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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!
I have a two word last name – Van “Jones.” My husband has a similar name for his middle name. I tried so hard to convince him to hyphenate my last name just so his monogram would be CVCSVJ.
My husband and I both kept our names, but for a time I was tempted to suggest changing both to Ossum. Because at first glance, whatever, but when you say it out loud….
I love my last name because it is very unique, and I simply cannot imagine having another one (through marriage or through invention).
I know of a couple who both changed their last name to Darwin, though. I think it is pretty cool, and it really suits the half of the couple who I know (I haven’t met her husband). Go them. 🙂 I believe they picked it in part for its connection to THE Darwin of evolutionary theory. So, along the same lines as those suggestions related to mutual interests/books.
Some knee-jerk ideas…
Tesla (my fave scientist)
Quark
Arathorn
Sussman (that’s my paternal family’s original last name before they got a fake passport to immigrate to the US during WWII)
My maiden name was Beers. His name was Olds.
I just took his last name (I’m traditional like that), but oh, the jokes, and oh, the options we had. 😉
My husband and I combined, which was really easy since my maiden name was ‘MacDonald’ and is was ‘Ramos’, we became ‘MacRamos’. The kids are MacRamoses as well. Changing was super easy since we live in MA, and gay marriage is/was legal when we got married they have spaces for both spouses to change names on the marriage certificate.
I would suggest creating a new one. It’s so awesome and fun.
We are located in MA as well, so it’s good to know how that works! My fiancee was under the impression for a while that if we both chose a last name different than what we originally had, the process would be more complicated.
My husband and I have different last names, and we’re meditating a mash-up for any potential kids. ‘Buchwell’ is the most harmonious-sounding combination of our names, and according to whitepages.com there’s only one other Buchwell in the US. True, it would have to come with a lot of background explanations about where the name comes from and how to connect it back to us, but I figure there was plenty of that happening at Ellis Island during the immigration boom in the late 19th/early 20th century and people still managed to follow their lineages. Not to excuse the practice of forcibly changing a name, of course.
I’m in the wedding biz, and I’ve had a few couples opt for a new last name. Most couples combine the letters and come up with something original, and I even had a couple chose “Renard” in homage to The Little Prince (it means fox in French).
yep this was us: 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. 🙂
when you merge names, 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. 😀
There was a family I went to school with whose last name was Daggerhart, which I always coveted. My husband and I briefly considered doing a dual name change (until we realized what a PITA it would be for us to do so) and some of the last names we considered were: (made by rearranging some letters from both our names)Harmony, Devlin, Vine, and Serious.
I’d say play around with the letters in your names to see if anything sounds awesome. We used all the letters from all our names, first last and middle. Also maybe look back into both your family trees to see if anyone has an awesome surname you want to take on. My family has some Valentines and my husbands mother’s maiden name was a beautiful French name that, had it not been for the aforementioned giant bureaucratic pain in the ass, we probably would have both taken.
Yes! I took my husbands last name because I like that it’s a more unusual spelling of a common word (wasn’t put off by having to spell it out all the time, because my maiden name was like that anyway!), but if I had to choose, I would totally go with ‘Serious’ as a last name. Love it!
I like Sirius!
I tried to convince my husband to change our names to pterodactyl, but he just wasn’t into it. Sigh.
I wish I could choose a new last name!! I’ve never liked my surname, so I’ve always been quite happy with the idea of taking fiancé’s. He’s into the whole heritage thing, his family is very important to him, so I don’t think he’d be into the idea of creating a new name. Which I get. But still.
My inclination is to go Disney-esque last names! But only because of ‘Aurora’ which may or may not be your real name lol. I’m original like that. 😉 But like … Rose … so Aurora Rose! How pretty is that! Lol
We need more info… namely your finance’s name.
What about Aurora Sky?
Aurora Darkness
Aurora Glow
Aurora Sparks
Aurora Free
Aurora Danger
Aurora Mars
I also think the idea of first names as last names is pretty awesome
Aurora Aimlee
Aurora Maximillion
My fiancee’s name is Ashley. And these are all epic last names. Seriously epic.
OOOH, Danger as your last name!
I lobbied for a portmanteau version of our last names (Donogh/Korsmo – I particularly liked Donsmo), but my husband hated each version we thought up. I also lobbied for Rampage, because my first name is Ana (my name would sound like On A Rampage). Rampage was nixed because then I’d have a disproportionately awesome name compared to the rest of our family unit… which I disagree. My name would be a phrase, but Rampage makes everyone’s name exceedingly awesome.
So for now, we’ve both kept our last names and our kiddo has taken my husband’s last name. This caused confusion at the hospital when our son was born, because I kept having to correct all hospital documentation — they automatically assumed our baby would have my last name.
My husband’s last name is Raynes and mine is Coleman.
I never considered changing my name (and he didn’t entertain that idea for me either) and we’re not having kids.
But…
Rayneman?
Considering I’ve got no biological tie to my last name (and wouldn’t have much of one anyway even if I did have my father’s last name) my fiance and I are strongly considering changing both our last names as well. His is double barreled and hard to spell, mine’s hard to spell and pronounce. Thus far our top contender is Thorn. Slight call back to an old family name for me (rosetti), uses letters from both our last names, short and idiot proof, sounds kind of awesome juxtaposed with my fiance’s profession (gunsmith), and, special bonus: with the baby names we have picked out, it makes our future kids kind of sound like comic book characters. Bruce Thorn. Lillie Thorn. Ignatius Thorn. Wolfgang Thorn. Maclovia (chloe) Thorn, etc.
We chose Phoenix as our new last name, which had no relation to either of our pre-marriage names. I’m sure it varies by state (we did WA State), but I don’t remember the paperwork being that onerous… though I guess I don’t know what it’d be like otherwise!
Eight years later, I absolutely LOVE it. One of the best decisions we’ve ever made as a couple.
My fiancé and I have been discussing this exact idea lately and we cannot think of ANYTHING that doesn’t sound ridiculous. Any help would be welcome!
His: Bott
Mine: Dagenais (it’s French & pronounced “Dajj-uh-nay”)
Could you try something like Bot-Dagenais, and pronounce Bot like”Bo”?
Bottenais?
Sounds like a fancy French..something. A sauce maybe, or a wine perhaps? That could work, depending on your preferences.
My fiancé and I are keeping our names, but I love telling people we’re taking the the first part of his last name, “But”, and the second half of mine, “mann”!. Butmann!
I have no interesting name changes myself, but my friend is working towards her PhD and wants to ditch her father’s last name for personal reasons, so she’s planning on changing it to “Who”. So, yes, she’ll be Doctor Who! Pretty sure she’s dead serious on this plan! 😀
We took the name Sagan because we didn’t like our last names, and we both love Carl. 🙂
My mother’s maiden name is Mann and my father’s last name is Slaughter. She didn’t hyphenate when they married but did drop her given middle name so she is G. Mann Slaughter. My entire childhood I couldn’t wait to get rid of the last name Slaughter. But once I got married and it came time to make a decision about my name I realized I had finally gotten attached to it.
We always knew my husband wanted to change his name when we got married (we’ve been together for 13 years, married for 10. Met when we were teenagers) because he wanted to distance himself from his family. I flat refused to take his family name, and my last name felt like a big part of my identity. Eventually we decided to come up with a different name all together. We planned a wedding, I got pregnant, we replanned the wedding for a lot sooner and realized kind of at the last minute that we needed to get going on that new legal surname (funny note – baby girl was born on the day after the original wedding was planned – 2 weeks early) The name actually to us both suddenly. We are practicing pagans and we chose the name Corvus for the role that crows and ravens play in mythology all over the world. We both consider crows and ravens to be totem animals for us. His folks were not happy (with any of this, really) and my extended family thought it was really weird – but they think I’m really weird so it wasn’t too difficult for them to accept. We had a pagan ceremony and the programs explained each step of the ceremony, as well as an explanation of the name we’d chosen. I have been so happy to have this new name. It gives us a strong sense of our own family, doing things our own way. My oldest is three now and she’s happy to tell everyone her name – Aurora Corvus!
We’re intending to either change my partner’s name to mine. (My partner’s name is awful) OR go with Whimsey. It incorporates some of our initials and describes what we do for a living. (We’re crafters and children’s entertainers)
Incidentally I know a fellow called Doug Enforcement. His friend’s name is Pierre Pressure (Doug and Pierre are their original first names)
yMY dad was friends with a woman who, after going through a divorce, neither wanted to keep her ex’s last name nor return to her maiden name. She decided to change her last name to Wonderland. She kept her first name: Allison.
And Whimsey has the great literary cred of Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey. 😀
Do you have any particular animals you could use for inspiration? Adapt the latin name of a favorite species? Tapir? (Because, tapir.)
We’ve played with the idea of getting a new last name. His is Hispanic, mine is German (and impossible to spell/pronounce), and trying to combine them into anything sensible is a pretty pointless exercise.
I’ve joked about just taking Smith because everyone knows how to pronounce and spell that, and I’m sick of correcting people. And I share a last name with a local celebrity, except spelled completely differently, which has led to some pretty interesting misunderstanding.
We met through Pokemon, and have joked about turning our last name into Mon. Our (probably never to exist–lucky for them) kids would be Kaymon and Damienmon.
I love gryphons, and he loves Family Guy, so we have discussed Griffin.
I’m just not sure how my family (or his) would take it (although I doubt my mom would balk at me shedding her ex-husband’s name). Plus, my career as a contractor is built on my current name, and it would be a bit frustrating to change everything. I’ve worked very hard to get my name as the first search result on Google, darn it!
I do love what the Pixels did, but my partner loves his and I love *saying* his (it’s ethnic and so fun to say!) so we’ll be combining his name. Therefore I don’t have any last names off the top of my head, but I do have some suggestions.
Have you considered looking into mythology or history? Some people in legends and history were pretty damn badass.
Or if you’re into more “My name means something badass”, I’d suggest Behind the Name, since they have a Surname archive.
You could always change it to a place name (if it flows well), like where you met, or where you’ll be getting married.