Solving the name game.

April 9, 2015 12:51 PM

I want to purchase a stamp or return address labels for our family. My husband and son have the same last name and I have a different one. What is the best way to do this (and keep it simple)?
posted by rglass to Writing & Language (17 answers total)

Smith and The Joneses
The Smith/Jones Household

(Probably the second one is the best solution, but the first one sounds like a rock band.)
posted by MsMolly at 12:53 PM on April 9, 2015 [4 favorites]

Last Name #1
Last Name #2
Street Address
City, State, ZIP (assuming you're in the U.S.)

If for some reason you're limited to 3 lines, just use a slash: LastName1/LastName2.
posted by JanetLand at 12:54 PM on April 9, 2015

You could just get the address, leave off the names entirely?
posted by LobsterMitten at 12:54 PM on April 9, 2015 [7 favorites]

Whenever I physically write a return address including both surnames in our household, I just use the first line and put "Surname1/Surname2" so I guess that gets my vote. Or on preview, what JanetLand said as her alternate.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 12:56 PM on April 9, 2015

I asked a similar question recently and you might find those answers helpful!
posted by handful of rain at 1:09 PM on April 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

I love the rock band option. Do whichever one you like best. The goal is to make it functional. No one is going to study it. So have a bit of fun if you like.
posted by myselfasme at 1:10 PM on April 9, 2015

Address only, firstnames only, or "The Smith/Jones Family"
posted by gatorae at 1:25 PM on April 9, 2015

Here's a very similar previous question that had a lot of great responses.
posted by phunniemee at 1:26 PM on April 9, 2015

We have a stamp with my husband's first name and my first name, no last names. There are tons of great options for this on etsy (link is to the shop where we order ours, I have no affiliation).
posted by notjustthefish at 1:31 PM on April 9, 2015

We use "Smith / Jones" on our return address stamp.
posted by RedOrGreen at 2:03 PM on April 9, 2015

Using the slash as the divider wouldn't be my choice, as I believe it technically denotes that it's either the Smith family or the Jones family, not a family comprising both names. I would do Smith & Jones Family or Smith-Jones Family. The hyphen does not imply to me that everyone has the concatenated surname (though they could.)
posted by vunder at 2:19 PM on April 9, 2015

Hm. We have the same issue in our house, but for the purposes of simplicity I just put my husband's last name on the first line:
Smith
Street address
City, ST, zip

Anyone who we know socially will know which family its from, and if the correspondence is for a business I pretty much assume they don't really care.
posted by vignettist at 2:34 PM on April 9, 2015

The Smith and Jones household/family is what a family I know with your last name situation uses.
posted by MadamM at 2:41 PM on April 9, 2015

We face this in my family, too. I'm John Doe, she's Jane Q Public. (In reality, she does have a common two-syllable surname, and I have a common one-syllable surname.) Generally, on the rare occasions I hand-write a return address, I'll just use our street address, but when I feel like it, or it makes more sense, I'll generally use "Public / Doe".

I put her first for two reasons, neither related to gender.

The first is that I like the sound better. The meter of "Doe / Public" doesn't please my ear as much as "Public / Doe".

The second is that we gave our daughter the surname Public-Doe, hyphenated. I haven't yet decided how I'm going to handle adding that to the mix when her surname becomes relevant to our mail, or if I'm just going to double down on only using the address. But, if I use names at all, I'll probably go with "Public - Doe", with a space between the hyphens, to best incorporate the sense of all three.
posted by jammer at 3:17 PM on April 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

We have a two-name household too. We do:

Thompson/Smith
123 Main Street
etc

My mother and step-father are Jones and Roberts and my youngest sister is Penelope Roberts-Jones. They do:

Roberts-Jones
123 Main Street
etc
posted by DarlingBri at 4:20 PM on April 9, 2015

We're also a three-name family (mine, spouse's, and the children have Spouse's-Mine). Spouse/Mine is how we've handled it.
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 1:04 PM on April 10, 2015

Friends use this:
The Smith Jones Family
I love it. It's elegant and gets the point across, if you know the last name of any family member.

I've used this:
The Smith and Jones Family
The "and" seems to make it a little more clear that this family uses two surnames.
posted by orange (sherbet) rabbit at 5:26 PM on April 10, 2015 [1 favorite]