For the first six months of his life, Sydney Skybetter was a child with no last name. Prior to his June 1982 birth in Florida, Christine Ledbetter and Dean Skylar brainstormed a way to give their son a unique last name that featured elements of their own. The result: Skybetter. The surname was simply an extension of his parents’ feminist ideologies. (His first name, Sydney, was meant to be gender ambiguous. Anthony, his middle name, was an homage to Susan B. Anthony.)
“I suppose my parents could have named me ‘Smash the Patriarchy,’ though that would be somewhat less poetic than what they settled on,” Skybetter, now a choreographer and professor at Brown University, said.
The last name, though, wouldn’t be legally recognized until that December, when a judge ruled that the Florida statute dictating how children are named was unconstitutional. “That it was legally inevitable for children born in Florida to receive the name of their father wasn’t in any way natural,” Skybetter said, “but it was made to feel that way.”
When it came to his own children’s surnames, Skybetter followed in his parents’ footsteps and blended his last name with his wife’s—Alvarado—to create Skyado.
Skybetter and his wife aren’t alone. A rising population of newlyweds and parents are opting to create a new last name by combining each of their own. Beyond maintaining a maiden name or hyphenating, both women and men are exploring ways to introduce their newly formed families.
We’ve long been fascinated with creating punchy names for celebrity couples like Bennifer, Brangelina, Kimye, and TomKat, to name a few. But now couples are taking legal measures to create their own familial identities. Whether to buck the patriarchal power dynamics behind the woman-takes-man’s-last-name tradition or to start a unique branch on the family tree, many see merging last names as another way to maintain equality within a partnership.
“I’m not finding a good man to marry,” Jenna Hammonaco said. “I’m finding a good partner and finding someone who is going to support me the same way I’m going to support him.”
Hammonaco, the head of digital marketing at Island Records and her publicist husband Joshua first jokingly introduced Hammonaco—the combination of LoMonaco and Hammond—on a Christmas card and eventually used the name as the hashtag for their March 2017 wedding. Once the couple began to discuss what name they’d take, Hammonaco jumped out as the option most in line with what they wanted.
“With me, I didn't think it was fair that somebody I’m entering a relationship with as a partner to sacrifice more than I would have to sacrifice,” Joshua said. “Especially when you consider the things that I’m not sacrificing compared to how her last name might be significantly important to her.”
Matt and Iain Braddak used their future merged last name as their wedding hashtag too. The couple have been married for just over a year, but Matt sometimes misses his old last name, Hudak—in certain groups of friends.
“It wasn't only a last name, but in some circles it was my only name,” Matt, a college administrator said. “It’s cool to meet new people and they only know me as Matt Braddak, so that’s a new kind of thing, a new identity. I definitely miss the last name of Hudak and appreciate it but [am] definitely ready to live out this new last name.”
For many couples who planned on having children, taking a single family name was about creating family unity. Lisa Wongchenko wanted their future family to share a name rather than the children taking either hers, Boychenko, or her husband’s, Wong. Since Wongchenko was already a nickname among friends, Lisa, a lawyer, and Matt, a scientist, took it as a way to honor both of their families.
Nora Stilestein wanted to provide a good example for her future children, that her family’s last name came out of two distinct histories—Stiles and Rottenstein—and not the assumption of one over another.
“Names in and of themselves are artificial,” Stilestein, an attorney said, “and to assume that women will modify their identity and that their kids will take the husband's names, I don't understand it.”
Both Wongchenko and Stilestein are OK if their new family tree starts and ends with their children should they decide to change their last names.
“I think it’s such a personal decision, and I’d be more than happy if he made a similar choice,” Wongchenko said of her son.
Unfortunately, the bureaucratic process of merging last names can still create headaches—and it varies from state to state. In Maryland, Katie and Ilana Kein, who blended their mothers’ maiden names, Kopa and Schein, had to file a name-change petition, publish the request in their local newspaper, and then have a judge sign off on the name change. In California the Name Equality Act of 2007 made the process for both men and women changing their names after marriage identical. For the Hammonacos, who married in New York, they were able to file their marriage certificate with their new last name.
Even in 2017 it’s still somewhat novel for a man to change his surname upon marriage. Joshua Hammonaco’s new name certainly raised eyebrows in his hometown of Kansas City. Stilestein once received a comment from a colleague poking fun at her husband’s masculinity due to his married name.
“It’s somehow embarrassing for a man to change his name because of tradition,” she said. “I’ve gotten that from [male] friends who said, ‘I would never change my name,’ or ‘I would never get married if she didn't take my last name.’”
It’s not radical for a woman to not take her husband’s last name, nor is it to create a new designation altogether. But the notion that both partners in a union hold equal weight in their new family’s identity is one inspired by feminism. That there are alternatives to what was once a societal norm.
“Your name is a piece of who you are,” Jenna Hammonaco said. “When you merge the two, you’re not saying, ‘I’m this person’s wife’; you’re saying, ‘We’re partners.’”
