Help us name our child

Tuesday | September 30, 2025

Love Letters Marriage

Help us name our child

Send your own anonymous relationship, dating, and friendship questions to [email protected] or fill out this form, and you could win a getaway.

My husband and I are expecting our first child, and we’re so excited to be parents. We are in agreement about all the big parenting decisions and philosophies, except for one sticking point.

I kept my name when we got married, as did a ton of my other female friends who married men. In every case, though, all of those women who then had children gave their kids their husbands’ last names. I don’t get this, and I don’t think my husband or I get more of a claim over the last name of a child than the other.

The solution seems like hyphenating, but my husband really doesn’t like hyphenated last names, because he thinks it’s just making our kid have to decide which name to keep if they get married. I feel really strongly that I want to share a last name with my child, but understand why he would too. His sibling isn’t having kids, so he’s the only one in his family who would give a kid his last name. Can you help us find a way to break through this dam?

– Ms. Mom

I like a hyphen. Or even two last names, no hyphen. That’s actually my personal preference.

As in, “Meredith Pattinson Goldstein.” Or, “Meredith Goldstein Pattinson.”

Three-part names are catchy, too. Like Jennifer Love Hewitt. You just … remember it. Jennifer Hewitt sounds far less interesting.

I do know families who change everyone’s name to a blend (like Pattinstein), but that’s a bigger adjustment, and I assume you don’t want to do that.

I don’t have a magic answer. But I advise you and your husband to avoid making decisions based on what you guess will happen in your child’s future. Your kid might want to keep their name, even if they get married. They might not get married at all.

They might become a massive superstar and go by one name, like Beyoncé or Madonna, and never think about their last name, unless they’re at the DMV.

Get both of your names on the record for posterity. Treat each other well, and get excited about learning to parent together.

But don’t overthink it.

No pressure or anything, but it’s my first name that follows me everywhere. Pick a nice one.

– Meredith

Send your own anonymous relationship, dating, and friendship questions to [email protected] or fill out this form, and you could win a getaway.

Readers? People who kept their last name after getting married, what name did you give kids? Is this a good first test in how to compromise as parents?

It's time to have kids Marriage

Featured Comment

Ultimately the choice is yours and something both of you will have to live with. If either choice is going to make one of you a little more resentful because that isn’t what you wanted, then I think you have other problems you need to deal with. Put your focus on having a healthy, happy baby, and please remember whatever name you give them some day has to appear on resumes, coffee cup orders, professional correspondence, etc and adding extra unnecessary vowels or y’s to a name causes more headaches than cuteness.

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