Hyphenated last names

[kranky]

Seems like there's an increase in people with hyphenated last names (to borrow an illustration from Monty Python, "Raymond Luxury-Yacht").

[made up names follow, but the scenario is real...]
When a friend (Daniel Jones) got married, his wife (Jill Smith) did not change her last name.
All their children were given hyphenated last names, "Smith-Jones".
My friend's oldest child, we'll call him Robert Smith-Jones, married Jane Doe. Jane also did not change her name when they got married.
They just had their first child, and named him John Doe-Jones.

My friend's other three children legally changed their last name from Smith-Jones to just Jones when they because adults. I don't know why, never asked.

I'm asking this in all seriousness - aside from the misery of never knowing how someone put your last name into a computer (hyphen? space? neither?), doesn't it cause any problems when family have different last names in each generation? And is there some standard methodology of handling things when you want to hyphenate names to combine them, and the names already are hyphenated to start with?

 

[sdifox]

Seems like there's an increase in people with hyphenated last names (to borrow an illustration from Monty Python, "Raymond Luxury-Yacht").

[made up names follow, but the scenario is real...]
When a friend (Daniel Jones) got married, his wife (Jill Smith) did not change her last name.
All their children were given hyphenated last names, "Smith-Jones".
My friend's oldest child, we'll call him Robert Smith-Jones, married Jane Doe. Jane also did not change her name when they got married.
They just had their first child, and named him John Doe-Jones.

My friend's other three children legally changed their last name from Smith-Jones to just Jones when they because adults. I don't know why, never asked.

I'm asking this in all seriousness - aside from the misery of never knowing how someone put your last name into a computer (hyphen? space? neither?), doesn't it cause any problems when family have different last names in each generation? And is there some standard methodology of handling things when you want to hyphenate names to combine them, and the names already are hyphenated to start with?

Umm, quite a big portion of the population have different last names in the family.

Patronymic - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[IronWing]

I came up with a scheme for last names that would carry both maternal and paternal lineages forward in perpetuity but then I remembered that it is none of my business what other folks choose to name themselves.

Then I thought that maybe I should give my self a super cool last name, copyright it, pass it on to my children, and then sue the crap out of them when they gave the grandkids that last name.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I used to see this a lot when I worked as a server tech. When I had to make accounts I just used the whole hyphenated last name. Some usernames got ridiculously long. Figured if they want it changed I can always change it but I stuck to the standard otherwise.