ultrarunner

No different from having "Jesus" as a first name, or "Moham..med/mad"

Yet to meet someone called GOD though. Parents ougth to think before they name their kids based on their own personal like/wish...think how it might affect the kid for a second.

Chris Martin from coldplay, kid is called Apple...Apple Martini anyone?

Shirtback

And that works just fine for us. Offspring use only half of their registered birth family name in everyday life. Income tax, RAMQ, School boards have never had a problem matching them up with with their records.

not2old

thanks for all the replies to my OP

Since number one son says he has no intention of having children, for our yet to be born grandchild, our daughter is thinking [wanting] to give her children her maiden name for succession reasons (hopefully a boy in the offspring) to keep our [welsh heritage] family name alive & to give the child welsh forenames.

Her husband brothers have male children, so for now, the other side is sorted.

I suggested thew double barrel name - it was a non-starter

When they got married last year she kept her maiden name along with all of the government related/legal ID intact - she prefers her maiden name over his

Shirtback

No problem, or "interesting" experiences at all at tax time.

Souvy

It can get complicated.

My missus, a Quebecoise, married her first husband in Ottawa. She took his name because she liked it better than her own. She continued to use it for years at work because that was how she was known within a very large organisation. Then she started to double-barrel it with her maiden name. Then she reverted to her maiden name.

We get bills etc to four names (her three plus mine). We get the phone calls too. I am used to saying yes when I'm asked if I'm Mr <name of first husband>.

Come to think of it, there are five names. The double-barreled one Hydro Quebec uses is a cracker. It contains her ex-husbands name and they've got her maiden name completely wrong.

I think we lost the sixth incorrect name. I know that the French roll their R's but even the most idiotic clerk must realise that no name has three R's in a row.

SchnookoLoly

I took my husband's surname when we got married. I just liked the idea of sharing that with him and (hopefully) our kids - I like that it's one "unit", sort of.

My husband's cousin didn't take her husband's surname because she's one of two girls, and also is in professional circles so didn't want to change. She didn't want to double-barrel her daughter, so they made a blended surname for her daughter of her and her husband (Pretend she's Green, and her husband is Smithfield, their daughter is Greenfield).

She does, however, when travelling internationally, have to carry her daughter's birth certificate, just in case border guards give her problems. Doesn't happen often, but has come up once and luckily she had the birth certificate with her.

If you give your kids double-barrelled surnames, what happens when they get married? The quad-barrel just seems excessive... a friend of mine married a guy who was double-barrelled. She really wanted to have the same last name as him, so took his double-barrel... and is now constantly asked if the first part of the barrel is her maiden name, and then hs to explain when she says no.

If we are lucky enough to have kids down the line, they'll have my husband's (and my) last name... however, they're also getting my maiden name as a middle name so that both names are carried, which I like, but that they still just have a simple surname.

Everyone's got their own ideas, and each to their own!

Dashie

The Ontario stuff took just under 6 weeks. Everything official was easy, CRA, Service Ontario took minutes at the office. Banks etc. a few minutes in the branch. New citizenship certificate took about 5 months though. New UK passport took 6 weeks, but that was over Christmas and I didn't rush the postage. The only one bring a pain to be honest is Rogers, because they keep 'not receiving' it despite triple checking the fax number and getting transmission reports. I've given up on that one now.

orly

I like how the Icelandic people do names. I'm sure they still manage to do family trees on Ancestry.com

ultrarunner

May be they will just do what your husband's cousin did as you mentioned, or may be people will just see the light again...and be "normal".

It obviously is a fad, and has nothing to do with status, wealth etc

Quebecois however, are known to have a lot of middle names, just like some Asians and Africans i.e. loads of initials like W.X.Y.Z. &. $

dbd33

My children have hyphenated surnames in their Swiss passports, as is customary there. They have one name in their other passports. I suppose if they chose to double barrel the names of any children they might have, those names would be doubly-hyphenated in their Swiss documentation. That's ugly.

ultrarunner

So nothing special about being a Swiss national then?

Knew it

Shirtback

I agree. Not for my d-b children however.

Start saying no ? You really don't want to be associated with other/former accounts. While I found it mildly amusing, & Mr Ex-Shirtback hated it when he was referred to as Mr-Shirtback, reality suggests at least trying to sort it :-( Hydro-Qc is particularly annoying in my experience.

Sorry for thread swerve.

ultrarunner

I would too...I mean how would you like to be referred to as the new mrs to Mr- ex-shirtback?

Once that door has been closed, the onus is on the ex/new partners to sort that mess out. I don't want to be known as my ex's old shag, and definitely don't want to be associated with her either.....c'est la vie

Next new crumpet please

SchnookoLoly

Having passports with different names is an absolute nightmare.

My first Canadian passport had my name "normally" - First, Middle, Last. In my case, my middle name is actually my mom's maiden name, so let's say my name shows up as Jane Smith Green, where Smith is my middle name officially. When I got married, I kept my middle name and had my new passport in the name Jane Smith Black.

My first Portuguese passport had my surname as my mother's maiden name followed by my father's surname - they don't recognise middle names, and custom there is that the surname is always comprised of mother's maiden name followed by family name. So my first passport from Portugal had just "Jane" as my first name, but then "Smith Green" as a two-part surname. When I got married, I tried to get them to issue it in the same name as my Canadian passport, but they wouldn't, so I ended up with "Smith Black" as my surname on that passport.

Honestly, living in 4 legal names in the UK was a nightmare. Since I was always known as Jane Green and then Jane Black, that's what I continued to use - at work, socially, etc... however, for anything legal - bank accounts, drivers license, etc - it had to be Smith Green. When I got married I changed all my stuff to just Black instead of Smith Black, which meant it no longer matched my EU passport... NIGHTMARE.

I got lucky when I applied for my British passport though - I wrote a letter explaining the fact that I have 4 legal names, but that I wanted my British documentation to match my Canadian documentation since that's what I've always known myself as, even though I was applying for British citizenship based on EU residency and treaty agreements.

ANyways. Different names on different passports is just a nightmare - such a nuisance having to always think about which passport I'm using to fly so that the names match. I had 2 different points accounts with BA, since I wanted to earn BA points on all my flights, but some flights were booked on the Canadian passport, and some on the Portuguese passport.

Again, different names = nightmare.

/rant.

dbd33

AFAIK it hasn't been a problem. Even in Switzerland they don't go by the second half of the hyphenation, it's just there to establish ancestry.

As it goes, I've never had airline tickets in the exact name in my passport and it's only once been an issue; a border official in Detroit didn't know that the name on the ticket is a diminuative of the one on the passport.