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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!
Love this post! My fiance and I have similar last names – both of our names start with the same three letters. But seeing as how both of our names are very unique and how our hyphenated name would be a 20-letter nightmare, we’ve both decided to keep our respective names. I tried to get him to think about changing it to something shorter that kept the first three letters, but he wants to keep his name for family’s sake.
However, that didn’t keep me from Googling a bunch of funny anagrams for his last name (see below*) and jokingly try to convince him to change our last name to The Beanierugs or The Abusereigns!!
Beanie Rugs
Bare Genius
Abuse Reign
Urban Siege
Urea Beings
Air Bungees
Not so geeky, but we did make our own last name – McFeinics. (Pronounce Feinics as phoenix) We were helped immensely by the Offbeat Bride Tribe when picking it out, partly inspired by my still yet-to-be-realized tattoo sleeve.
Just wanted to offer you props on a terrific name, from the (created last name) Phoenix family to your (created last name) McFeinics family!
Thank you!
We each kept our own last name but have created a portmanteau that we use informally. It seems to have stuck enough that we receive Christmas cards and wedding invites addressed to our combined name, and we use it for our home wifi network name.
You could also look up maiden names in your genealogical histories and choose one that you both like? I’ve got a couple aunts who decided that they wanted to eschew their paternal name and took their mother’s maiden name, O’Shae. That way it’s still in the family, but they effectively made it their own and I really liked that.
I had a very unique maiden name. I took my husbands rediculously common last name, Young. I refuse to be Mrs. Young. I rather Ms. Young, as I feel that the name Young is well too young for the formal Mrs. I also wanted to have our daughter’s middle name be Forever, but my husband refused. Oh well I tried.
I have two friends who changed their last names to Buendia, I believe after the character from A Thousand Years of Solitude. I think that’s pretty beautiful. My husband has two friends who changed their last names to Wizard so they could be Mr. Wizard and Mrs. Wizard.
Two friends of mine (both women) are getting married this summer and one of their last names is Straight. They each want to keep their last name, but admitted it is hard to pass up being “Mrs. and Mrs. Straight”. 🙂
We’re also a couple of queer women. We created a new family name when we got married. OK, honestly, we didn’t change it until our babies were almost born five years after we got married, because it’s actually kind of a pain to change your name but we wanted them to be born with our “family” name. Neither of us wanted to take the other’s name. They were too ridiculous to hyphenate. We tried to combine our names in a meaningful way, but that didn’t work. We ended up choosing a name that espouses our values and sounds good with both of our first names.
But, coming from a punk background where many people take “punk names” and go by them for many years and in some cases their loved ones and friends don’t even know their legal names, I feel strongly your new name should be something that comes from you and your shared experiences, not crowd sourced.
Paging “Aurora Galora”! … paging Ms Galora! Mr DeMille is requesting your close-up.
My wife and I talked about this for years before getting married. We considered combining our last names, but could not come up with an eloquent combination. We also thought about hyphenating, but neither of us have connections to our given last names (my parents chose theirs when they married, my wife’s dad knows nothing of his dad or were his last name originated). So we chose a symbolic new last name, Birch. Yes yes it is one letter away from a distasteful name, but birch trees, like many trees, symbolize new life and beginning, also, purity and honesty, which are guiding principles we want to honor in our marriage. So we are going through the process of becoming legally Birch!
But let’s be honest, Pixel is so badass.
My husband and I merged our names. He was Roach and I was Downes. Our new name is Roachdown as it just looked better without the ‘es’ on the end. I had great fun designing a family crest for us, the Roach crest is 3 silver fish on a red background and the Downes crest is a white stag on a blue background. So naturally the Roachdown crest is now a stag with a fish tail on a purple background. I love it.
My husband changed his name to Anakin Skywalker before he met me. When we got married I couldn’t wait to take his name. I know it’s not his family name but it is now our family name. While some people are suggesting children will not be able to trace their lineage, I ask them if they think it completely wrong for a woman to change their name at all? Even if I’d taken his family name, my family’s name would be gone. Luckily for the both of us we are very interested in our families’ history and know almost all there is to know. We hope to pass that on to our children no matter what our names are. And if our children wish to change their name as an adult then that is their adult decision to make.
I say change your name to something that is unique and special to the 2 of you.
My fiance and I are changing our last names when we get married this summer. We’ve actually opted for Shepard (as in the Commander from Mass Effect) and honestly we couldn’t be happier with it. Neither of us have good relationships with our fathers and while I’d always rejoiced in the changing of mine, he wasn’t so sure he wanted to keep his either. One night, after a few beers and some video games, I turned to him and said, “We should just change our last name to Shepard and be the baddest commanders in this place.” and thus the idea was born. We’d considered making a portmanteau of our last names, but they weren’t options that we’d really want, though they did both make cool last names. Of course the process of him changing his last name in our state is a bit of a pain in the ass, but we’ll make it work.
As a die-hard geek, my top picks are:
Targaryen (if it’s good enough for the mother of dragons, Daenerys Stormborn herself, it’s good enough for me!)
Elric (Fullmetal Alchemist fan)
Reynolds (Firefly… Browncoats unite!)
I kind of fell in love with the surname Castle after watching the show by the same name.
I could go on… there are millions of fandom inspired or geeky names. But if I was picking a new one for my fiance and I… well, our only shared ethnicity is Irish, so I think my ancestral McHale or a combination of it with one of his Irish grandmothers’ surnames would be great.
Or just go with Targaryen. Because that name is plain badass. 😀
Good luck with it all!
I’m working on convincing my fiance that choosing a new name is something to consider.
His name is already hyphenated (and wildly unusual). And for all we joke about combining the two halves of my last name with half of each of his last names (so if I’m, say, Johnson, and he’s, say, Crazyface-Beardenstein, we’d end up with Crazyson-Johnenstein or Johnface-Beardson or whatever) that’s a little too insane even for us. ;-p He’s also spent his whole life coming to terms with a nutballs last name, and is a little hesitant to give it up.
For the moment, I’m partial to Raddicks (radix being the Latin word for root, of trees or of words), Petrichor (which he thinks is too “loot at me i’m a normal English word” but I love — the dampness of earth, the possibility of new growth), or Cantabridge (we’ve lived in Cambridge MA as long as we’ve been together — Cantabrigia). He’s hesitant. I know it’s his call, and I’m trying not to be disappointed if (when, obviously when) he decides he’s not into it.