{"id":14861,"date":"2020-07-30T08:11:13","date_gmt":"2020-07-30T12:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=14861"},"modified":"2020-07-30T15:12:22","modified_gmt":"2020-07-30T19:12:22","slug":"baby-naming-issue-alternating-the-parents-surnames","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2020\/07\/30\/baby-naming-issue-alternating-the-parents-surnames\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Naming Issue: Alternating the Parents’ Surnames"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hello Swistle,<\/p>\n

I’m about 14 weeks away from my first baby’s due date. At this point, my husband and I have a general plan for first and middle names (we do not know what the sex of the baby is). My question is about last names.<\/p>\n

My husband and I both decided not to change our last names when we got married. Interestingly, we both have rather uncommon last names. I’m an only child and do not have any first or second cousins that share my last name (though distant cousins do exist). My husband has a sister but like me, they do not have any cousins or 2nd cousins with their last name.<\/p>\n

I’m really excited to give one baby his last name and another baby my last name. While I don’t think my husband would have come up with this idea on his own, he is warming up to the idea.<\/p>\n

I’m curious to hear how other families have done this. If life goes as we’ve planned up to this moment, we’ll have two children (one at a time) and the first will share a name with their dad and a second will share a name with their mom. What happens if there are twins with a second pregnancy? Or if parents decide to have an uneven number of children? Or if a second pregnancy isn’t possible? We could expand it even further to families who welcome older children.<\/p>\n

Thanks for your insight,<\/p>\n

Molly<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Oh, this is so fun to think about. I think I can tell you how I would have done it if Paul and I had gone this route:<\/p>\n

\u2022 The first baby would have had my surname, because if we ended up having only one baby, I would NOT have been pleased to have it look as if our plan was to give kids their dad’s surname. And also because I would want to counteract any feeling that the dad’s surname was more important and should be used first. And also because I would want to make sure the plan went ahead as planned—as opposed to getting pregnant with the second child and having my husband argue that at this point it would be easier\/simpler\/better to just keep giving children his surname. I wouldn’t want to have been counting on getting my turn, and have my husband change his mind.<\/p>\n

\u2022 While not specifically locking down what we’d do if we had twins (unless fertility treatments made multiples highly likely, I’d consider that a bridge to be crossed when we came to it), I’d want to at least touch on the topic ahead of time to make sure we were thinking similarly. I find that while my first impulse is to name them just as if they’d been born singletons, so that one would have my surname and one would have Paul’s, my heart wants twins to have the same surname. I don’t know what I’d do about that.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The possibility of an uneven number of children is another reason I would want to use my own surname first; I would keep that reason close to my chest, but would think of it as putting the teeniest tiniest weight on the mothers’ side of the balance scale, for all the vast number of children who have been given their fathers’ surnames. I think if the couple KNEW ahead of time that they would have, say, three children, they might want to compensate for it in some way with honor names: that is, if the mother’s surname would be used more often, use more honor firsts\/middles from the dad’s side. Since even careful\/certain plans are uncertain when it comes to having children, I think my plan would be to try to balance things as we went along: when we used my surname, we’d err on the side Paul’s preferences and Paul’s side of the family for first\/middles, and vice versa. That way, even if we had three children or, say, five, things should end up roughly balanced.<\/p>\n

\u2022 If we were to later have welcomed older children into our family, I think what I would want to do is (1) add them into the pattern as they would have been named, but (2) if we welcomed a sibling group, perhaps give them the same surname as each other. So for example, let’s say we had our first baby and used my surname; then we had a second baby and used Paul’s surname; and then when those babies were 3 and 1 we brought a 5-year-old into the family: I would think we would use Paul’s surname for that child, since then their name fits into the family pattern. (I would likely want to use my surname as the 5-year-old’s middle name.) But if when the babies were 3 and 1 we brought 5-year-old and 7-year-old siblings into the family, I would be stymied as I am with twins. Maybe it makes the most sense to give the 7-year-old my surname and the 5-year-old Paul’s surname, but I feel the same reluctance as I do when considering different surnames for twins. Well, again, unless there was a strong likelihood of this possibility occurring, I think I would check in to make sure we shared basically the same feelings on it, and then put it into the Cross This Bridge If We Come To It category.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I am having a lot of fun thinking about this now. Rob would have had my surname, and so then we would have used the name William for him: Rob was an honor name from my side, used to balance the use of Paul’s surname. Well, except we were much less motivated to use the honor name William, and used it almost entirely to balance the use of the name Rob, which I VERY MUCH wanted to use. And Paul had almost no desire to honor any of his family members (except William), and I had a LOT of good people I wanted to honor, and Paul didn’t feel strongly about balance. So ACTUALLY I think Rob would have had my surname and then we still would have used Rob. And then William would have had Paul’s surname and we still would have used William. Oh but then twins!! Okay, if we had KNOWN we would later have Henry, which we did NOT know, then I would have felt perfectly happy using my surname for both twins, knowing we would use Paul’s surname later for Henry. But NOT knowing about Henry, I would have been pretty stressed: it’s one thing to have an odd number of children, it’s another thing to have three kids with my surname and only one with Paul’s!<\/p>\n

Well! What does everyone else think THEY would have done, if they had decided to alternate surnames? And of course, those of you who DID alternate surnames (or know people who alternated surnames), we are hanging on your every word.<\/p>\n

[Edited to add:<\/strong> A note to commenters: The question is how it would be done \/ how we would do it \/ how we have done it or heard of it done. The question is not whether we personally like the idea \/ whether we personally would do it \/ whether we personally think patriarchy is good, actually.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hello Swistle, I’m about 14 weeks away from my first baby’s due date. At this point, my husband and I have a general plan for first and middle names (we do not know what the sex of the baby is). My question is about last names. My husband and I both decided not to change […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3RH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14861"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14863,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14861\/revisions\/14863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}