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I have not done so but after getting married I changed my name from Bravo Victor to Bravo Sierra and it actually made me feel a bit sad like I was trading my family in. I had never thought of using both last names before, but since then I've talked to my husband and we are both considering changing our names to include both last names. These days, it's not that we're signed over to our husbands! This is a joint effort and I really like the idea of both last names! :)
Are you asking about having two last names?
What I did was drop my middle name & make my last name my middle name, which would read excatly like you wrote "my first name, my last name, his last name." Even though I technically have one last name, I refer to myself by my full name during new introductions (esp work related ones.) So although I don't have a hyphen my "middle name" is always included on all documentations.
Like you, just didn't want to completely loose my last name, so I thought this was a great way to have both
Also, for your children, my mom actually made her maiden name my brothers middle name (she didn't do it on mine just my bro's lol,) so that is another way to ensure your name is part of your childrens names.
Annie - I am asking about two last names, sorry it wasn't clear. I don't want my last name to be a middle name since then I would still have to change my law license. I guess it's called a "double-barreled name" like Helena Bonham Carter (Bonham is not her middle name). I'm just not sure if it's possible to do without a hyphen.
one of the women i work for did this-- i'm changing the names to made up ones, but her maiden name was something like sheila wilson, and she's now sheila wilson burk. it totally works! the only thing is that we work in a field with lots of writing and publications, and it gets confusing about whether her citations should be listed in bibiliographies under w or b (ie burk, sheila wilson, or wilson burk, sheila). i'm not going to do this for my name because both my and my fi's last names have 8 letters and 3 syllables, so it'd be super long, but i think it's a great option!
imj pretty sure you can change your name to whatever you want, you might have to opt to making your last name a middle name though.
This is what I'm doing, just tacking it onto the end. It just is easiest.
Stupid question here - alphabetically are you the first letter of yours still? And can you pick and choose when to just use your hubby's last?
yes, it's very simple. you go to the social security office and just write it down :) I have 4 names, First middle mylast hislast :)
Lori - I would think if your new name is "Lori Yourlast Hislast" then yes, alphabetically you would be sorted by the first letter of "Yourlast" last name ... as for picking and choosing. I'm not sure :) I was thinking this would avoid the whole thing of changing all my license and professional names but I guess all that would happen is that you're legally your new (yourlast hislast) combination but you could socially/professionally do whatever you wanted (i.e., go by "madonna" or "yourfirst yourlast")
We have a new idea now ... and that is to give Hislast Mylast to our children! That pretty much takes care of the problem I was most worried about, and avoids us paying $165 to the county for a name change :)
my mom did not have a middle name, she made her maiden her middle, and my dad's last name her last name. so: her name, her last, his last. worked fine!
i am pretty sure that i am going to do the same thing as mrs. d'orsay (i love my middle name, want to take his name but not sure I want to lose my maiden name altogether)
We were figuring out what to do about this. My fiance and I were actually both going to change our last names to Mine-His. But i think we are both going to change our last names to Mine His (i.e. no hyphen).
I wanted to 1) keep my last name, 2) have him take my name as well 3) make sure that my whole family had the same last name (I had a different last name from the rest of my family & i HATED it), 4) not make it a pain for our kids to have a hyphenated last name (my friend had one and she said it caused all kinds of issues for her).
When we have kids they are just going to have his last name so that we will be the "His Family" but I can still introduce myself with my maiden name, basically as my middle name. LOL. sounds complicated, but I think this is the best solution
I think it would help us to know what the rules are for kids. Like, can you give your kids whatever name you want? This is what I think we might want to end up doing: Johnnie Hisname Myname. But is that allowed? Would it be confusing to people if "Johnnie" has a middle name as well (so 4 names?) or would people just like drop the second last name (mine) when referring to our kids?
@bluebook: You can definitely name your kid with a hyphenated last name AND a middle name. That was my friend's situation, but she said it was always a hassle, b/c people would tend to drop one or the other, and wouldn't know how to alphabetize it (sometimes by one name sometimes by the other), as well as the fact that it was longer. I think it was also confusing to people once she got to the "marrying age" but her name wasn't hyphenated b/c of marriage.
I think more kids are probably having hyphenated names now, since people are being more "progressive" with their names, but it's still pretty unusual.
Moneypenny - that's the whole thing though, we don't want a hyphen :) We just want to put the two last names together and call it one last name. That's the part I'm unsure about, that things like what happened to your friend would happen, or that people would hyphenate the names etc ... that is if they even let us do it!
@bluebook: So maybe I'm still not understanding, but if you mean like MynameHisname with no hyphen AND no space, you can do that too. Like the mayor of LA Villaraigosa -- I think his last name was Raigosa and his wife's was Villa. So they made a conjoined last name--no hyphen AND no space. I also have friends whose parents made them an entire new name from parts of their names--but that's a totally different ballgame!
But i think that what you are talking about doing is exactly what we are talking about doing--except that he would ALSO take my name. So we will have the same Lastname1 Lastname2, and kids will just have Lastname2 so that we all have the same family connection.
I guess i never looked into whether that was actually "allowed". I feel like it must be because you can change your name to whatever you want--it's just more of a hassle than the traditional woman-takes-his-last-name thing which is a less complicated procedure (and I think in Cali, men can now take their wive's last name without going through the huge hassle either).
That's what I'm going to do. Also Hilary Rodham Clinton did it too, though it doesn't seem to have stuck.
I'm going to have 4 names too, like Orsay.
First Middle MYLast HISLast.
I refuse to drop my middle, and I personally don't want to use a hyphen.
I'm almost positive that Hillary Rodham Clinton's last name is Clinton and not Rodham Clinton.
I think it is possible to do (one of my fiance's family names is a two name last name), but it's going to take a lot of explaining and introductions and people ALWAYS thinking your last name is the last one and not the full two names.
so I wikipedia'd Hillary's name, and it appears as if she never legally changed it to Clinton:
She announced she was keeping the name Hillary Rodham,<sup id="cite_ref-mara-122_65-1" style="line-height: 1em; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal;">[64]</sup> to keep their professional lives separate and avoid seeming conflicts of interest and because "it showed that I was still me,"<sup id="cite_ref-66" style="line-height: 1em; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal;">[65]</sup> although her decision upset both their mothers.<sup id="cite_ref-67" style="line-height: 1em; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal;">[66]</sup>
Bill Clinton returned to the governor's office two years later by winning the election of 1982. During her husband's campaign, Rodham began to use the name Hillary Clinton, or sometimes "Mrs. Bill Clinton", to assuage the concerns of Arkansas voters;<sup id="cite_ref-ex04_89-0" style="line-height: 1em; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal;">[nb 4]</sup>
When Bill Clinton took office as president in January 1993, Hillary Rodham Clinton became the First Lady of the United States, and announced that she would be using that form of her name.<sup id="cite_ref-118" style="line-height: 1em; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal;">[113]</sup>
I'll be a four-namer too. I grew up with a double name (Like Mary Catherine, but not quite that), so I'm just writing two last names in the one last name blank and seeing what happens. My two-part last name will have six syllables!
I think the worst that will happen is you have to pay more money for an official name change and/or petition a judge/put an ad in the newspaper announcing the change. A little bit of a pain, but not a big deal.
I did! I think it may depend on the state you live in (I think I remember a TX bee saying that the people at the DMV would not let her do this), but I had no problem. I'm officially a 4 namer (Erin Marie Mack Trapanese), but keep my maiden for work (working on getting published and eventually a PhD) and use his last name in all other cases. Good luck and keep us posted!
i'll have two last names too, not hyphenated. I will be losing the middle name though. I'm pretty sure that they'll let you change it to whatever you want!
I'm totally confused about this. Wouldn't people just end up calling you Mrs. Hislast? Or are you thinking people will call you Mrs. Yourlast Hislast?
This would never work for me because I'd end up with a huge tounge twister with way too many letters and syllables!
One of my co-workers convinced me to do this, and I am going to have four names- myfirst middle mylast hislast- no hyphen. The courthouse questioned it, but I called the SS office and they said I could do whatever I wanted. My maiden would not become a middle name. I would think that the DMV would have to follow the ID you bring in to change names, but I haven't gone through it and could be way wrong.
My reason for doing this is strictly due to work relationships...once you change your name, there is no link or way for people to find you if they search under a maiden name. If someone calls me just by his last, I'll be fine with that. Guess you could say I'll answer to almost anything.
I added his last to mine with no hyphen. Essentially, my name is the same it's always been, but with an additional name added to the end. I like my middle and maiden names too much to give them up (besides, I've had clients for years that have only known me by my maiden name). My return address labels read J K M S, but our return address labels and Christmas cards read R & J S, just to make things easier. My mail is addressed to J M S, but mail that comes to both of us most of the time is addressed to Mr & Mrs S, or to R & J S, which is fine as far as I'm concerned.
Also, you can ask for it to be a second middle, or a second las.t So you could be first middle middle last or first middle last last.
The social security people told me they will let you put 2 last names (no hyphen) if that's how you want it.
I'm not sure about in the legal profession, but I called my state's board of medical examiners to find out what name I will have to have on my medical license. They said as long as what you want to have on your license is part of your legal name, that's fine with them. I would assume if your legal last name still contains your maiden name, you can leave those licenses as they are.
So you can keep your professional papers, share a name with your husband and kids, and not have to deal with a hyphen! Good luck!
Ok, so I'm having this same name changing crisis. I don't want to change my middle name, but I don't want to lose my maiden name either (it's the one on my MD degree). And I also don't want to hyphenate. I realize this discussion is several months old, but did anyone successfully do this? We're submitting our marriage license application in California and they seem to have all sorts of rules on what you can and can't do with your middle and last name...
I just went through this myself, because i wanted to add my FI's last name to mine without a hyphen. The ability to do this is VERY dependent on the state you are getting married in. For example, i am getting married in New York, and when i went to get the marriage license they told me they could not legally put two last names without a hyphen on the license. I talked to several people about it, including vital records, social security, DMV, etc, but that happens to be the law in New York.
Social Security WILL allow you to have two last names without a hypen; however, when you change your social security card, they change it based on the marriage license. So if it isn't on the marriage license, it's not going to be on your social security card. In New York, DMV changes your name based on the marriage license and the social security card, so once again, if it isn't on the marriage license, no dice.
In New York they will allow you to: hypenate the two last names, take your maiden name as a middle name, or make up a new last name. That is all. You do have a legal right to go by whatever name you want as long as there is no intention on your part to defraud, so you could always write it out as two last names with no hyphen regardless.
HOWEVER, my FI and i need to get married prior to the actual wedding anyways (the officiant is my uncle, who got ordained online, and sometimes NY doesn't recognize people ordained that way), so we are just getting married in Massachucetts a few days before the actual wedding, because MA allows you to have two last names without a hyphen, and it only costs $10 to get a marriage license there.
Connecticut and Vermont do allow you to have two last names with no hyphen, but they do not put your new surname on the marriage license--only your maiden name. You change your name with the DMV and THEN get a social security card in those states, so that would not have served my purposes because i would have needed to get a driver's license in one of those states to change my social security card to then change my NY license.
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I don't have a middle name (and want to keep it that way) but I also want to retain my name because all my papers and my license are in that name.
My FI has a very unique and rare name and it's very important to him that our children have it and pass on the name, which I am totally fine with. However, I feel a little "left out" without a connection to our future children (name-wise). I'd rather not hyphenate for the same professional reasons.
I recently heard I could "add" his last name to mine? Like: Myfirstname Mylastname Hislastname. No dash. Has anyone done that? How did it work? I'd really just like to keep my name socially/professionally but have papers that reflect our future children's last name ... is that possible?