This is one of my favourite curiosities about other feminist parents. And this is what we did.
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We hyphenated our kids’ names for many reasons, least of which is that we can’t get married and wanted their names to reflect their connection to both of us. That said, sometimes I regret it because neither of our last names were easy to pronounce or spell on their own. Together, they are crazy! Also, my partner’s name is an example of hypens gone wild. Her name goes: first name, middle name, hypenated last name from mother, hyphenated last name from father. ha.
Your partner’s name sounds very unique! Both my parents have double last names, as mandated by Spanish tradition, and I have a double last name which consists of each of their first last names (also following tradition). So my name has a manageable length, but the downside is that my entire name is fairly common — there are several of us in the phonebook!
genderkid, I really like the Spanish tradition, and your perspective.
My partner is Portuguese.
I hope our kids hook up with hyphenated types from Portugal like you did so their kids can go hyphen crazy too.
We went with secret option D (E? F? losing count …): create a new last name for the child, just like we made up his first and middle names, arbitrarily. If he has siblings, we’ll use the same last name for them, but it’s not shared with either parent (or a combination of our names). We thought people would freak out about it, but my grandmother just remarked happily “I didn’t know you could do that …” and teachers/doctors/etc. don’t bat an eye. It’s been the right choice for us, cheerfully embracing the arbitrariness of naming.
Oh, but when I was pregnant, a colleague became extremely agitated about the whole plan because “then your child won’t have an identity.” This argument continues to amuse me to no end. Like, Noah’s wandering around going, ‘whooooo ammmmm Iiiiiiiiiiii? I am noooothingnesss ….’
Our daughter has my surname. It was actually my husband’s suggestion, which was utterly delightful – no arguments!
I know it was my father’s name – patrilineal and all that – but also it’s my name. It’s the name I grew up with, worked with, write with, live with. I love that she shares it.
Her middle name is a family name from my husband’s side, so we honoured his family in that way. I’m actually a fan of family names so I was very happy to do this.
I admit, despite understanding and taking on board the range of views on this (that Feministe thread was particularly enlightening about colonialist and other baggage tied up in names) I do find it perplexing that most of my married friends changed their names and passed the father’s name onto the children.
One friend has two sons: the firstborn carries his father’s surname, the second his mother’s. She’s had a lot of comments about how when they are at school no one will know they are brothers (as if this is somehow a terrible problem) but mostly people think it’s a good idea. Good compromise when hyphenation’s not your thing. Don’t know what they’ll choose if they go back for a third baby though!
It is fascinating to read everyones approach to this. I refused to get married, despite all round encouragement and bafflement, so obviously still have my surname. As an aside – I want to understand why women still change their name (or get married in the first place) but I just simply Do Not Get It.
For some reason that strong feeling was not present when naming our kids. They both have my partners surname and I must say I like the feeling of being an individual entity that is passionately committed and devoted to my partner and my family but at the same time an island. Not sure if I am expressing my position very well, but thought I would attempt to explain how some women end up following the patriachy on this front.
When we got married, I would actually have changed my name, but it’s actually not allowed in the province where we were living at the time. You can’t “assume” your partner’s name on any official documentation; you can change it legally, but marriage is usually not considered a good enough reason to do that. Of course no one has any say in what you call yourself socially, but oddly enough, in the 30-some years this rule has been in place, it seems to have become part of the culture. Most of the women I talked to were puzzled as to why you would want to change your name at all.
I thought that was bizarre and annoyingly over-legislated at the time, but by the time we moved back to somewhere more “conventional” on this score, I didn’t want to change my name anymore, and was in fact a little puzzled as to why I had wanted to in the first place.
When we talked about having kids, I got to thinking, “why should I be the only one in my family with my last name?” So we agreed that of our two planned kids, one would have my name and one would have his. Then the question was which one goes to the firstborn. So we figured we’d use the baby’s sex as a coin-flip: girl would get my last name, boy would get his – and then the second child would get the other name, boy or girl.
So my one-year-old daughter has my last name, and the next baby will have his.
My two children have the hyphenated option (my surname-his surname was most euphonious). And no middle names, cause the surname is pretty unique in our neck of the woods, and long enough as it is! We are not married but even if we were I would not change my surname. I have friends who have kept their surnames, married or not, but the kids still have the father’s surname and I just don’t get that.
My brother is in the same boat and his kids are her surname-his surname (incidently, her ex-husband’s surname, which she kept for various reasons). I kind of like that our children’s surnames intersect like that!
In Iceland where I live, the children normally get the fathers first name with the addition of xyz-son (for the boys) or xyz-dóttir (for girls). Some women choose to take their first names for the last name build-up, but its quite rare. As I am german our kids have my name as a last name in germany and his forename-lastname-construction as a middle-name and the other way round in iceland. Sounds complicated?
I like that in the Nordic countries the last name does not really count anyway, you always use the first name, even in formal correspondence.