My husband and I are expecting our first and only child (a daughter) in about three weeks. We both have unique last names -- which I won't put here because they are unique enough that you'd easily be able to ID us. About 20 people exist with his last and about 80 with mine. The last names are unusual spellings of otherwise fairly common last names, and we both take pride in the family stories behind the unusual spellings.
His last name is 4 syllables and contains a V. Mine is 2 syllables and contains a Z. Both are hard to spell.
I want to hyphenate our names -- her last name would be mine followed by his. I prefer mine first because it flows better, but I've told him I'd flip the order if it would help him get on board. It doesn't.
His objections: tradition says kids get the dad's name. A hyphenated name would be 16 letters, 6 syllables, and her full name would hit 11 syllables total. Combining two already hard to spell names will make her life harder. And he worries that if he picks her up from school or an event, not having a matching last name will raise flags in a way it wouldn't for me. Additionally, our niece on my side already has my last name, but our nieces on his side have his sister's husband's last name instead, so he says no one else is carrying on his family name. (I said he should take that up with his sister and not with me.)
My argument is that she's just as much my daughter as she is his and the tradition of passing along the dad's name is an extension of the patriarchy rather than some well thought out naming convention. Either of our names (especially his) are going to be hard to learn to spell. Is there really a big difference between learning to spell a 16-letter difficult name or a 10-letter difficult name? We both like our names so we should pass both names on. Neither name is better than the other. And it solves the issue for both of us about her not matching one parent's name when we pick her up from an event. Both our names would be in her name so we would both obviously be the parents.
So AITAH for wanting to die on this hill?