two last names

[Chamy and Gatita 3]

My husband is from Ecuador, where they use two last names. The first is from the father, second is from the mother. They use both names on all offical documents, but commonly give only one, the first last name, for everything else.

What should we do here in the US? His passport, visa, and all our paperwork uses both last names. i can forsee a problem with continuing to use both names because people will want to alphabetize him under the second name instead of the first. What is everyone else doing? Pros....cons...?

[Mo_Mati 2]

Legal documents should continue to use both last names. This is your fiances' legal name, and therefore should not be changed while filing papework. When processing the AOS paperwork make sure to write both last names where it asks for "Family Name". We screwed up on this and then had to correct it to make everything official.

[Chamy and Gatita 3]

Thanks!

We went to apply for a SSN today. on the application, I wrote both surnames, no hyphen, just like in Latin America. The clerk didn't have a problem with it, and didn't even ask. She had me double check what she typed in and sure enough, for last name she had both, correctly.

I'm still curious how this is going to work and if it's ok if he gives his name as only his paternal surname....any thoughts?

[Chica Yeyé 41]

When I lived in Canada, I chose to hyphenate my last names to avoid any mishaps. People get confused and think the paternal last name is a middle name, adn the maternal last name the "actuazl" last name. Messy business. I would hyphen.

[Shannon and David 0]

Hi!

My husband is also Latino. He's kept both last names and I added his first last name when we got married.

No doubt it has been sort of a pain in the butt. Everyone has a hard time figuring out what his name or my name is exactly. I often do have to explain that it is two last names (made more confusing by the "De" in his and my last names). I just have to explain it, no big deal. We get the doctors calling us by the wrong names all the time, but other than that, it's really not a problem.

(Except when making plane reservations - they can only put one in online; had to call to fix it after I bought the tickets.)

[Earthsun 0]

My husband is from Ecuador, where they use two last names. The first is from the father, second is from the mother. They use both names on all offical documents, but commonly give only one, the first last name, for everything else.

They do the same thing in Peru. It is really hard getting both the paternal and maternal family names on most forms. For USCIS filings, we did not hyphenate my wife's last names. I would not recommend that! However, for everything else (drivers license, marriage license, etc.) she did use a hyphen for listing her previous (maiden) name.

Giselle chose to take my last name (which by itself has 14 letters!). I offered to hyphenate her two last names with mine for a total of 29 characters. Fortunately, she declined my offer.

[monyfer 27]

We are confused about this, too. Like, I want to put him on my health insurance, so do I put his first last name or both? What about on the Social Security card? We would much prefer to shorten it to his paternal last name but I am afraid this will cause problems since it will differ from the info on his green card and passport slightly and USCIS docs.

[TBoneTX 43,340]

Hyphenation is something to consider, si man.

Not that these two situations are automatically similar, but PubMed (the database of published medical & scientific articles) often hyphenates Hispanic names so that the authors aren't variously listed under the "final" or "middle" name (as we gringos would perceive them).

[TLJohnson 1]

I would not worry too much about this. My husband also has two last names and it has not caused much trouble.

The first issue we encountered was on his I-94. When he entered the country, the border agent only used his first last name on the document. Not really a big deal, but it came up when he went to get his social security card. Because they had only used the one last name on the I-94, they just put the version of his name with only one last name in the system as an alias.

The second issue was with our marriage license. It turns out that in our county, for people with two last names they are always hyphenated. We just kind of went with the flow on this one, as the license itself really only has sentimental value (and if a very heavily Hispanic county like ours requires hyphenation, it must not be such a big problem). We have not run into any issues with this.

When I changed my name, I just took his first last name, and this has not really caused any problems either. When you change your name, everyone looks to the marriage license for authority. I thought maybe they would make me take both exactly like his or not at all, but they pretty much let you do whatever you want.

When filing out forms (for pretty much anything), my husband lists his first name, then middle name (if they only give room for a first name, he usually lists his first and middle names because he goes by both together often). Then for last name, he just puts both words down without any hyphen.