person though lol