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Baby Names
jupiterthecat
member
hyphenated last name-- need middle name?
jupiterthecat
member
in Baby Names
I'm still very early and am only at the stage of wistfully ruminating about baby names. But one thing that my husband and I have decided is that we'll hyphenate the baby's last name-- I kept my name when we got married, and we'd like to give our baby the hyphenated name MyLast-HisLast. It just so happens that our names sound awesome together, so it's not like we're saddling the kid with some horrible, awkward moniker for the sake of egalitarianism. My question is, given the double last name, middle name or no middle name? The baby would already essentially have three initials. Plus, if it turns out that the kid finds having a hyphenated surname to be a horrendous albatross, I do want them to have the option of shifting my last name to a middle name. But, I do like the idea of using a MN to honor someone in our family-- and hate to give up the opportunity to choose another name! Thoughts? Anyone else doing this?
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Re: hyphenated last name-- need middle name?
If you don't want your last name to possibly get 'lost in the shuffle', so to speak, I'd actually give LO your last name as a middle name instead. Esp if you have a daughter. When she gets married, she may drop the entire last name. or if she and her DH decide to do some kind of hyphenated name, most likely a part of this name will end up getting dropped (and that could happen to if you have a son).
Obviously people have all kinds of different experiences and takes on this, but I'm just passing on my friends experience as food for thought:
In H.S. she actually made the choice to hyphenate her name to include her fathers name. She went from Smith to Smith-Dow. Long story short, it became an albatross!
She would say "Smith hyphen Doe" when telling people her name. She was asked all.the.time "How do you spell hyphen?". Uh.... o.k. So then she started saying "Smith dash Doe". she still got the same question!
When she got married, I wondered if she would change her name. She CHOSE her last name - it was important to her. What was she going to do? She couldn't wait to get rid of it. Simply because it was hyphenated! Her married last name is long and harder to spell (her maiden name was almost as simple as Smith-Doe!), but it was still easier w/o having to contend w/ "can you spell that?".
Again, just food for thought!
~Benjamin Franklin
DS dx with celiac disease 5/28/10
My best friend and her husband have a hyphenated name. Their kids have no middle name because they decided it was too much name to saddle on a kid.?
FWIW, I didn't change my name after marriage either. Our daughter has my last name as her middle. Giving her my family name was also to honor my Dad who died a few years ago.?
?Good luck with your decision.
This for sure.
I worked in college admissions for a while, and I've got to tell you that, clerically, hyphenated LNs are a nightmare. Keep in mind, too, that your child's LN will be shortened to the first initial of the first LN (so Kate Williams-Anderson would be Kate W. on paper, not Kate W.A.).
I would definitely use your LN as a MN for all of your children to preserve it. Like PP said, it will make life a lot easier if your daughters want to hyphenate their LNs with their spouses. And it won't be a clerical nightmare.
My last name is an albatross all on its own. I kept my last name when I married, and my baby doesn't have it at all -- not as a middle name (yuck!) and not hyphenated, which would sound ridiculous.
If you WANT to give your child a middle name, go ahead. I don't think it's any more troublesome with an easy hyphenated last name than it is with a long-ass, difficult last name. But if you don't, there's no law saying you have to.
I really don't understand the prevailing argument on this board that your daughter will "lose" her middle name when she marries. That is probably the third most common choice of married women, after taking their husband's last or just not changing at all. I know dozens of women who haven't taken their husband's last name at all, and of the women I know who have taken their husband's last name, I know only ONE who has converted her maiden name into a new middle name.
Judging by what I see in urban areas, by the time our daughter's are old enough to make this choice, they won't change their names at all. Additionally, she might never get married, or her husband might take her name, or she might drop her "given" middle name in order to re-hyphenate her name making one of the original hyphens a new middle name, or so many other variations that planning for it before she's born is rather putting the cart before the horse.
Thanks for all your thoughts. We're definitely hyphenating, though-- that's really not up for debate. If I weren't concerned about my privacy, I'd share our names, and you'd understand-- they go great together! I'd hyphenate myself, except I have publications, and my husband is strangely unwilling to hyphenate, and I think it's something we should either do together or not at all. I can understand that a lot of hyphenated names are annoying, but that isn't the case here. And even though we debate about them a lot here, middle names are rarely used in real life, and I want my family name in a place of greater prominence. I don't have any brothers or cousins with my last name, so it's in danger of dying out this generation, and the name means a lot to me. If I have a daughter, she can do whatever she wants when and if she gets married. If trends hold, she'll probably keep her name, since I did and everyone in my family has. And if my kids tell me, when they are old enough to make such a decision, that they despise the hyphen, I will fully support them moving my name to a MN.
Anyway, back to the MN question, thanks for the thoughts-- any more opinions?