In some cases, if a baby gets the mom's last name, in-laws may complain that their family name isn't being passed on. Giving your baby the maternal surname is an open invitation for people to ask you to explain why, even though men are never asked why their child has their name. He doesn't even see them now and I wish I'd have given them mine.'Ĭons: There's a double standard to this untraditional baby naming choice. 'I was with my kids' father when I had my first two and never thought we'd split. We're happy with our choice.'Īnother common reason for using the mother's last name is to avoid regret if the relationship goes wrong. We weren't fans of combining to make a new last name or a double or hyphenated name, so it came down to picking just one name to use for us. 'I'm happily married, and didn't change my last name,' a Bab圜enter mom says. 'I'm Caucasian and she's Korean, and it makes sense to us for our child to have a Korean last name so that she can more easily connect with her Korean identity.'

'Our baby will be taking my wife's last name,' says one expecting Bab圜enter dad. All of these are perfectly valid reasons to give your baby their mother's surname. In some cases, the mom's last name just sounds better together with the child's given name. Pros: Women who are proud of their last name may want to pass that lineage along to their child. They also get annoyed by the expectation that they explain why their name is different from her child's name.

'I don't need to give anyone more reason to question or speculate who the 'real' mom is.'Ĭons: Some moms who bear a different last name from their child and partner might occasionally feel left out. This can also work well for same-sex marriages: 'I'm married and took my wife's last name just for the sake of both of us having the same last name as our eventual kids,' one Bab圜enter parent says. 'So this was a way to give him a gift without betraying my wish to keep my own name.' 'It was very important to my husband to share a name with our kids, but I really didn't care,' says Kerri Patrick, mother of two. In general, this old-school method of giving a baby a last name is easy and agreeable, regardless of whether the mother changes her name or not. This tradition is practiced by parents in a variety of situations – including heterosexual couples, same-sex couples, couples who adopt, and couples who choose not to marry. Pros: The default choice in the United States is to give your child the last name of their father.

Unique girl last names