My birthday is coming up soon and with every card that arrives, I’m reminded of how incomprehensible my double-barrelled surname is to some people. This got me thinking about all the little frustrations that occur when you have a hyphenated surname. Most days I love my surname. It’s great being able to carry on both family names for another generation and hyphenated surnames can often be interpreted as sounding more grown up or sophisticated, however, there are plenty of drawbacks.
Filling in forms. If you have a double barrelled surname, chances are it’s probably quite long. You will often find yourself writing above or beyond the allocated one letter per box space and God help you if they want your middle name too. You’d have thought online forms might be more accommodating but alas not, many online registration forms don’t accept hyphens or spaces and expect your surname to be just one-word long.
Spelling it out. Spelling out a long name, be it over the phone or in person is a nightmare. Many a time I have been misheard or been asked to give other information for means of identification such as my date of birth or my address. During a recent visit to my GP, the receptionist didn’t even ask me to spell out my name, just bluntly said, ‘the system doesn’t like double barrelled names, what’s your birth date?’. I told her and once I got over her rudeness I started to feel sorry for her having to work with a computer system that can’t even handle a hyphen.
Impossible to make into a signature. The whole point of a signature is that it’s a quick, unique depiction of your name, but when your name is twenty-odd letters long, it’s hard to make that into a quick scribble of a signature. When you have such a long name, you either end up with an impractically long signature or one made up of just initials and thus easily forged.
Getting stereotyped as ‘posh’. Unfortunately, there is still an outdated stereotype that anyone with a double barrelled surname is ‘posh’. Admittedly, this is something encountered more as a child, however, the stereotype does still exist, it’s just that most adults are too polite to acknowledge it.
Your own family getting it wrong. I can’t speak for everyone on this one but some members of my family don’t seem to know I have a double barrelled surname, or they just don’t care. As my birthday approaches, I can tell which side of the family I’m receiving cards from based on which half of my surname the sender uses.
Can’t hyphenate when you getting married. If, like me, your hyphenated name is derived from a fusion of your mum’s maiden name and your dad’s surname, that means you’ve lost the option to hyphenate your name when you get married, your parents already did that. That leaves us hyphenated people with three options; keep our maiden names, take our partner’s name, or create some strange hybrid name, perhaps using one barrel of our maiden name. Maybe we should all just go mononymous like Cher or Bono.
Your surname doesn’t quite match your family’s. While my surname can sometimes be inconvenient or cumbersome, I’m not usually self-conscious about it. The only time I’ve felt self-conscious was when I was on holiday with my parents and maternal grandmother. Between four people, we had three, albeit linked, but different surnames. This shouldn’t have bothered me but somehow it did, as if the people at the hotel were going to get confused or see us as less of a proper family because we didn’t all have the same surname.
Getting questioned about it. While hyphenated surnames are increasingly common, people still like to ask questions about it. At school, I was asked why I had two names, to which I had no response except, I just do, being asked why your name is your name is a very difficult one to answer. More insultingly, even my own family ask why it was necessary for my mum to hyphenate our names, rather than just taking my dad’s name like everyone else does. While this might’ve been a valid question in the weeks following my birth, to still be making a point of your disapproval after twenty years is a bit much.
Never using your middle name. If you’re lucky enough to have a middle name to add to your already extensive name, then the chances are you probably never use it. Whenever you’re asked for your full name, you inevitably decide that forename and surname are wholly sufficient, especially if you’re faced with an inappropriately small space in which to fit your long name.
People choosing one barrel and calling you by that. Last and by no means least, people thinking they can choose one half of your surname, and call you by that. This is my personal pet peeve as I feel it shows a disregard for what my name actually is. It seems that some people don’t realise that using only one barrel of my surname is the same as shortening a surname like Roberts or Williams to just Rob or Will. You wouldn’t cut a single word in half, so why do some people think it’s acceptable to cut my name off at the hyphen?
So there we have it, rant over. If you have a double barrelled surname, I’m sure you can relate to some of these issues which, while trivial, get very annoying when you’re encountering them regularly. And if you’re lucky enough to only have one word as your surname, please remember some of these things next time you meet someone who has two.
Louisa Merrick-White
Featured image courtesy of Author.