Which is less annoying: two last names or a hyphenated last name?

April 4, 2023 4:52 PM

Which is less annoying: two last names or a hyphenated last name? I'm female, my kids have my last name. My male spouse is changing his last name to include mine. Is hyphenated or unhyphenated easier under the circumstances?

I don't think aesthetics are a concern at all, just pure practicality. He's changing it so that he shares a name with the kids, so in case of travel and emergency there's no question that they're related.

His last name is 7 letters and mine is 11, so a hyphenate is really long. I know the issues associated with that to some extent. Would a non-hyphenate be easier? Is there any difference between the two? If you've changed your name as an adult in this regard, what has been your experience with either of these options?

posted by Knicke to Society & Culture (49 answers total)

Spouse could just take your last name. Hyphenated or two last names can be annoying especially if they are long or hard to pronounce/spell.
posted by VyanSelei at 4:57 PM on April 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

I think a hyphen makes it a little clearer that it's a single last name, vs a First Middle Last situation.

Also, I would imagine almost every computer system allows a hyphen in the surname, whereas some may be poorly designed and disallow spaces. (See: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names)
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 4:59 PM on April 4, 2023 [34 favorites]

Unhyphenated last names run the risk that one will be mistaken for a middle name. E.g., David Lloyd George.
posted by kevinbelt at 5:01 PM on April 4, 2023 [8 favorites]

My husband and I hyphenated and I’ve spent the last 18 years explaining it to people on the phone. My friends who use a space find that the first name is dropped a lot. They’re both logistical nightmares because nobody expects them and systems aren’t built to accommodate them. I’m sorry!
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 5:02 PM on April 4, 2023 [19 favorites]

Hyphen makes it clearer what is last vs middle. I have two middle names, one being my maiden name, and people get confused sometimes.
posted by soelo at 5:02 PM on April 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

Blue Jello Elf, neither my bank nor the underlying airline systems can handle a hyphen. I have so many aliases. I’m so glad you cited that article though!
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 5:03 PM on April 4, 2023 [8 favorites]

Having worked at a bank - both options are pretty suboptimal. If you’re inclined towards hyphen, just smoosh the names together without one. If you are inclined towards two last names, he should just take your last name and use his as a middle name or drop it.
posted by Bottlecap at 5:07 PM on April 4, 2023 [5 favorites]

With two last names, the first last name often gets dropped. Mr Foobar Bazly in some systems, Mr Bazly in others. Surprisingly difficult for people trying to look up restaurant reservations. Eventually we just went with the single last name.
posted by troyer at 5:08 PM on April 4, 2023

Okay, I'm not answering your question, so you all can flag away if you'd like. But: I am of a different race than my children, and we have different last names. I don't look anything like them or have any apparent connection to them without a birth certificate. And this has been fine.

I would think carrying a birth certificate on travels (I lived abroad and have traveled with them a bunch and have done this) would be easier than changing your name. I'm a super feminist so fully support your spouse doing this, to be clear. But he could even carry a couple of birth certificates around or keep them in a memorable spot for emergencies if he's worried. Because that seems much easier than the logistics and hassle of a name change to a non-standard name.

Are you imagining a situation where he shows up at an ER with an injured kid, and the ER refuses to treat the child because your husband doesn't have the same last name?
posted by bluedaisy at 5:08 PM on April 4, 2023 [4 favorites]

I have a co-worker with two last names - say, Jane Elizabeth Smith Jones- for anything that requires entry into computer systems, she says her last name is SmithJones, no hyphen and a capital on the “J”. Seems to work.
posted by Silvery Fish at 5:12 PM on April 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

My wife uses unhyphenated. and it's generally not a problem. If it doesn't fit in a Last Name field, she just goes with the last last one. But on government documents etc. It's clear it's her last name.
posted by transient at 5:14 PM on April 4, 2023

Unhyphenated last names run the risk that one will be mistaken for a middle name

Even hyphenated, I can't imagine that Bojack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg doesn't have to constantly correct folks about his last name.
posted by SPrintF at 5:16 PM on April 4, 2023 [4 favorites]

My sister is Suzannah Smith-Jones.

About 1/3rd of people call her Suzannah Smith-Jones. Another third use Suzannah Jones. The remainder call her Suzannah Smith. So if you want any chance of the double-barrel version of the name ever being used, go for the hyphen.
posted by DarlingBri at 5:17 PM on April 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

My wife tried it unhyphenated. But almost nobody, even in professional settings, respected and used the first part of her last name (i.e., her maiden surname) -- only the second part (i.e., my surname). She found that pretty annoying, so she added a hyphen.

Perhaps it's worth noting that this was over 20 years ago, in the South. Depending on where you live, it may not be such an issue now.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 5:19 PM on April 4, 2023 [5 favorites]

Also I really wouldn't worry about the length. Nobody struggles with Tara Palmer-Thompkinson.
posted by DarlingBri at 5:21 PM on April 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

My mother attempted unhyphenated and eventually gave up and went to two middle names, which computers also don't like, but was less hassle.
posted by hoyland at 5:36 PM on April 4, 2023

My husband and I hyphenated and I’ve spent the last 18 years explaining it to people on the phone. My friends who use a space find that the first name is dropped a lot. They’re both logistical nightmares because nobody expects them and systems aren’t built to accommodate them.

One hundred percent this. My legal last name is MyLastName Partnerlastname. A major medical company that dominates our area has a database that can't handle hyphens, so in that one I'm Mylastnamepartnerlastname. It's 12 letters long.

On my driver's license, I'm MyLastName-PartnerLastName, because their system can do hyphens but not spaces in last names.

And in a lot of systems, the people in charge put me in as PartnerLastName. So when a receptionist can't find me in the system, I have to be like, "Look under X...try it with a hyphen...with a space...with neither."

A huge pain in the ass and I am looking forward to going back MyLastNameONLY soon.
posted by Well I never at 5:39 PM on April 4, 2023 [8 favorites]

I like to think of myself as feminist and am generally willing to call someone by whatever the heck name/pronouns/whatever they want.

That being said, I had never heard of or considered that "NAME1 NAME2 NAME3" could mean that LASTNAME = "NAME2 NAME3". I mean, it's right there in the label. . . it's your LAST name (not your last two names). I mean I would change once you asked me, but you'd for sure have to ask me.

So if you want people to know that NAME2 NAME3 is your last name without having to be told, then I would vote with sticking the hyphen in there to connect them.
posted by tiamat at 5:39 PM on April 4, 2023 [13 favorites]

Assuming you are in the US: My Hispanic students have nightmares with bureaucracy when it comes to their two last names. Hyphenating and treating it as one name seems to work better than not, but they still sometimes run into situations where their names don't match in different systems, and it creates a nightmare that of course doesn't exist in Latin America, where two last names is expected. At some point, US bureaucracy will catch up with the rest of the Americas, but in the meantime, I vote for hyphens.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:43 PM on April 4, 2023 [19 favorites]

I worked with many databases/membership directories in my career, and for me, if a name was hyphenated, it made it clear how to alphabetize the name. If there was no hyphen, it was all but impossible to tell whether that was a middle name or the first of two last names. So I had to make the decision to treat it as a middle name. Go with the hyphen.

Or he can do as women do sometimes and make his old last name into his middle name and use your name as his last. That would solve all your problems.
posted by hydra77 at 5:46 PM on April 4, 2023 [4 favorites]

When we got married we made my spouse's birth last name our second middle name and a variant of my birth last name our last name. We gave our kids the same second middle and last. I like the second middle name as it's easy to use or omit as the situation calls for.
posted by arrmatie at 5:53 PM on April 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

I have a coworker whose new last name is his spouse's old name and his old name, combined without a space or hyphen. It's really the most practical solution when it comes to computer systems.
posted by larrybob at 5:53 PM on April 4, 2023

I never changed my name, my children have my ex-husband's last name. There was never a problem. But, it is a lot cheaper and easier to change your children's last names to the other name, than to change the husband's. In the long run, both parent's chosen names are on the birth certificates. Both parent's names can be on passports too, we pay enough for passports, they should at least do what they are supposed to do,
posted by Oyéah at 5:57 PM on April 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

My nieces and nephews, who are all under 5 and who go by FirstName MiddleName DadLastName MomLastName, are (well their parents are) already finding out that DadLastName is getting dropped a lot in their daycares and swimming lessons and such. Go with the hyphen.
posted by cgg at 6:06 PM on April 4, 2023

Here is what I WISH I had done, so I am offering it to you as a gift.

You keep your name -- it's yours. Your husband keeps his -- it's his.
You come up with a NEW last name for your kids.
Then you hyphenate YOUR name, so the burden is on you not them.

So, let's say your last name is Smith, your husband's last name is Jones, and you choose the name Fun for your kids.
Your kids would be Firstname Fun. Easy.
You would be Firstname Fun-Smith (or Smith-Fun).
Your husband would be Firstname Jones-Fun (or Fun-Jones).

That way you all share a name, and yet you and your husband keep your individual identities. And you don't have to worry about the burden of hyphenated names for your children -- you've taken that problem from them. And you get to choose a great name!

Win-win-win, I wish I had thought of it before.
posted by heavenknows at 6:10 PM on April 4, 2023 [8 favorites]

I have to work putting names into a database that has two fields. First name and last name. Hyphenated is much easier to discern that the first last name is not the middle name and that it's one name. If they're separated I have to use my best judgement and I'm sure I've gotten it wrong on occasion.
posted by downtohisturtles at 6:24 PM on April 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

We don’t call them last names in my area - they are called “Family Name”, because for some people the first part of their name indicates their family and, as noted “last name” implies there is only one word.

Hyphens are not a problem in any databases I have encountered, but no hyphen can be confusing when verbally said. I am in the habit of CAPITISING the family name to indicate it is the family name.
posted by saucysault at 6:47 PM on April 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

My assumption (as a hyphenated last name person) is that if you have a hyphenated last name, that's an intentional choice by you or your parents. If you have two last names, I'd assume you are from a culture that has a naming system along those lines (the most prominent example being Hispanic).

Various systems (government, airlines) sometimes don't handle hyphenated or double last names well, but it's common, so the work arounds are no big deal (e.g. I buy airline tickets with the hyphenated last name that's on my passport, but my boarding passes say Namename and no one bats an eye).
posted by ssg at 7:29 PM on April 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

I have a single last name, let's say it's "Lopez". So does my wife, let's say it's "Anderson". My kids' last name is hyphenated ("Anderson-Lopez"), with her last name first, for multiple reasons - she carried the kids, this order sounds better, and her last name starts with A and she wanted to pass on her "alphabetic privilege".

Some notes on this experience:
- computer systems are surprisingly unable to handle hyphens; they usually seem to smush the names together, sometimes capitalized like AndersonLopez, sometimes like Andersonlopez.
- since it's hyphenated, people generally seem to get that it's one name.
- one thing I didn't anticipate is that my wife's last name sounds like it could be a first name (as far as I know nobody actually uses it as a first name, but it sounds kind of like some common first names). So every so often I'll be asked for the kid's last name, I give it, and they think the kid's full name is Anderson Lopez.
- the hyphenated name (9 + 4 letters) is not too long for "last name" fields - but both kids have seven-letter first names that get truncated to six letters by our pharmacy when they're printing on the pill bottles. You're starting at 11 + 7 so this sort of truncation is more likely to be an issue.
- I don't think anybody that interacts with us around the kids has called me Mr. Anderson... but the veterinarian has. I'm okay with this.
posted by madcaptenor at 7:35 PM on April 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

Just chucking out there the solution of a couple I know: their surnames were Newport and Greatbatch, so they both adopted the surname Greatnews.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 10:03 PM on April 4, 2023 [10 favorites]

Our kid is hyphenated and it works about as well with databases as others have commented, but databases do a terrible job for even common names and people want to call you all kinds of things other than what you are anyway. (Don’t get me started on being a married woman with a doctorate whose spouse has a different last name). Go with what floats your boat because people will be difficult regardless.
posted by Peach at 1:19 AM on April 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

I have 2 last names (with a space) and I wholeheartedly wish I had chosen a different option. The ONLY place that has my name 100% correct is my passport. I spend so much time saying "Well, it might be under your system as belladonna Name1 Name 2, but you can also try belladonna Name 1 or belladonna Name 2."

I've given up & use Name1 professionally (because I wanted to remain the only belladonna Name1 at the company where I'd already worked for a decade, rather than one of a dozen belladonna Name2) and I use Name2 when dealing with the kids' schools. (I also wish we'd given the kids Name1 rather than Name2 or just picked a new, shared family name, but that's a whole other issue.)
posted by belladonna at 3:43 AM on April 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

I tried two last names with no hyphen, and gave up after a year or so because everyone dropped the first one. With a hyphen, it was better but still annoying.
posted by LizardBreath at 4:14 AM on April 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

Mod note: Comment removed. Please stick to answering the stated question, thanks!
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 5:01 AM on April 5, 2023

I appended my husband's last name and made my maiden name my middle name; I'm an academic and I publish under my full name (First name MiddleName LastName). I've run into the opposite problem where people treat the names as LastName1 LastName2 instead of MiddleName LastName; for official things I have to be explicit (e.g., journal publishing I need to include a note about which name is which; I need to jam the middle name in with my first name to get it printed on badges for conferences, etc.)

So the non- hyphenated is definitely ambiguous in the US context!
posted by damayanti at 5:47 AM on April 5, 2023

My partner has a spaced last name, and I can tell you one specific way that it is a problem is that one of the three credit agencies (I don't remember which one) can't do it, but they also giver them a runaround whenever they try to enter it without a space or just use the last last name, because that's not what their identifying documents say. Which made freezing their credit and later unfreezing it a huge pain.

Previously their passport had the names smooshed, but I think that got updated in the last few years and it now appears properly there.
posted by solotoro at 6:43 AM on April 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

I changed my last name after my divorce to one with a hyphen, my mother's family name-my dad's family name. A lot of people still only use one or the other, it's like they are ignoring the hyphen altogether. I'm not too bothered about it. At least neither of the names people use belonged to my cheating ex.
posted by poppunkcat at 6:45 AM on April 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

Also, I would imagine almost every computer system allows a hyphen in the surname, whereas some may be poorly designed and disallow spaces.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahha. You must not have a hyphenated last name. As I noted here:

Personally, I'm all for hyphenating, but I WISH TO FUCKING GOD that the internet would get up to speed on this. So many web forms will not accept a hyphen in a name field, including airline reservations, where I'm helpfully told both that there's an illegal character in the name field and that the name field must match my ID exactly or they won't let me through. And different forms resolve it in different ways -- sometimes they'll just strip the hyphen entirely, leaving me with Lastname1LastName2, sometimes they'll convert the hyphen to a space...

I don't know how things work with last names with spaces (which is quite common in Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries), but hyphens are not without their hassles.
posted by number9dream at 7:00 AM on April 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

Twenty-six years ago I took my wife’s last name and replaced my former middle name with my “maiden” name (I am a guy). If I had it to do over again, I’d probably just drop the old name entirely.
posted by rikschell at 7:22 AM on April 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

I changed my name to MyLast HisLast, only intending to use it socially, continuing to use only MyLast professionally. It caused lots of problems and as others are saying, one was often dropped. I ended up changing it back to MyLast fairly quickly.

My kids have HisLast (MyLast as a second middle name). Even so, it has never been a problem getting care or traveling, when their full names aren’t being used. While I am a big fan of men changing their names, I don’t know that that’s necessary if it’s only for that purpose.
posted by emkelley at 7:23 AM on April 5, 2023

You use the word annoying but I’ll use the word practical as in easier for English-speakers who aren’t very worldly. All of my names, including one last named are probably annoying to many people because they don’t fit mainstream white American culture but that’s their problem, not mine. That said, hyphenated last names last names are easier to organize than two last separate names in current US name databases. That said, cool that you all are doing what feels best to you! Every family deserves that!
posted by smorgasbord at 7:24 AM on April 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

My child has my family name and my husband has his own, entirely different, name. It has never been a problem for husband and kid to travel together. Moreover, that circumstance comes up less often than once a year.
posted by xo at 8:34 AM on April 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

A fun anecdote: I had been living with my partner for years when I learned that their name wasn’t FirstName LastName LastName but rather FirstName MiddleName LastName. In my defense, their middle name is their mother’s last name and I didn’t know it was a thing for people to have family names for middle names. In their defense, they didn’t know that sometimes people have two last names. We only discovered my error when I couldn’t find their name on an alphabetical-by-last-name list, because I was looking for their middle name and not their last name.

In other words, if you are in the U.S., I think there is too much variety of practice, technology, and cultural knowledge for there to be one easy answer here. I would pick purely based on which version I liked better.
posted by CtrlAltDelete at 8:37 AM on April 5, 2023

I disagree. We have hyphenated last names in the US. They're rare, but not unknown.

I had never heard of or considered that "NAME1 NAME2 NAME3" could mean that LASTNAME = "NAME2 NAME3".

Not entirely unknown, but until I started teaching ESL the only like this I'd encountered were pretentious German names like Ludwig van Beethoven (and note the clue of the uncapitalized 'van'). So I'm with hydropsyche on this one -- if you don't want to lose that other last name, in US bureaucracies (except the State Dept), connect 'em with a hyphen.
posted by Rash at 9:14 AM on April 5, 2023

Best answer: There seems to be a solid consensus that whatever you choose, the other option would have been a better choice.
posted by kevinbelt at 11:09 AM on April 5, 2023 [9 favorites]

I think there's also a solid consensus after reading this that no matter what option you pick, they're all kind of bad for at least several computer systems and you will have big problems no matter what.

I think the one conclusion I've come to reading this is that running the last names together into one last name (i.e. SmithMcKenzie) may be the one thing that thwarts hyphen and space issues. If you don't do that, I'd say to do a hyphen because at least in that case it's obvious which initial you should be looking for the person under, i.e. Smith-McKenzie vs. "Is it under Smith? Is it under McKenzie?"
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:16 AM on April 5, 2023

Just another data point to the pile on: my son is hyphenated - my lastname-ex'lastname - and he hates it, always has. He mostly uses my last name now but then if there are official documents involved he has to explain and it is a giant pain. He is estranged from his father and one of these days we are going to just get rid of that name altogether but it is a surprisingly complicated and costly (for us, anyway, the last time I looked into it around $200 or so) process. So keep that in mind.

Friends of mine went back into their respective family trees until they found a maiden name that had died out and they used that last name for their children, while keeping their own names. That was also occasionally complicated but not as much of a pain as the hyphen.
posted by mygothlaundry at 12:02 PM on April 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

Whichever you choose, ensure that it's consistent across all the kids' IDs. My ex-boyfriend has a hyphenated last name and used it for all his ID, but then one time he needed to renew some ID (a passport?) and learned that on his birth certificate, his last name WASN'T hyphenated. He basically needed to file some kind of name change thing just to get the hyphen into his name and get all his ID congruent.

(No idea how he managed to get past this beforehand, but such was the case!)
posted by creatrixtiara at 1:03 AM on April 7, 2023

Oh yeah. Consistent names on EVERYTHING, especially if you ever plan to go international anything. I've had trouble with that one in my job.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:41 AM on April 7, 2023