If you and your husband both have different hyphenated last names, what last name do you give the kids?

Question

For example, your name is Mary Jones-Smith, and your husband's is John O'Boyle-Carter. You can't name your child Britney Jones-Smith-O'Boyle-Carter, can you?
If you have personally experienced this, please share with me what you have done. I am writing an article on it. Thanks!

Answer 1

pull names out of a hat. rock-paper-scissors works too, best two out of three.

Answer 2

It is according to where you live. There are no laws in the U.S. on how these names are done. I don't know about Britain.

Now in Hispanic countries,it is a legal requirement but they do it differenty. If your name was Jones-Smith, in Hispanic countries that means your father's name was Jones and your mother's maiden name was Smith. Your husband's father name would be O'Boyle and his mother's maiden name would be Carter. When you married you would drop your mother's maiden name, Smith and push Jones to the right and put your husband's name O"Boyle in front and your and your children would then be O'Boyle-Jones. That is until your daughter got married and she would drop Jones, push O'Boyle to the right and put her husband's name in front.
Our newspapers puts obituaries in alphabetically. I had a hair dresser form Peru and she gave her father's name like they do in Peru. The paper had it alphabetized under his mother's maiden name because they saw the name the way it is done in English speaking countries where people put the mother's name followed by the father's name.

It is proper always to address people from Latin America with double surnames by the first surname, not the last surname.

Answer 3

Oh the dreaded hyphens. What tangled webs we weave with those.

Why not just give the kids the father's name? Or, all of you take the father's paternal name only and cut down on the confusion. Anyone can go to the court house and change their name so it wouldn't be hard to do to simply things for the kids.

It would sure help the genealogist alot when they start researching years from now, too.

But whatever you decide, give all the kids the same last name so people won't think they're illegitimate ~ the kids at school will tease them if a rumor gets started, and you know how people are, so put your pride aside and think of what the kids might have to endure from their peers. Adults can handle it but kids get hurt easily.

Answer 4

Maybe pick one of each name - like the kid could be Bob Jones-O'Boyle. Then if they have a second kid, it could be Lucy Smith-Carter.... Or, just use the Dad's name.

Answer 5

Save the children the heartache of learning all those extra letters in kindergarten. Give them one surname and use the rest for middle names. My kids have 2-3 middle names each...saved all their arguments with their daddy and grandma. I've typed birth certificates of kids with as many as 8 middle names. Only the County Clerk and Social Security Administration knows them all...

Answer 6

Take the preferred name out of each hyphenated name and hyphenate those. For example: Britany Smith-Carter.

Answer 7

Drop the hyphens and then use your unhypenated surname as your children's middle name; for instance, if you are Mary Jones-Smith, give all your sons and daughters the middle name of Smith. In parts of the American South, girls sometimes receive their mother's maiden name as their middle name; for example, my mother's middle name is Dougherty, her mother's maiden name. Similarly, one of my paternal uncles was named using both the first and surname of my grandmother's father, so his middle name, Dickerson, was also her maiden name.

This type of practice works quite well--John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Franklin Delano Roosevelt both have their mother's maiden name as their middle name.