Last Name - Hyphenate, Two Last Names, Maiden Name as Middle Name

Hyphenating but switching the order.

His last name-my maiden

I'm taking his last name legally and I can't decide if I want to drop my middle name and change it to my maiden. Ugh! I'm so indecisive.

@VickiG

I'm surprised! That's interesting and lucky for Californians. OP should definitely check out her state laws because I remember reading that NY (or maybe it was another state) recently passed a law allowing women to keep their maiden as a second middle name, thus be able to have 4 legal names.

ETA. I just realized YOU'RE OP Vickie! . Scratch what I said! Leaving it here tho in case it helps anyone else.

Wait can you only have three names? I want to keep my maiden name for professional AND personal reasons and have my FH's last name be my new legal last name...

I hear ya. I already have two middle names (mom's maiden name is my second middle name...though she didn't change her last name when she got married) and my last name is pretty long already so if I hyphenated or barreled then I'd have five names. But I don't want to drop one or both middle names and my FH likes my last name so he (and I) don't really want to lose it. *sigh* It's complicated.

ETA grammar

@Kari I live in MA, where you're allowed to have two last names unhyphenated. But in NY, where I grew up, you can't unless you include the hyphen. So it is sort of a crap shoot.

I have a hyphenated name from birth; and it has been a huge pain! My full name never fit on any formal document(plane tickets, in school standardized testing, I'm 2 lines on my drivers license) I had my college applications filled under different parts of my last name which made it very difficult to know which name to search for. My credit cards can't fit my full name either so they just pick one of my last names, which can be confusing when a store asks to see my ID and it only matches one of the names on my cc. Needless to say for me it has been a struggle my whole life and I'm excited to take my husbands and just have 1 last name!

My last name now is hyphenated and After almost 20 years i cannot wait to get rid of it and just have ONE last name.... it is a pain in the ass.... people dont know whether to call you by your first last name or second.... also those moments when you call lets say insurance company they dont know if they should look for you by the first last name or the second.... Correcting people.... spelling it out... ect ect it has gotten really really old....

Im changing mine altogether and only keeping his last name. It has more to do with personal reasons than anything else. I couldnt even consider hyphenating due to each of my names containing more than 9 letters lol.

I've always thought of a hyphenated name but mine is 9 letters long n FH is 8...that's too many for my taste. Since I'm not named after anyone, I will be replacing my middle name with my maiden name...just so happens that my MI remains the same

This thread helped me thanks! Going to add his last name, no hyphen but go by my maiden professionally.

I'm going the old fashioned route and changing my last name to his.

Thanks, ladies! This was so helpful!