Last Name Dilemma

General Name Discussion
1

My boyfriend and I aren’t close to marriage, but we have discussed it. And with that comes the last name discussion. He assumed that I would take his last name. I never liked the idea of giving up my last name for someone else’s, and the fact that I really don’t like his doesn’t help either. I told him this, and he got kind of defensive, saying he would never consider changing his to mine and that the kids would definitely be getting his if I refused to take it. I suggested combining ours and he said “maybe” and I let it go because I didn’t want to get into anything. But it’s really been bothering me ever since. I don’t like his, he doesn’t like mine. We discussed hyphenating but both of ours are 8+ letters and 3 syllables, so that would be quite a mouthful. If I keep mine, I’ll have a different surname than my kids, and I don’t like that either. I don’t want to bring it up with him again because it did really upset him (and me). I always thought it would be a more minor thing, but apparently it’s more complicated than I expected. Did anyone else have this problem?? What did you do??:confused:

2

I wish I had an easy solution for you, but I don’t. I’m currently engaged and our conversation about last names was eerily similar to the conversation you described, so you’re not alone in the struggle.

The only potential solutions I can suggest are:

  1. I know a family where girls got mom’s surname and boys got dad’s
  2. if he doesn’t want to hyphenate you still can (be Mr. [name_m]Jones[/name_m] and Mrs. [name_m]Smith[/name_m]-[name_m]Jones[/name_m])
  3. You can move your maiden name to a second middle name
  4. You can give all your children one of your surnames and the other surname as a middle name
  5. As you said you an combine names or pick a new name either out of your family trees or just something meaningful

I hope this helps. It helped me to think through my various options.

3

Thank you for your suggestions :slight_smile:

4

My married last name sounds AWFUL with my first name (both fn and ln end in the -nee sound and together they slur or sound a bit like a sneeze). I still took it because it’s important to me to have my whole family have the same name. I break it up with my middle name often. You could give future kids 2 middle names and just make the second one your maiden name.