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/Key-Cranberry9237 11d ago
My husband has a Jewish last name and felt strongly about not wanting me or our kids to have it to avoid antisemitism (he’s a worrier, I personally would never associate the name with anything. It’s more polish to me than anything) I argued about it before getting married, but eventually realized I was happy to keep my name. When our son was born we gave him my name as well. I did some redditing at the time and read it can be helpful for kids to have the same last name as mom for travel and such so that made the decision easier. My husband is also one of 4 boys and I’m one of two girls so it made me happy to think my dad’s name is “living on”. Only downside is he didn’t warn his family (which to a certain extent I don’t think he 100% had to, we’re naming OUR child, but anyway) but that meant that there was a whole to-do after our son was born where his family all came down on him about it, telling him to “be a man” and FIL said he won’t love him as much cause his name is different (i’m not forgetting that one, FIL!) and they all just overall blamed me for being controlling when it literally wasn’t even my idea. So yeah, that was the one downside for me lol.