I would agree that sharing the same last name definitely makes things less confusing.  Even in today’s world of divorce, remarriage, keeping professional names, hyphenating names, etc - I find myself making inaccurate assumptions about other families when I see the names don’t match.  (Thankfully, I haven’t stuck my foot in my mouth yet!)  When I realize what I’ve subconsciously done, I tell myself “shame on me.”  Because I think it’s similar to making assumptions about families when one notices they are multi-racial.  Just my thoughts.

And as for incorporating an adopted child’s biological surname, we kinda did that.  I was considering a particular name for our future child that was from my family line (a surname), and when meeting the EM’s family - found it was also in their family tree.  So this became her first name!  I’m not sure what you mean about “ALL” - we only have one child.  But I would not change our surname to incorporate that of our child’s birth family…if that’s what you meant.

I think it’s important to all children that they have the same surname as both parents.  My sister is divorced.  She is remarried, but kept her ex-husband’s last name in order to have the same last name as her daughter.

It’s a great idea to somehow incorporate the birthname into the adopted name. Very good for the adoptee’s sense of self and continuity.

I’ve also heard that certain states now maake it legal for marrying couples to make a new name using syllables from the wife’s last name and the husband’s last name, but that won’t help you now, mamina!

Many women keep thier names and add their husband’s last name, and many states leegally allow the husband to change his name to the wife’s name.

Perhaps now is the time for the hubby to man-up and show his support for your career and the continuity of your family name!

Good luck! This is certainly not an easy issue. Adding adoptees in there, with the idea of keeping their names and adding them to your names, to me, that means you are trying to be inclusive. Hope it works out.

I also had a professional career and owned my own practice before I got married.  All I did was legally change my name (including my license to practice and all legal business stuff) but I’m still known by my maiden name in everything having to do with business.  Some of my patients even call my husband “Mr. My-maiden-name” and he doesn’t mind.  At home I go my my married name and at the office I’m my maiden name…pretty simple in the long run.  I did change my maiden name legally to a second middle name to cut down on confusion when my name is written.  Then it will be recognized as me in business or personal situations.

I also had friends who did the hyphen thing…the whole family has the hyphenated last name and it does look a little cumbersome at times.  Another couple I know kind of merged their last names and made a totally new last name that is now the whole family’s last name.

I don’t think I’d try to incorporate the BM’s surname into the last name at all.  If its an open situation and you feel comfortable and want to honor that you can always make her last name a middle or even second middle name.  My husband actually has two middle names and his second middle name is the maiden name of his father’s step mother.

So many options!

I had the same issue, career, older when I got married.  What I did and what other women in my workplace do is they continue to use their maiden names at work.  I took my husband’s name and use it outside of work.  Outside of work, my maiden name became my middle name.  So my official signature is my first, maiden, and married name, no hyphens.  I was surprised when I discovered how many women at my work were doing the same thing, using their maiden name at work and married name at home.  My drivers license and bank accounts have all three names.  It can make things a little confusing sometimes, like when I can’t remember which name I made an appointment under.  My sons both have my husband’s name as their surname.

I kept my maiden name as my last name. And my son’s middle name is my last name.

Thank you so much for all of your thoughtful, helpful feedback!

It was great to hear from those who kept your maiden names for your professional names and used your husband’s names for your personal life.  I had thought of that but never heard of others doing it - now that I have I think that is worth seriously considering!

Yes, I did mean the concept of incorporating the birth family’s last name into all of our last names.  So if we were Johnson we could all become Sanchez-Johnson, or whatever.  I think it would have to be a very special and particular situation for this all to work out, but you never know.  Maybe more for families adopting older children who already identify with their full birth-name.

Additional note: I think names are deeply important as ways we identify with self. My parents started out calling me by my first name, after 5 or 6 months switched to an ethnic diminutive version of my middle name, and in kindergarten everyone switched to calling me by the English diminutive version of my middle name (but still not the middle name as written on all legal documents).  My first name is still what’s on all my official documents, and what gets called in a doctor’s office etc.  Having always been this way, I don’t KNOW how I would feel otherwise, but I believe I have some issues related to feeling somehow disconnected from “the sound people use to identify me”...  So I absolutely believe in keeping a child’s first name if they are already being identified by it, and in sticking with a name, period!

I do know lots of people, including my husband, are called by their middle names because the first is their father’s name, but they were always called that since birth, and apart from the annoyance of being called by “their dad’s name” at the bank etc it seems fine.

And some people I know who have been called by their middle names all their lives have gone on to continue that same naming tradition with their own children, so clearly they have no conflicting emotions around that!

I agree that sharing a last name is important.  If there is one thing I regret about my daughter’s name is that when we adopted her I didn’t ask her BM what name she would have given her.  I think as a tribute to her BM I would have liked to incorporate her BM’s chosen name perhaps as a middle name.

I did ask our son’s BM what she would like to name him and would have used it as his first name, but it was not a favorite of my husband. So we use it as his middle name.  She was very happy that we incorporated her chosen name for him and she called him that all during the pregnancy.

When we got married there was no question about changing my name. A few reasons - 1) my mother had a different last name 2) hyphenating was just not an option and 3) I shaved 8 letters off my signature! (lol)

As for incorporating names, we didn’t with last names. But when we chose names, we chose both a first and middle name, but always with the intention that if the birthparents had names picked out (that were not completely terrible), we wanted to make that the middle name.  When we first met our son’s bmom, she had picked a name we’d never heard of before, but we wound up liking it with our chosen name.  She actually gave him her chosen name at birth (which was fine with us, that was her choice) and then we changed it. The funny thing was that he’s had the same three initials, the first two just got swapped. 

But naming is a very individual thing.  Some people are much more ‘intense’ on everyone being represented.  And that works for them. We know people through our agency whose children had 5-6 names.  First name(s), middle name(s) and hyphenated last name.  for me that’s too much, but that’s what works for their family.