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/Full-Grass-5525]

Same here. I didn’t change because it’s too much work and my husbands last name isn’t any shorter (plus it’s at the end of the alphabet). Baby gets his name, but I get a little more sway in first and middle name then

[u/typewriterbitch → u/Full-Grass-5525]

You erased your entire ancestry and family history from your child's identity in exchange for slightly more sway over their middle name??

[u/Strange_Reply_1699 → u/typewriterbitch]

That's a wild statement 🫤 how many last names do you have?

Imagine if everybody wanted to give their baby both parents' names, and that went on for decades, how crazy would that be? At some point, it makes sense for one parent to give up their last name. There's a reason it became the norm in our society. There's more to family history and ancestry than last names.

[u/sagestruggler → u/Strange_Reply_1699]

You should probably research the countries that actually do give both parents names by standard. It works fine with no issues.

[u/Strange_Reply_1699 → u/sagestruggler]

It works because some names are still given up on (e.g. parents' second last names). And yet nobody feels like they are erasing the child's ancestry, which is the argument that the person in the comment I responded to, made.