There are a lot of conversations that take place when a couple gets engaged and begins the exciting process of planning their lives together. Where they’ll live, what their plans for growing their family are, even where they’ll spend the holidays. Each of those topics covers major life choices, which means that from time to time talking through them (as in: do you really want to spend the next 20-plus Christmas mornings opening presents with your in-laws?) can be a source of tension and frustration. But for one couple on Reddit, it’s the conversation they didn’t have that’s causing the biggest fight of their relationship.
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Over the weekend, Redditor u/Fightoverlastname posted about the fight that she and her fiancé got into over his assumption that they would be giving their future children dad’s last name. According to the poster, dad’s name can be somewhat vulgar sounding — and it’s not something she wants to saddle her kids with. “I (29 F) have been with my fiancé (29 M) for 6 years now, and we recently got engaged,” she writes. “My fiancé’s last name, when said out loud, sounds vulgar/inappropriate, though it’s not spelled inappropriately (I’m not going to give out his last name on the internet obviously, but for example’s sake, let’s say his last name is Pipi but pronounced like pee-pee). I told my husband after we got engaged that I would be keeping my last name because I preferred my last name to ‘Pipi.’ He was ok with that.”
However, the conversation went downhill this weekend when the newly engaged couple were talking to OP’s future mother-in-law about names for their imagined children. “She was talking about our future children, and I offhandedly mentioned that I liked the name Hannah. She said ‘awww, Hana Pipi, isn’t that adorable!’ And I said that our children would take my last name because I’m not going to give my kids a last name that would result in them getting bullied,” OP wrote. “My fiancé was shocked because we hadn’t had this conversation yet, and my MIL was mad that we would be ‘untraditional’ by not giving the kids their father’s last name.” In addition to the “vulgar” aspect of the name, OP said that she felt it was also sexist for everyone to assume that their children were going to have her fiancé’s last name.
Fightoverlastname concluded her post by saying that her fiancé had never mentioned whether or not the kids would have his name because he had always just assumed they would, and now both her future husband and her future mother-in-law are mad at her. “My husband did get bullied for his vulgar-sounding last name, and he still gets comments on it, but he claims that he doesn’t want to change his name or take on my name,” she writes. “And I don’t want to hyphenate the kids’ names because then Pipi would still be part of their last name. Also, our names hyphenated together would be quite long.”
Redditors were not shy about sharing their opinions on the matter. “I’m not a huge fan that is always the expectation that kids will get their fathers last name. But I can’t believe OP thought to discuss her not changing her last name but in 6 years and after getting engaged never discussed how their kids would be named,” wrote Noblestromana. “This should have been discussed by both future parents from the start.”
Another Redditor found it hard to believe that OP could both be so against her future husband’s last name while also never mentioning what their kids would be called. “My ex’s last name is Arreola (pronounced like you think). You better believe we talked about whether or not I would take his name if we got married and what last name our children would have,” wrote CaffeinatedCannoli. “With an ‘interesting’ last name, this should be a conversation that happens early on.”
But not everyone thought that the blame should fall solely on the shoulders of OP. “When someone told me they don’t want to take my last name as it sounds vulgar my next question would be ‘and what about our future children?’,” wrote user DarkStar0915. “These questions are going hand to hand for me.”
You know what they say about assuming, which leads us to declare both parties are at fault in this scenario. Hopefully, they can get on the same page about the last name before OP actually gets pregnant.
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