If you could create a new last name, what would it be?

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#Life#names#newlyweds
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Both my fiancée and I are both looking to change our last name to something totally new once we get married.

I remembered that there was a wedding featured on Offbeat Bride where the couple changed their last name to Pixel. I’d love to crowd-source last names along that vein that are bad ass. (Also, think Lucy Lawless — how awesome of a last name is “Lawless”?)

So, Homies: What are awesome, bad ass, or geeky, unique last names that you’d choose for your family?

-Aurora

What a fun question! As far as Empire chicks go…

Megan Finley lucked into her dream last name via that guy she married. Although she once considered staying with an ex boyfriend solely because of his last name: Kirby.

Ariel and her husband both kept their last names, but sometimes they create a goofy portmanteau out of the two names and refer to themselves as “The Fetzlings Family.”

And of course who could ever forget Cat Rocketship?

What would your dream last name be? Squishing together your and your partners’ names? Creating something new? Spill it!

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Comments on If you could create a new last name, what would it be?

  1. I will now honor my mother the historian by saying, beware the dual name change in that it completely screws with any future offspring that may want to trace lineage. It makes it very hard for descendants to track or trace herratage and even if that not your thing, everyone kind of wants to know who they are and where they came from. The dual name change can throw a wrench in things.

    Ok now that that’s done you seem to have made up your mind so let’s find you a badass last name! Traditionally last names came from jobs or location. Anything you got there? Maybe hobbies you do together (to add meaning or a giggle) sometimes last names were sourced from major events (like Freeman or Freedman for freed slaves in the US) i know that’s not exactly a list of names but maybe a place tot start!

    • I recently became the keeper of my side of the family’s *extensive* genealogical research. If you are thinking to change your name AND want to make it easier for your progeny to be able to find where they come from, I highly recommend putting together some sort record of at least yourselves, your parents, and your grandparents with names (married and maiden) birth years, and birth places. Do more if possible!

      I learned SO much about my family and how many amazing (and sometimes terrible… I’m looking at you great, great uncle scourge-of-the-Cherokee) things that my family was a part of.

    • I would like to note that we’re both women, so I’m not exactly sure if this applies to us. If it does, and if you have any further tips on how to make it easier for our kids to trace their lineage, I’d love to hear them! One of my aunts on my dad’s side has our family tree traced back to I think the 9th century in Scotland, and I definitely think all that stuff is super interesting.

      • Never forget that you are a part of other families make up as well! Your aunt cares! (or cousin/brother/sister/niece/nephew etc!) Or random strangers. My mom is a writer and I have spent more time than I care to admit following her around graveyards making rubbings of headstones so that she can research the sister of a friend mentioned in a letter she found.
        I asked her for advise on this and she quoted me her #1 phrase “If it’s not written down, it doesn’t exist”. So DOCUMENT whatever you do. Grab your aunt and get your immediate genealogy file it away with copies of original birth certificates for you both and copies of paperwork that covers legal name changing and then your old licenses and passports and new ones and GOOD LUCK

    • You know I would agree with this… if it weren’t 2013. There’s a lot of genealogy software out there and more coming in the future. Also since the software already tracks female name changes I’m sure it won’t be too hard to implement a maiden name for men as well.

      You can tell your mother to breathe easy!

  3. My FH and I are combining last names. Both our current last names are two-syllable names that start with the same letter. So, for example (not using our actual names): Farnzel + Fortwell = Fortzel. I’m super excited about the fact that we’re taking pieces of each other’s names and creating a new family name–and the symbolism of that, as we each bring our own lives and contributions into this new family we’re making.

    • I considered morphing names when we got married. Alas, he’s too traditional (and has a boring traditional last name to match) and my last name is too freaking unique (Dacyczyn) to change it OR morph it officiall, so we just kept our own names. I do think that when we get our lives settled enough to be that couple who sends Christmas cards, I’ll sign them from the Frankcyczyn Family…both for fun AND to remind those irritating relatives that keep sending us cards addressed to Mr. and Mrs. HisFirstName Franklin.

    • If we’d combined our names, we would have done this (we wound up keeping our own names for the sake of ancestry). He has a short common last name, I have a three-syllable last name that’s only common in Ireland. We would have combined them, i.e. Smith + Harrison = Harrismith (not the real names but that’s an example). I often refer to our children as “future Harrismiths” or I say “Merry Christmas from the Harrismith family”.

      • I tried to convince my husband to take the “Mc” part of my last name in front of his British surname…but instead we both hyphenate so now we have a 5 syllable last name 🙂

    • Oh! I would looove to do this, but unfortunately my last name is Brown and his is Whitmore, making any sort of combination automatically awkward. Brownmore? Noooope. Whitown? Nadda. Bromore? Even worse!

      No, I think I’m going to end up being traditional, going with his.

      NOW FOR THE MAIN PART. How about Zelda? You guys are going for something geeky, I think that would actually be an excellent last name, especially with your first name, Aurora. Aurora Zelda. Aurora Storm maybe? A throw back to X-men.

      Actually I’m really digging Storm now. BE THE STORMS.

      • just a thought, but one option when combining: you don’t have to combine the names in the pronounced way they appear in the original names. you can arrange the letters any way you want. we used 3 letters from his last name, 3 letters from my last name and made up a new one, arranging those letters into a name pleasing to us. 🙂

        • I worked with a couple who did a cool take like this – one was Ross and the other was a German name I can’t remember, starting with F, so they made their new last name Frost. Also they’ve been married over 30 years, so they were making a new name before it was cool lol

    • 🙂 We seriously considered this and my mom still says she thinks it would have been cool. But… we decided it wasn’t worth the extensive paperwork involved. Also, I’m pretty sure my husband’s name would have ended at him and it’s fairly unique so I’m hoping we can keep it going.

  4. My husband and I always joke that we’re going to change our last name to Monstertruck, so our kids can aspire to being things like Senator Monstertruck, Admiral Monstertruck, Doctor Monstertruck (this is why we should probably never have kids).

  5. My husband’s initials spell an acronym that he’s quite fond of, so we’re hunting for a new name that starts with the same letter – A. Because we identify as culturally Jewish, we’re hoping to come up with something that reflects those roots (while being totally secular in practice). The Avrams, maybe?

  6. The funny thing is, Lucy Lawless did not (really) make up that name, she married a man named Lawless. It’s very difficult to change your last name in Germany, but if I could I would go for Picard or Solo.

    • Basically impossible in my country (neighbouring Germany), too. As far as I know, you can only change your name if it’s considered offensive for some reason or another – I know someone whose parents had their name changed from “Ficker” (which translates to f*cker) to “Fischer” – but basically, once you have a name you’re stuck with it forever. I kinda envy all the cool opportunities for name changes you guys get in the States! 🙂

      BTW, I really know someone (of Italian ancestry, so that’s where the name hails from I guess) with the last name of “Solo”, and his sister is Johanna, nicknamed Hanna. That rocks so much and even though they all claim it I cannot believe that their parents were oblivious to that fact! 😀

  8. Because I’m a big fan of puns, when I saw that your name is “Aurora”, my first thought was “Borealis” — but that’s totally up to your sense of humour… 😛

    I second those who are suggesting that your new last name might reference a hobby / common interest you have. Is there a book you both love that you could steal a last name from? What words are associated with your common interests? Do you have different passions that you could portmanteau to create a new last name that reflects both of you? Do you want to combine your current last names? (I know one family that did that, and I’ve always thought it was pretty cool…).

    • I’ve been hearing “Is your middle name ‘Borealis’?” for years, so that’s a little stale for me. But along a similar vein, Australis (the Southern lights over Antarctica) would be pretty cool! And I’ll have to sit down with my fiancee and brainstorm different ideas related to common interests.

  9. My last name is Wheeler. My guy’s is Broadrick. I think it would be awesome to combine them into Broadwheel. He’s not really into either of us changing our names legally, but I wouldn’t mind signing our Christmas cards “love from the Broadwheels” once we’re married! 😀

    • My friend formally changed her last name to her husband’s, but everyone in our circle always refers to the them as the Hardblacks (rather than the Blacks).

  10. I have a friend with the last name Black, and her girlfriend has the last name Smith. Smith’s pushing Black for them to switch to Blacksmith. Because COME ON, THAT WOULD BE AWESOME.

  11. We considered creating the last name Evancore, after a set of characters in my husbands books (which aren’t entirely written yet). We decided not too, however, and I just ended up keeping my last name. If I ever go into hiding or anything though, I’m totally changing my last name to Aran. 😉

  12. My fiance and I both joke about becoming “Campbell” – as that’s my mother’s maiden name and his paternal grandmother’s maiden name (at least we’re not related closely enough for banjos to play). Besides, I’ve always liked the surname of Campbell.

    Although if he wasn’t such a stickler for family name tradition, we’d probably be either Turunga (Futurama), Greyhorse (his yoga teacher name), or Blue (our cat’s name).

    I would have liked my online cognomen’s last name (Tesser) to be in the running, but my ex-husband had taken that name for his own online name while we were married. I kind of don’t want my second husband to be known as “The Second Mr. Tesser” in any way.

  13. My last name is Taylor, and my partner’s is Turnbull… we joked that we should combine them into Taytur.. ’cause when we have kids they’d be the Taytur tots!

    …but I couldn’t do that to my kids for real.

  15. My maiden name is Sword and I have always loved its awesomeness. I didn’t want to lose it when I got married (had big arguments with a long time boyfriend at the time over the whole thing). Then I met my now husband and who is amazing and clearly sent to me by the universe. My last name is now Sword-Buster. Thank you universe!

  16. My husband and I both have a hypenated double last name, so any hope of combining them went out the window. Two is fine, four just wasn’t. Now we both have always just used our mothers’ last name, solely because they were the first last names (before the hypen) and dad’s came after. It was easy. We discussed the combination thing early on, but simply could not figure a way to jimmy such different names together. We debated becoming the Mullarah family, but eventually I just didn’t want to owing to the fact that my clients know me one way and I just didn’t want to inconvienance any of them. It sounds so unromantic to do it that way, but that was really my rationale.

    It wasn’t hard for us. It was hard to have a child, though. We debated about which last names to give one, if they’d be better off with the combined Mullarah name, etc. Eventually, we decided that it was important to us that kids have a last name that matched us at least somewhat. It also helped that a collegue of mine gave her child a new last name based upon the parents and it’s caused her a lot of grief – apparantly, people are weird when a child’s last name doesn’t exactly match the parents’. Go figure. Our daughter has the hypenated last names we used growing up – which are the last names of her grandmothers. That worked for us, but we were going solely for practicality.

  17. We went with hyphenating our mother’s maiden names. Just beware, when hyphenating, of giving yourself “the longest last name in the world”, if I where to do it again I would have probably pushed for some combination of the names just to create something shorter for official documents.

  18. When we were planning our wedding, my husband lobbied hard for “Robototronosaurus”. I veto’d it on the basis of it’d be hell to sign credit card slips.

    (We ended up each keeping our own- I already had a business built under my maiden name and doing paperwork is dumb.)

  19. If it didn’t take so much bloody paperwork, my husband and I would both change our last names to Skullduggery. Too bad neither of us want kids, because they would be SO feared and respected in school.

  20. I always hoped to marry a guy with the last name “Lee” or “Ly” so I could have adjectives for kids, like “Sparkle” or “Ug”. My now husband and I talked about doing a combination (resulting in the not-so-attractive “Munchison”) or “Awesome” or something else that would make people do a double take in it’s cool-ness.

    But that’s a big decision! It’s hard to change your name (which really does play a part in your identity, I’ve found), so make sure you can live with it, and it does mean something to both of you!

  21. My husband and I kept our names, there was never any real thought we’d do anything else. But I have to say, we were both slightly tempted when we found out an anagram of both of our last names that uses every letter was Damesworthy.

  22. A friend & her (now ex) husband changed their last names to “Graven,” which I think sounds lovely. It worked well with their names & their kids names. It wasn’t a combo of their previous last names, they just picked it.

    My husband & I kept our last names bec. they’re unique & we like them.

  23. My husband and I combined names and I absolutely love it. It was fairly easy to do in our state. We took his last name which was short and added the second syllable of my last name. I wanted to keep the “y” from my signature because it’s just like my dad’s who taught me how to write.

  24. I took my husband’s last name, Yoshida and we live in Vancouver, so amongst family, to distinguish which Yoshidas one is talking about, we are the Vanshidas.

  25. My pre-marriage initials were LMN, so I always kind of wanted to find a guy with an O last name. Alas, my husband will not change his name to O’Murphy for me 😛

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