My friend and i were discussing this:
If you were getting married and didn’t want to keep your own surname but didn’t really care for your spouse’s either, how open would you be to inventing your own?
What would you think if someone you knew did this?
I know a couple who did this! I don’t think they’d mind if I said it here, since I’m complimentary of their decision…if they had taken his name it would have been Kruger. A lot of people just don’t like that surname from the distaste of horror movies and stuff. It’s also tough for naming and she is a big-time namer who predicted her baby name about three years before it broke wide open. Instead they went back, I believe into both of their family histories, and they found the last name Vining in there somewhere rather recently. They switched to that and everything sounds great with it. Their names and their kid’s name both immediately took on a cool and trendy chicness.
I’d loooove to do that, or to do the portmanteau invented surname some people do. But I believe DH’s family would make our lives even tougher. If they didn’t disown us or else just live the rest of their lives offended and insulted and hating and excluding us. Actually, maybe it’s not such a bad idea! 
As someone who is interested in tracking genealogy and family history, I think that entirely new surnames will cause a whole lot of confusion in pretty short order. Within just a generation or two – especially as future generations follow suit and invent new surnames – I fear that family heritage will be so obscured that it might be just about impossible to discover. That’s a real tragedy in my mind. Choosing a surname from family history may lessen the confusion, but I still see the risk as very strongly present.
I think taking on a mother or grandmothers maiden name instead of choosing one sir-name or the other is rather sweet. ([name_m]Even[/name_m] combining the two sir-names to create a new one. I don’t know if I would just choose a random new one though). This is actually something I would consider as I’m not psyched about my SO’s very, very common LN and I have a feeling he wouldn’t love the idea of dropping his for mine.
I know a couple who did this. It seems vastly preferable to a woman bowing to the forces of cultural coercion and sacrificing her own name.
I don’t understand inventing surnames. At all. I think it’s kind of silly, and the thought of a couple chucking hundreds of years’ worth of family history out the window by adopting an “invented” surname makes me shudder. I can get on board with hyphenating and using mom’s surname instead of dad’s, but inventing? Yeah, definitely not for me.
All such good points. I love genealogy too. I would want to hope that with how well documented we are in the modern day, stuff like that can be kept pretty obvious. We have tracked people developing and changing surnames for hundred of years on scraps of paper kept in filing cabinets. Surely we can do the same with modern technology. Families like mine who immigrated to [name_u]America[/name_u] have had their family names changed multiple times sometimes. But you guys know all that from doing it as well, southern.maple you at least I can identify as American and perhaps having gone through that sort of transition 
Also, a fun way to think of it (although I know on Nameberry people are quite traditional and averse to “kreigh8ivity”) is that many surnames developed to tell folks apart when we all had the same name in a small area. Lots of times they would get changed even if the head of a household shifted their trade. We all have much more carefully tracked long series of names these days, with ID numbers and other things to help identify our personhood, so we are more free than ever to maintain our history while making a change.
Still, I do see what you guys mean…I don’t think I could ever do it. Maybe if I divorce my first husband and I loosen up about it all and care less about hurting the next one’s family. Hahaha. I am a strange combo of traditional and not, so I feel like an alternate universe version of me would be a huge advocate for this. It really equalizes the marriage in a way. I already identify my friends by their new last name.
My husband and I did this, in a way. Rather, we’re still in the process of doing it because the legal system doesn’t exactly make it an easy transition.
My dad was adopted by his stepfather, so my maiden name has no significance to our family history and I’ve never been attached to it. My husband’s last name is a one-syllable word name that I wouldn’t consider particularly attractive and has the same -aw vowel sound as my one-syllable first name, making the two together quite a mouthful. He wasn’t particularly attached to his last name at the time…so when we came across a beautiful, unusual name that had a lot of powerful personal and spiritual meaning to us, we decided to take it as our new name when we got married. We loved the symbolism of both of us creating a new name together the way we were creating a new life together and a new family, rather than one person giving up their name and their life to assimilate into the other’s.
Well our very traditional conservative families were NOT thrilled. Apparently his family name can be traced back several generations in this area, and the idea that he was leaving that behind, in addition to the idea that we were taking an entirely new name, really upset my future in-laws. After much discussion, we decided to take the new name and hyphenate with his last name. In that way, we’re honoring his heritage and family history while still staying true to the symbolism and meaning of choosing a new name for ourselves. It wasn’t my ideal outcome (and I found out later that the family was not as okay with the compromise as they claimed to be at the time), but I think it set a good precedent for our ability to discuss our wishes, weigh the opinions and input of others, and achieve a successful, workable compromise.
I definitely think the new name sets us apart and says a lot about our identity as a couple, and I don’t regret the decision one bit! Despite all the paperwork, government red tape, and financial hassles of changing it, haha.
Bump! 
That’s awesome. That’s how I feel as well. But torn, because I love our last names in their…way. Hahaha!
We didn’t invent one, but we are changing our surname to a really cool one we’ve both got on our family trees. We thought that was a nice touch, I didn’t want to take his, he didn’t want to take mine (it’s not very pretty), and I was kind of sad my daughter didn’t share my surname. So this was the best option. We’re going through the process now.
I’m shocked that so many Berries are into genealogy work. It’s something I don’t give a fig about. My mother changed her name to my father’s and deeply regrets it. She’s since changed it back, but my sister and I still have his name. I wish they had agreed on another surname and given it to me and my sister. While I am attached to my surname now, since it connects me to my beloved grandfather and my Jewish heritage, I would still rather have a different name that was shared with my mother and which didn’t represent so much strife for my family.
I actually seriously considered combining my boyfriend and my last name. I really don’t like his last name and he won’t consider taking mine (some manliness thing I think). But while my parents probably wouldn’t mind the idea, his parents would most likely think it completely ridiculous. The whole last name thing after marriage has really been stressing me out lately…
Well… My cousin changed it to the ‘main’ family-name, since his then-fiancée disliked both their names. So he switched to that, and tadaa they got married. Pretty ironic, since my grandfather, the man my cousin is named for, died a week prior to the wedding. But there’s still one with a copy of his name around.
Many members in the family have switched to it, since it is more unique. I was so lucky to be born with it. My father was also the only son between girls - a reason why there’s so many cousins switching to my last name. It’s also fairly new. My great-grandfather and his wife changed their surname.
I’m kind of a history buff so I think for me, I prefer a name that occurs throughout history and isn’t a recent invention…but I love it when other couples do this, and I think that name changing should always come with a discussion and never just be what everyone assumes you have to do. It’s interesting what you figure out about yourself as you think through the various options.
I tried to convince my husband and he said no! His surname is long & it’s spelling is different than the sound of it. I had no connection to my own & had considered changing it for years. But when I tried to convince him to pick a new one with me he refused because he’s Jewish and in his family history the name had been changed various times to avoid religious persecution or perhaps even forcibly by his country at one time, so it was a sore subject and his family members would surely take it to heart and be very upset if we did it…so even though my husband is an atheist he is strongly against changing the name!
I really really wish my fiancé would be willing to do this. I have a very uncommon, very Germanic last name that I truly love despite no one being able to spell or pronounce it (it has an absolutely fantastic meaning and i love the connection to ky family), but he’s very “traditional” (read absolutely refuses to entertain any idea other than me taking his last name). I really dislike his incredibly common last name because to me it symbolizes a lack of any real history and connection anymore because it is so common (think top 10 most common) as opposed to my own where if you live in the US and have the same surname we’re definitely related.
I would love to either hyphenate our names or take an entirely new one either from our family trees or one with meaning as, at least to me it would be far more meaningful than being one of millions with the same last name (such a common surname also makes naming harder!). Unfortunately hyphenating would make our name six syllables and almost 20 letters so it’s not a good option, and my fiancé is far to mysogynistic (just kidding!) to consider other options.
That’s honestly appalling. Your fiance is being unreasonable, and the fact that he’s so stuck on this issue is both regressive and troubling. Fight for your name! You love it, keep it.
I think it’s a lovely idea. I’m very into genealogy as well, but I don’t think coming up with a new name will make it terribly difficult for future generations to find their ancestral roots, at least, not any more difficult than it already is. Most women change their names anyway, so why not the man as well? There will be a record with the courts that it happened, and that’s one of the best starting points in finding family, official records. I suppose if every generation for 200 years picked a different name when they got married, it would start to get messy, but I don’t think that’s likely to happen. I’m in the process of changing my surname to a name I made up (with help from berries) and am finding it to be a much bigger undertaking than I was prepared for. I don’t think I’ll ever change my name again, I’m done. My boyfriend has often said he’d change his name to mine or one we made up if/when we get married, so I guess I’m lucky to have an unconventional sweetie pie. I’ve heard it’s more difficult for men to change their names through marriage than it is for women, which is truly sad.
I sometimes wonder if I’d want to do this.
My problem is that, while i love my family connection, i don’t really love my surname itself. Its Dutch in origin and hard for people to pronounce and doesn’t have a pretty sound or meaning. I fully plan to take my husband’s surname when i marry.
But since there’s no prospect of a husband right now, I’ve sort of just come up with my “ideal” surname that sounds cool to me, which is either Nightshade or Baudelaire. And my names now sound so perfect with those (for real, picture a little [name_f]Imogen[/name_f] Nightshade, amirite?) that the reality of [name_f]Amy[/name_f] other name almost seems a little disappointing.
I really enjoy learning about genealogy, so I’d feel weird doing it, as if i was turning my back on family…but if my future husband had a surname that clashed or sounded bad and we were both into the idea and no one in the family was offended by it i think i would do it
I took my husbands name when we got married, but my boss at the time did this :).
My maiden name started with McC and so after I got married he just added the McC in front of my new surname and that’s what he’s always called me. I actually love it and kinda wish we’d done that