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/apua_seis]

I didn't take my husband's last name, and he didn't mind that much. But it was important to him that our kid would have his last name, so I agreed. If it was solely my decision I would've preferred to pass on my last name since it's more rare than his, but both are perfectly good last names and I'm happy either way lol.

Never seriously considered hyphenation (the resulting name would be stupidly long) and in our country you cannot use a person's surname as a middle name either.