When genetic testing results revealed I was pregnant with a girl, her dad and I spent the first trimester excitedly talking about possible first and middle names. Like typical expecting parents, we lobbed a barrage of contending names back and forth, quickly vetoing any we had a strong negative reaction to. The list of first names we both liked was short, but by the third trimester, we agreed on one we both loved.
We didn’t talk about her last name in much detail. Though there are no nationwide statistics on how many children are given a surname other than their fathers, it’s still the de facto custom for heterosexual couples in the United States.
He assumed his daughter would take his last name. I assumed my daughter would take his last name and that he and I would be married eventually, then the three of us would have a family name.
I was wrong.
He left about 6 months after she was born
In the delivery recovery room, while I was still exhausted from an emergency C-section, we got a standard visit from hospital staff about the birth certificate. Since I wasn’t married to the father of my child, the staff member paused and asked if we were sure about paternity. Neither of us contested it. She put his last name on the birth certificate behind the first and middle names we’d carefully chosen on our newborn daughter’s behalf.
Me, a new mom with a doula and a birth plan and multiple people covering for my maternity leave at work, left a vital detail unexplored: How would I feel with a different last name than my only child? It turned out to be more complicated than I expected.
The father of my child excused himself from our romantic relationship about six months after she was born. Leaving me with a broken heart and a daughter with a last name completely different from my own. Along with the shock of unexpectedly navigating life as a single mom with an infant, I was realizing the repercussions of having a daughter without my last name: passport problems, school registration, and a feeling of general disconnect when I said her full name out loud.
All the work I did disappeared in her name, different from mine
And since I’m being honest here, calling her solely by my ex’s last name felt like a betrayal to all the physical and emotional work I did pregnant and postpartum. How had I disappeared in the name? And less important but still important: I like my last name better than her dad’s last name. Mine is easy to spell and pronounce. It sounds nice with her first name. I’m proud of my last name. Sure, I have my dad’s last name, but so does my mom. It’s our family name. The father of my child did not want to have a family with me — something he didn’t decide until after our daughter was born. I had last name regret. But I figured I had to live with it.
We agreed to add my last name to her name
I consulted a family lawyer and learned that in the state of Wisconsin (where my daughter was born), it’s free to change a child’s name for the first 12 months of their life. After a year passes, a name change requires a court hearing and a fee. I talked to her dad about hyphenating her last name to include mine and his. He agreed, and I filled out the paperwork online.
Her new birth certificate (and eventual passport) arrived in the mail with her new hyphenated name. At 2, my daughter’s last name is now legally hyphenated, as a compromise to her dad and to me. If I could do the naming thing all over again, I would have put my last name on her birth certificate in the hospital and told her dad we could change it to a family name if that day came.
I’ve made peace with my daughter’s last name and moved on to the other challenges and joys of motherhood. When she’s an adult, I’ll talk to her about how and why her last name was changed. If she wants to make any changes, I’ll help her with the paperwork.
