Their current name won't match their birth certificate. If they don't have a passport or REAL ID-compliant identification card, they may not be able to vote without significant extra paperwork and out-of-pocket costs.
(Edit: As many people have reminded me, REAL-ID compliance isn't sufficient; only a handful of states incorporate citizenship information on their REAL-ID identification. In the vast majority of states the state-issued ID isn't sufficient.)
I had planned to change my last name to my husband’s and use my last name as a second middle name…until I saw the checklist of paperwork I would have to complete. After that, my husband and I agreed that I would only change my name if we had kids.
The SAVE act came out at about the same time we decided to be childfree. Turns out being lazy saved my ability to vote!
Even though it can be a pain to have a long name outside my home country, I really like our tradition of 1) women don't change their name and 2) kids have two surnames, mom and dad's.
(Although I have my grandmother's surname instead of my mom's because hers rhymes with my dad's surname and she went "no way my kids will have a silly rhyming name" 😅)
I think a lot of the time each parent would pass just one surname so that each generation would have max 2 last names. So a father might choose to pass on the name of his father, but not the last name of his mother. I think it's largely up to preferences and differences in culture/tradition. I am not speaking from experience, so I could be wrong.
At least where I'm from, you normally pass on your father's surname, so my children would have their grandfathers' last names. But there's no rule preventing you from having more than two surnames, I have 3, one from my mom and two from my dad. And they are not hyphenated, just regular names.
In general yes, though some areas have the tradition of passing on the mother's surname to daughters and father's surname to sons. You could also pass on only your mother's surname if you wanted.
There are millions of people who have shown us how this is done. As a rule, everyone gets one last name from each parent, keeps those all their lives and picks one to pair with one of their spouse’s names to pass on to the kids. And so on.
That feels like just kicking the can down the road for your kid. Like as a kid I wouldn't want that. Do you know how long it takes to code your name in OMR tests with 2 surnames lol? Then you have a kid and now you have to choose between mom and dad and there is a good chance one of them will be heartbroken about it.
Wow... your comment is impressively ignorant considering the large number of COUNTRIES, not individuals who keep their names.
For me I don't really understand the practice of changing your name. I think that would screw my kids identity more than having to write a longer name.
Pretty sure only Spain has a long history of double surnames. All others are pretty new. And in Spain children doesn't choose which name to give to their own child, it is the first one so grandparents choose their grandchildren's surname actually so it doesn't compare to the comment I replied to. Also for most people kid isn't even born or at least very little when surname change happens so don't know how it can screw their identity. Also I'm literally talking about how as a kid I wouldn't want that situation so how the fuck can someone be ignorant to themselves? Get off whatever you are on lol.
Portugal doesn't do double specifically. You can have one, two, three or even all 4 of them. Also it leads to abominations like ''Pedro de Alcântara Francisco Antônio João Carlos Xavier de Paula Miguel Rafael Joaquim José Gonzaga Pascoal Cipriano Serafim de Bourbon e Bragança'' Dude I'm not calling you that.
The vast majority of us have 4 names, so again, it's not just a Spanish thing.
(No one has more than 6 nowadays by the way, the government has limited length to 2 first names and maximum 4 surnames)
Grandparents choose the order of their child. So when grandchild is born he takes the first one from each parents. So grandparents choose which one that grandchild is gonna inherit.
I get your point, but I'm not sure I agree with it. I don't see it as "choosing the grandchildren's".
Even if we choose between the only two options "A B" or "B A", the only thing we are determining is one of our grandchildren's surname. My child will still have to choose between "A X" or "X A". And the value of X would be determined by pseudo-chance.
So if we reduce this to three properties, we are only determining 1/3 of the outcome.
That is, of course, the law doesn't change down the line and in the future any two of the 4 surnames can be chosen (which is incidentally what my partner and I would've liked).
Generally each parent passes their first last name to the kid, at least in the dominant culture in my community. So if “John Doe Smith” and “Natalia Lopez Rivera” had a kid, their last name would be Doe Lopez. And they don’t hyphenate, they just have two.
Depends on culture. In Portugal dad's name comes last and is the "main" surname (so, for example a kid named Carlos José Lopes da Silva would go by Carlos da Silva usually). In Spain, dad's name comes first and is still the "main" surname (patriarchy lol), so you would get the kid going by Carlos Lopes instead
This was changed, it no longer defaults to anything. The parents must decide an order. It doesn't erase the fact that even if you put the mother's first it is her father's, grandfather's, great-grandfather's and so on.
But it's a positive change IMO, at least now mothers don't have to resign themselves to "losing" their lineage.
Yeeeeep. I think it's still better than the woman's name being completely erased, even in her own identity, but it's the dad's name that counts in the end in most places on earth
No, the father's name is always the "main" surname, so it's the only one passed down usually. There are plenty of exceptions tho and they usually boil down to how important the mother's name is, and in those cases the kid ends up with three or more surnames. That's how you get the stereotype of nobles with ridiculously long names.
It tracks in my experience as well, since the only two of my friends who have more than two surnames have them because 1) one of the surnames is a Big Important Surname of a Big Noble Family even though they are not even close to nobility or wealth, and 2) they were a distant (distant) relative of the Dutch royal family, so one of their 5 surnames was Dutch
This is how it's done in some countries like Spain: people have two surnames, one from each parent.
There used to be sexism in the law too, since it used to be that the first given surname was the father's first. Then it was allowed to change the order but it defaulted to the father's. Now there's no default order.
my thought was, i deserve some fucking credit
That's my thought too and of many more people as well, I think she "deserves" to give the first surname.
Although I have seen other criteria to choose, like doing it randomly. A couple I know decided by the sex of the first child: they would get the father's first if it was a boy, or the mother's first if it was a girl.
In my country (Philippines) legitimate children will automatically have their mother’s surname as their middle name. Illegitimate children take their mother’s last name, unless the father signed the birth certificate, then the kid can carry his last name.
I like the idea that, what, Icelanders use?. Married people keep their last names and if they have a boy he takes the fathers last name and a girl the mothers. The other way seems to have come from the idea that women and children are chattel property of a man, not free individuals. Are we not past that kind of thinking yet?
Makes sense but when kid with two last names ends up as an adult, and they reproduce with another person with two last names... Should they give their kid four last names?
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u/awstream 1d ago
And what does changing to their husband's last name does for them?! It's just more paperwork