What's in a name that which we call a rose?

May 27, 2012 8:50 AM

Would an adopted child take on both parents surnames in the case of same-sex parents?

Is there some sort of general rule of thumb among same-sex parents when giving their surname to an adopted child? If John Smith and Davey Jones adopted baby Mary. Would she then become Mary Smith-Jones? Let's assume that John and Davey are not married so neither one of them has taken the other's name. What then of Mary?

posted by cazoo to Grab Bag (31 answers total)

There are as many ways to bestow surnames on children as there are families with different preferences about the matter. Some do the hyphenation, some do different names for each kid, some do portmanteaus, some flip a coin, some pick the more melifluous name, some pick the name that's easiest to spell, etc. There's no rule of thumb for couples with different last names, really, regardless of their sex or marital status.
posted by decathecting at 8:52 AM on May 27, 2012 [16 favorites]

Agreed on decathecting's comment.

In my admittedly small experience, though, I'd say that most of the kids I've known have hyphenated names. Think about how hard it is to prove a kid or partner is "yours," in small and large ways. Some places are much worse than others. Having a name that reflects your own name makes it that much easier to say, "I'm Judy Smith, and I'm here to pick up my kid, Sally Smith-Jones." Even hetero parents who don't have the same name as their kid run into this issue sometimes.
posted by Madamina at 9:00 AM on May 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

I don't think there's any rule of thumb with a biological child, either. The genetic connection (to one partner) doesn't make the child that partner's child and not the other's, or more one partner's child than the other.
posted by needs more cowbell at 9:03 AM on May 27, 2012 [3 favorites]

What decathecting said. Also, I'm not seeing how the kid's adoption is relevant. By the way, we're a same-sex couple with a (non adopted) baby, and all three of us have the same single barrel last name. We know lots of different gay families in lots of different circumstances who have chosen many different permutations, lots of straight couples who've chosen different family name options too.
posted by crabintheocean at 9:03 AM on May 27, 2012

It's up to you, but as a child with a hyphenated name who shared names with no one, I just ask that you don't do that. I'd much rather have had a shared single name (preferably with both parents, but at least with one of them.) People are forever messing up my name, and I had issues with "I don't really belong anywhere, I don't really have a family that's mine, I am alone in the universe" thoughts when I was a kid, and the name thing didn't help with that.
posted by SMPA at 9:06 AM on May 27, 2012

No rule of thumb that I'm aware of, and even if the parents are not legally married, they very well could share a surname.
posted by insectosaurus at 9:11 AM on May 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

I have a friend named Sven Booker (not his real name). He married a woman named Jane White (nhrn). Being of Swedish extraction, he named his first son Bjorn Svensson.

It has nothing to do with the gender of the parents, nor are there laws governing it.
posted by IAmBroom at 9:18 AM on May 27, 2012

Yeah, people make it up as they go along. I know kids of both straight and gay families with hyphenated names and at least one family where the mother didn't change her name but the kids took the father's last name (as I understand it, in Texas there are practical reasons for this, although I've never actually asked as to their specific motivations.)
posted by restless_nomad at 9:39 AM on May 27, 2012

It's pretty common among straight couples where I live for the mom to keep her name while the kids' take the dad's name or sometimes a double-barrelled name. I don't think it has anything to do with same sex relationships.
posted by Chaussette and the Pussy Cats at 10:00 AM on May 27, 2012

I don't know anyone in this specific situation, but I do have unmarried hetero friends who are giving their child a hyphenated last name. A bonus of the hyphenated last name is that it helps at school and doctor's offices when the parent has the same (or almost the same) last name as the child. Semi-related, I had a friend change her name 4 years into marriage specifically because the pediatrician's office always got confused that her last name was not the same as her child's and then she started worrying about what would happen if there was an emergency and would the hospital not easily recognize that she was the mother because her last name was different, etc.... Hyphenation would help in this situation because either Mom Smith or Mom Jones could easily say, hey look I share a last name with Baby Smith-Jones.
posted by echo0720 at 10:24 AM on May 27, 2012

This isn't really particular for same-sex couples or for adoptions.

Personally, I'm not a fan of the hyphenation thing -- I mean, for me, if other people want to do it that's great -- because it's untenable in the long term. What happens when John Rhys-Davies has a kid with Catherine Zeta-Jones?

What I feel is a neater way to do it, but unfortunately I don't think I've ever seen it done, is to build an entirely new last name by meshing, rather than simply concatenating, the two original last names. For example, if I were one of the parents of John Rhyz-Davies, I would have argued for the name "Ravies" instead. Not necessarily just for the kid, either - potentially for me and the other parent as well.
posted by Flunkie at 10:42 AM on May 27, 2012

This isn't really particular for same-sex couples or for adoptions.

I think it is. Though I may be wrong, I am actually unaware of any states that allow two-party adoption by unmarried same-sex couples. The child would be adopted by one parent and therefore carry that parent's name. The child would effectively be ineligible for a hyphenated surname. (See)
posted by DarlingBri at 11:58 AM on May 27, 2012

DarlingBri, adults can change their own names or their child's last name using the state name change procedure (usually pretty simple, and the same process same sex couples who can't legally marry often use too). When I changed my own name, most of the folks in court that day were families changing their child's last name to better reflect their family (to match a new step-parent for example). It might take an extra step (as does second parent adoption), but kid can have whatever name the parents choose.
posted by crabintheocean at 12:04 PM on May 27, 2012

The child would effectively be ineligible for a hyphenated surname.

DarlingBri, please cite the law that you assume prohibits a parent from determining their own child's name.
posted by IAmBroom at 12:40 PM on May 27, 2012

DarlingBri, please cite the law that you assume prohibits a parent from determining their own child's name.

There is no such law I am aware of, after your child is adopted and legally yours.
posted by DarlingBri at 1:13 PM on May 27, 2012

There are centuries of tradition in many language communities for compounding surnames. In the English-speaking world, the custom for two parents with compound surnames is to hyphenate the patronymics of each parent to create the child's surname. So Chris Doe-Smith, child of John Doe and Jane Smith, has a child with Terry Roe-Jones, child of Richard Roe and Susan Jones; if Chris and Terry follow customary usage, their child would be Brook Doe-Roe.

Catherine Zeta-Jones isn't a great example; that's a stage name that she took because there were other Catherine Joneses. Zeta is the first name of one of her grandmothers, I believe. Her children with Michael Douglas have the surname of Douglas.

In my circle of friends, the same-sex couples with kids have all hyphenated their surnames and given that surname to their kids. Almost all of my opposite-gender married friends each kept their own surnames and gave their kids one of the parents' surnames--usually but not always the dad's.
posted by Sidhedevil at 1:30 PM on May 27, 2012

I hope this isn't a derail, but DarlingBri, it is entirely possible for a newborn baby to be given the name of a non-biological parent who is not its legal parent. My closest friends, we'll call them Sherry Pierson and Trina Potts, have two children who are Sherry's biological children. Their oldest son is alo Trina's legally, but because of a change in the law in our state, they have not been able to do a second-parent adoption for their second child.

Both children were given the last name Potts at birth, meaning that their oldest child was a Potts even before his adoption, and their second child is a Potts even though Trina is not her legal parent. Likewise, when we took legal custody of our daughter, we gave her the name we chose, both first and last, though she was still "Baby Girl Birthmother's Last Name" on legal documents until the adoption was finalized. But at no point did anyone give us any guidelines about what limitations existed on our choice of names, which suggests to me that there are none. We could have kept the name the birthmother gave her, both first and last, if we had chosen, even though the last name wasn't the same as ours (or, we could have hyphenated the birthmoter's, birthfather's, and both our names: Fox-Harris-McGuffy-Gunderson).

Perhaps it is different elsewhere, but my understanding has always been that parents can give their child any name they choose at birth. And to answer the original question, both opposite-sex and same-sex parents of my acquaintance use a variety of strategies for naming their kids . My friends gave the babies the non-bio mom's last name in order to signal her maternal relationship to people, for instance.
posted by not that girl at 1:34 PM on May 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

One clarification: prior to the finalization, documents like the court order for legal custody showed the name we had given our daughter, along with a series of a/k/a:

Ourdaughter Snapdragon

a/k/a Summer McGuffin

a/k/a Baby Girl McGuffin.

So the court at that point basically recognized the name we had given her although the other names weren't dropped until the finalization.
posted by not that girl at 1:37 PM on May 27, 2012

When Dan Savage and Terry Miller adopted their son, they gave him his birth mother's last name.
posted by KathrynT at 1:56 PM on May 27, 2012

I think it is. Though I may be wrong, I am actually unaware of any states that allow two-party adoption by unmarried same-sex couples. The child would be adopted by one parent and therefore carry that parent's name. The child would effectively be ineligible for a hyphenated surname.

Not permitting two-parent adoption by unmarried couples (whether same-sex or not) is a separate issue from changing the surname of the adopted child. But in the article you linked, the couple already shares a last name. They wouldn't even need to risk an awkward conversation with a stubborn judge in order to give all the kids the same family last name, regardless of which parent legally adopted which kid.

There's not necessarily an automatic name-change for children when adopted, though. Certainly this more common with older children who already have a sense of identity linked to their birth name, but the assumption that the name should be changed immediately upon legal adoption is not necessarily a given even with infants.
posted by desuetude at 1:56 PM on May 27, 2012

Sorry, I have not expressed myself well in this thread. I will come back and try to be more coherent when not on a stupid phone.
posted by DarlingBri at 2:24 PM on May 27, 2012

Among my same-sex partnered friends with children (adopted or otherwise), it seems most common to hyphenate the two last names, usually by deciding which order of names sounds better -- in other words, they just decide if they like "Pritchett-Tucker" or "Tucker-Pritchett."

Sometimes specific issues come into it, like if one parent is going to be mostly at home and dealing with the schools, maybe the kids will share a name with that parent. Or maybe the couple is accepted by John Smith's family, but not Davey Jones's, so they go with "Smith" for the kids. Or maybe this is the only Jones family grandchild but there are 47 little Smiths running around, so they go with Jones. Or a few of my friends have chosen NOT to pass on their last names, and use their partner's instead, because they hate having to write out an 18-letter Central European with no vowels and constantly explain how to pronounce it and try to spell it over the phone!

"The child would effectively be ineligible for a hyphenated surname."

There is no eligibility for surnames in the U.S., hyphenated or otherwise. (The couple in your link appears to have the same last name anyway, yes?) There is no law that you must share surnames with your relatives, nor that you must be related to everyone who shares your surname. You can name your kid Banana Nut-Bread if you want, although in the case of a name-change-during-adoption, the judge reviews it and a name change for a minor has to be not-traumatic for the minor. So you probably could not change John Smith to Banana Nut-Bread (despite your right to name a newborn something so stupid), but rare is the judge who would say, "You, John Doe, are adopting Baby Sam Snead, and have a non-marital partner named Joe Doe (who is not currently adopting because of the laws of our state, and want to change his last name to Sam Roe-Doe -- no, I'm not going to allow that."

(Similarly, if you are an unwed mother named Sally Smith and the father who refuses to acknowledge the child is named Date Nut-Bread, naming your child Banana Nut-Bread does not automatically confer paternity or any requirements of paternity on Date Nut-Bread, nor does naming him Banana Smith automatically bar Date Nut-Bread from claiming paternity. The law just doesn't work that way anymore.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:34 PM on May 27, 2012 [2 favorites]

I belong to a large queer parents group (100+ families) and the most common approach I've noticed is to hyphenate the parents' last names if there are two parents. But there are also many variations, including a newly invented last name (which might combine two parents' names, if there's a pleasing combo to be had [more pleasing than Mary Jith or Smones :)], or might be freshly made up).

There was no real way to make a pleasing hyphenate for my son, who has three parents, especially because two of us coincidentally have really similar last names. So each of us got to choose one of his names (first/middle/last). First honors one of his grandparents; middle is a meaningful word; and last is just one of his moms' last names, unaltered.
posted by kalapierson at 2:52 PM on May 27, 2012

My daughter has a different last name than me; she has her father's name. She's almost four and been through all of the normal bureaucratic stuff of early childhood, doctor's visits, two preschools.

I've never had any issue with her having a different name than me. I say, if I have to call the doctor for instance, 'Hello, this is Terrible Llama, I'm calling about my daughter Ornery Giraffe' and I've never had a single person question me. I can't remember anyone even blinking or faltering.

For whatever it's worth.

I don't think there is an overwhelming standard. My experience is it's flexible.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 3:39 PM on May 27, 2012

I gave birth to a baby boy seven months ago. We gave him my (female) partner's last name. So even though she's not on the birth certificate, and in fact is in no way legally connected or obligated to him as far as the State of New York is concerned, he has her last name.

We did this for a couple of reasons: I wanted him to be as much "hers" as he was "mine" from the very instant he was born and this seemed like one significant way to indicate that; he needed someone's last name; we didn't want to hyphenate, nor did we want to choose a new family name; her last name is also my dad's mom's maiden name, so it wasn't without meaning for me, either.

But the OP's question strikes me as interesting because it's asking about "adopted" children of same-sex couples, as if there are any other kind. As far as I know, all children of same sex couples must at a certain point be adopted by the non-biological parent if that parent wants legal rights and recognition. This is true even in states that allow both same-sex parents on a birth certificate -- New York does, for example, if you're a legally married same-sex couple. But a birth certificate is a health record, not a legal document, and doesn't actually confer or compel parental rights.

So you have to do what is called a second-parent adoption, which in our case required us to get a lawyer, ask friends of ours to write letters attesting to my partner's fitness as a parent, have a social worker come to our apartment to evaluate us, and, for my partner, get fingerprinted and have a thorough background check. In practice, this has been a little bit expensive and kind of a pain (my partner just went to the courthouse to get fingerprinted for the third time because the machine keeps not reading her fingerprints) but not too bad; in principle it offends me beyond belief.

From what I know, which is admittedly not much, there's an additional process if a lesbian couple uses a known donor, which I think involves that person terminating his parental rights; and the same for gay men who use a surrogate or otherwise have a biological child. But here I am treading into dangerous territory because I don't know much about it.
posted by janet lynn at 7:18 PM on May 27, 2012

DarlingBri, please cite the law that you assume prohibits a parent from determining their own child's name.

There is no such law I am aware of, after your child is adopted and legally yours.

DarlingBri, thank you for admitting your stated position was wrong.

Your new implied position is still wrong, though: I was adopted at age 2 weeks; my birth certificate has my adopting parents' last name on it. There is no law limiting how a child may be named, period, at all, in the US, except that it must not be struck down by a court judge - and this is such a rare action that Prince was able to change his name to an unpronounceable symbol.
posted by IAmBroom at 9:18 AM on May 28, 2012

There is no law limiting how a child may be named, period, at all, in the US

Not so much: "Currently, state laws restrict parental naming rights in a number of ways, from restrictions on particular surnames to restrictions on diacritical marks to prohibitions on obscenities, numerals, and pictograms." See pages 165 - 167, particularly for restrictions on surnames for unmarried mothers.

So here was my thinking:

In RI or South Dakota, for example, if Jane Bloggs and Joe Smith have a baby and are not married, the infant must bear the surname Bloggs; the infant cannot bear the surname Smith or Smith-Bloggs or Bloggs-Smith.

So this was my thinking: let's say Jane Bloggs and Josie Hernandez adopt a baby. Because there is no same sex marriage in SD, the adoption is done as a single parent adoption with Jane as the adoptor. If the infant's name is changed on adoption, I believe that the baby must be named Baby Bloggs on the new birth certificate, and cannot be named Baby Hernandez or Baby Bloggs- Hernandez. (I have no idea if the name must be changed at all but I'm not sure clarifying that will help answer the OP's question.)

I am 100% willing to be wrong here, or maybe I'm over-complicating this, but that was my reading.
posted by DarlingBri at 9:58 AM on May 28, 2012

Except that to further complicate what's already kind of a derail, several states which do not have gay marriage do permit same sex couples to jointly adopt (and many others don't clearly ban it). New Mexico is one of them.
posted by crabintheocean at 1:03 PM on May 28, 2012

OK, DarlingBri, I'll give you that one. I haven't ever heard of such restrictions, and I was overeager in my claim that no restrictive law exists.
posted by IAmBroom at 7:30 PM on May 28, 2012

The (hilarious) sitcom Modern Family has this exact dynamic - the same sex couple has an adopted daughter with a hyphenated surname.
posted by namewithoutwords at 7:12 AM on May 29, 2012

In some states it's possible to have a same sex partner recognized as a parent via a birth order instead of adoption. If one partner gestates the other partner's egg, NY will now permit an order of maternal filiation for the genetic mother and the gestational mother is recognized by law. Since an order of filiation is a court ruling, it should be ok on the full faith and credit front. These are definitely developing areas of law and still fairly few and far between, and of application in limited situations, but there are starting to be alternatives to adoption.
posted by Salamandrous at 6:34 AM on May 30, 2012