Two last names without hyphen?

Do whatever you're comfortable with. It's no one else's place to judge. Make sure to file necessary paperwork to make it legal.

I wouldn't recommend it if you plan on living in the states. It would cause a lot of confusion and peoole would assume your first last name is your middle name. You could definitely do that without trouble in a Spanish speaking country.

It's really up to you! My sister in law and her wife both added the other person's last name after their own name, so they both have both last names, just in a different order. My Sister in law is First Middle A B and her wife is First Middle B A. Some couples make up entirely new names for their families by combining each others last name. People do all sorts of things now with their names. Might there be some confusion every now and then? Sure. But that will happen regardless. My mom never changed her last name after marriage, but she gets called Mrs. Husband's last name all the time. People will mess up. But hey, that happens in general. Both my husband and I have relatively unique last names. I did decide to take his and drop mine, but plenty of misspell/mispronounce both of them.

I technically made my maiden name a muffle name but you can view it is as an un hyphen last name. I did it my maiden name followed by his last name. In conversations I will use his last name but legally and in my signature I am including my maiden name.

So my mom decided to be unique when I was born and give me two middle names so my full name when I was born was Veronica Jean Lambert Grimes. Jean was after my great-grandmother and Lambert was my mom's maiden name. She did this to honor my grandfather since his name wouldn't be passed on because he didn't have a son. Now that I'm married I dropped Grimes and took my husband's name which is Thayer so anyone that didn't know my last name before assume that Lambert was my last name before I got married and that I just took it as my middle name after the wedding which isn't the case. I think people could very easily make the same mistake with your name if you don't hyphenate. Also, if you plan on having children it could end up being confusing for them as well.

View Quoted Comment Not necessarily. It all depends on how the op chooses to announce herself. No one I feel guilty pays attention to the legal paperwork. I know people that hyphen and use last names as that's how they introduce themselves. I will say legally is one thing but how will you announce yourself. I made my maiden name a middle name. It'll be included in my signature but I will introduce myself my his last name. I feel even in the US everything is changing. I know a famous couple they combined each other's last name and they both go by that.

View Quoted Comment Okay. That's not what I meant but thanks for sharing

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I knew what you meant and I was respectfully disagreeing. I do not feel it is confusion unless the OP makes it confusing. I have known Americans to use the one last name or some go by both. It depends on how she and her fh choose the use it. I also feel pending where you are in the US we have various cultures and are aware of different traditions from different countries.

I found some research: You might have noticed that in many cases, a hyphen is added to separate the two surnames. This is done artificially to satisfy the strict implementation of software systems that assume that a space is not a legal entry in the last name field. This ignores people that have a last name with two words -something typical in some cultures, and ignores cultures that use two surnames, as explained above. By the way, Hispanics are not the only culture that uses two surnames, there are other cultures that use a similar scheme. There are even other cultures that have other combinations of surnames.


So, to avoid confusion, a lot of Hispanics hyphenate their surnames, as I do with mine Pérez- Quiñones. But this is purely to avoid many hours of frustration dealing with office personnel that insist that we do not exist in their computer system. This has happened to me at all three of the four universities that I have been affiliated with, either as a student or as a professor (and the fourth one was in Puerto Rico, where it would not be an issue). It has also happened several times when dealing with local government offices. But the worst of all is the marketing junk mail. I appear in junk mailing lists many times. I appear as Pérez, as Quiñones (with Pérez as the middle name), as Pérez-Quiñones, and other truncated variations (e.g. Pérez-Quiñon) because the combination of the two surnames is often too long for their computer systems to store the full surnames.
https://webpages.uncc.edu/mperez19/twolastnames.html

Overall, two last names WITH or WITHOUT a hyphen can be done, but you are likely to run into some hiccups/frustration/confusion with people, as in insurance conpanies, doctor's office, dentist, etc.; administration everywhere, including the workplace if you are in the States.

View Quoted Comment Hi Kristen! It's okay to disagree. I still suspect you Didn't realize what I meant bc I didn't explain it the best. When I wrote "people," i meant major institutions, such as hospitals, insurances, etc. As quoted from a parenting article: " we went home with our two last named newborn. About a week later, the trouble started. First, his health insurance card came with just the second last name, and when I called to let them know there was a mistake, I was told their system wasn’t capable of inputting hyphens or two last names. Second the hospital sent us TWO bills for his birth, one with the first last name, the other with the second. By the time our child turned one, we had encountered issues with almost every major institution we interacted with. Just as we’d been warned, the hyphen was a real pain."

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Ahhhh okay I get it now. Thank you for clarifying. I can see that being an issue but I wonder how do Hispanics in the US do it? I would research that (to the OP). I live in Florida and many Hispanic students I have use a hyphen name so I wonder do they face the same issues?

I did not take DH's name.

HOWEVER, we have portmanteau'd our names, which we use for things like a shared email, Zoom calls, and as a nickname among our friends, to indicate our 'married-ness'.

This way, neither of us have to deal with name changes or software issues, but we still have some things that reflect the marriage.

View Quoted Comment Wow, thanks for this research—that's really helpful! I'm not Hispanic, but my surname does contain the é character, which I've found always confuses online forms. Part of the reason I want to avoid a hyphen is that I worry it will give me as much trouble as the é already does. I don't really care if people end up referring to me by one surname or the other in informal contexts, but I suppose the potential for difficulty with administration is something to keep in mind.

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I love portmanteau names! I thought about it some for us, but unfortunately, our existing last names don't share a single character in common and just don't combine well at all. It's still a really cute idea, though.

Youtube “it’s a southern thing double names”

My fiancé is hispanic and has two last names. He has found that most places in the US are not equipped to manage it, so each of his bank cards has a slightly different name. His drivers license, however, does have his correct full name. It might be slightly more of a hassle to make two last names work, but I think it is worth it if you care about it!

ETA: Samantha, my last name also contains the é character, so I feel your pain there!

A lot of people confuse your ‘first’ last name as a middle name constantly. It literally happens all the time... but I like my last names. I’ll be keeping them when I get married... shifting them over to middle names LOL.

In every instance I know where a woman has done this, she's done HerLast HisLast.

One of my colleagues has this, and occasionally someone will drop one of those names and it really upsets her. I think they'll assume the first last name is a middle name instead.

Another of my friends did this and she and her (now ex) husband both changed their last names to be the same in the order of HerLast HisLast. She's since divorced and remarried and now changed her name to just HisLast, dropping her maiden name entirely.

I don't really have any advice but I figured I'd share the experiences of those two women if helpful.

I did two last names without a hyphen (sometimes called "double-barreling"). Over 3 years later I still love it and have had absolutely ZERO regrets. This is what my experience has been:

Yes, there will sometimes be people who mistakenly refer to me as "Amanda HisLast" rather than "Amanda HerLast HisLast", but you gotta just be ready to roll with that and not take it too personally. If it's only in conversation I usually let it go without comment. If it's on a document for a work thing I'll usually follow up afterward and gently request the name be fixed, and nobody has ever been a jerk about fixing it. (IMO, if you're someone who will be *very upset* if someone gets your name wrong, though, you're better off hyphenating -- people will still mess it up sometimes but not nearly as much.) Occasionally on certain internet forms they won't allow a space and so I become "Amanda HerLastHisLast" but whatever. It all works out.

One of the HUGE unexpected perks of a double-barreled name is that essentially all versions and variations of the name can be legally used in almost all situations (exceptions: certain legal documents). So according to the SSA and on my driver's license I'm officially "Amanda HerLast HisLast", but if someone sends me a check or writes me a prescription for "Amanda HerLast HisLast" OR "Amanda HerLast" OR "Amanda HisLast" OR even "Amanda HerLast-HisLast" it's all valid and doesn't cause me a headache. The weirdest thing is that my credit card still has "Amanda HerLast" written on it but it *scans* as "Amanda HerLast Hislast" -- but even that has never actually caused any problems.

My husband did not change his name, and it's never been weird for us or caused us any trouble to have non-matching last names. I have occasionally had well-meaning people tell me that it'll be such a huge pain if we every have kids (we've decided they'd get my husband's name rather than both names) but honestly... I really don't buy that at all. My mom kept her maiden name back when that was NOT the done thing (she even had relatives at the time ask her if keeping her name was "even legal"... lol) and she occasionally had to deal with people, like, not wanting to let her pick up her own kids from daycare because "ma'am you don't have the same name as these children" whereas if I were ever in the same situation I'd at least share *part* of my name with my kids and so I can't imagine it being that much of an issue.

As far as the order, "HerLast HisLast" vs "HisLast HerLast", I think that's really up to you. "HerLast HisLast" is certainly more common (and it puts you in the good company of Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg), but ultimately it's up to you and what you feel most comfortable with. I can imagine that both of you having double-barreled names that are in different orders could potentially make Christmas cards a little tricky (is it "Happy Holidays from the HisName HerName Family" or "Happy Holidays from the HerName HisName Family"?) but even then... shoot just say "Happy Holidays from FirstName and OtherFirstName"!

Overall I've been extremely pleased with how double-barreling has worked out for me, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to others.

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Thanks so much for sharing your experience! That's a huge encouragement to hear someone else has done this and found it worthwhile. Like you mentioned, I really like the potential for versatility with double-barreling—I could choose to introduce myself with my name, my husband's name, or both, depending on the context. I'm definitely not the kind of person who'd be offended if people "mess up" my name in informal situations. If anything, double-barreling could mean that whichever name or combination of names someone calls me, they're never really wrong!