Two last names or a hyphen?

I worked in an OB/GYN office for 8 years and honestly the patients with hyphenated names would drive nurses nuts in terms of looking for charts! I would just make sure whenever ur doing business with anyone make sure u make them aware that your name is hyphenated and give them both names. You'd be surprised how many people forgot to do that and a lot of time was wasted looking for charts, etc.

For what it's worth: I am taking FH's last name but will use both professionally for a little bit. Once people associate me with my new last name (or I change jobs, let's be honest), I will drop my maiden name and just go by my new last name.

But I'm counting on people dropping my maiden name because it will be unhyphenated. So you may want to hyphenate if you're intending to keep both.

@DesertPolarBear my best friend and her hubby did that, too. All of yeti wedding stuff used the new one to arrest gettng people used to the idea. It worked!

I think the hyphen makes it more of one last name versus not hyphen the first last name gets lost

FH and I are both hyphenating, and our new name will be: Mine-His.

I'm not sure how it works legally. But I was not given a middle name. So I am keeping my last name as my new middle name and then my FH last name will by mine as well. Do what works for you. It just felt right to me.

I ditched my middle name, moved my maiden name into middle position, and added DH's last name as my legal name.

Eventually, it got to be too much trouble (not always enough room) to use the maiden name, so now (for non-legal purposes) I use that as a middle initial. I figured without the hyphen, it would be easier to drop the maiden name.

My FMIL has a hyphenated last name (her ex husbands last name and her husbands last name....... ) and people only call her by the first last name and so does she. The second one gets lost all the time.

FH and I are both hyphenating, but our last names fewer syllables and 6 and 8 letters.

If we had last names as long as yours, I would probably want us to both take mine as a second middle name and use his as our last name.

FH has 2 middle names from birth, the second one is his mom's maiden name.

Combine both of them. I know of a couple who did that. It shows unity between y'all.

You could combine and come up with a new last name. I had a friend who was going to do that. For example: Anderson and Yackley = Anderley

I have a hyphenated last name because my parents weren't married when I was born and both wanted to be represented in my name. Honestly my whole life it's been kind of an inconvenience. My name is different everywhere, my social security card only has one of the last names on it because of how someone filed it, my insurance card runs both names together like one long one, my doctors office has my file under the second last name instead of my first one, and any school has always had it in the right order. If you decide to hyphenate I would definitely make sure it is on file the same way everywhere important because it can be hard to keep up with what name to tell different offices when you need to schedule an appointment or get records. Plus no matter how many times I tell everywhere the right way to put my name in their systems (even if I show my birth certificate where it's right) it never actually gets changed to my correct name.

I personally think taking my FH last name hyphenated would be like it's temporary.. my brothers will carry on my last name. I will carry on my FH last name. I may feel different if I was an only child, or didn't have brothers.

I plan to hyphenate my last name when I get married. That has been my plan since I was a younger lady. My son has a hyphenated last name and my daughter has a hyphenated middle name. I just love the hyphen!

I have two last names just like most people from Puerto Rico do. Moving to the US everything was hyphenated automatically. So I don't think the difference is huge.

I'm doing Jenna middle name my last name-his last name. I'm not sacrificing my middle name and I feel like I still have my identity. I will go by Jenna his last name if it's not on a legal document

View Quoted Comment Cant you only name your children after the parents? Pretry sure youre not allowed to just make up a last name for your kid. You and/or your husband would have to as well

View Quoted Comment

That probably depends on the laws of wherever you live. For example, I live in Texas and the law specifically says that the child's last name does not have to be either of the parents' last names.

View Quoted Comment I was thinking about doing the same thing! I’m torn between two last names with no hyphen or just changing my middle name to my maiden name. I want to keep my maiden name in some way and I’m not sure the best way! I know I don’t want to hyper though

View Quoted Comment *hyphen (it wouldn’t let me correct the original haha)