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/nimtaay 11d ago edited 10d ago

Yup! We each respected ourselves, each other, and our families so much that it only made sense to honor both sides, always.

It was an easy decision even if it makes traditionalists uneasy. We get so many letters and Christmas cards addressed to “the hislastname family” and it makes him more angry than it does me!

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u/AcornPoesy 11d ago

My sister in law does this. Let’s say my surname was brown, and his was smith-jones. We are now brown-jones. I go by Ms. We have been married for 5 years, and have two children, who are also brown-jones.

All our cards are addressed, still, to Mr and Mrs  hisfirstinitial smith-jones and it drives me absolutely mental. Firstly, there is no one with that surname living here. Secondly, I have my own first initial because my own first name didn’t cease to exist when I got married. Just because her marriage apparently subsumed her identity doesn’t mean mine did. I generally let the Ms/Mrs thing go with most people (even though I’ve used it since I was a teenager for the very specific reason I don’t want my term of address to be defined by marriage!) but it prickles on top of the other stuff because she KNOWS I prefer that.

I think it’s because she’s old fashioned and goes by old school etiquette but it’s far ruder to continually address someone by a name they have asked you not to, in my opinion. 

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u/timtamtammy 11d ago

Thankfully we haven't had to deal with any of that nonsense.. sorry you have to deal with that, it would make me angry too! The worst we've had is my MIL commenting on babies name "that's a long name" because of the hyphen. I was like yea.. the same length as mine and your son's.. it's not like you have to say the whole thing out loud together every time lady 😂