I already have a hyphenated name, so the concept of hyphenating is no problem for me. When I get married, I'll keep my mom's maiden name (the first part of the hyphenated name) and take on my husband's name for the second part. I went to legally change my name to the hyphenated version because on my mom's side there are no boys to carry on the name (and it's a pretty uncommon last name because of its spelling), so as the oldest grandchild I took on the name (and also it sounded better with my dad's last name than with my cousins' last name). This is something I will talk about with my husband...as for hyphenating children's names, I don't know if I will or not....if I can work the family name into either the first name or middle name, I might just leave children's name as "Bobby Hisname". But I can tell you, a hyphenated name as a child will not scar you for life. I'm pretty normal, if I do say so myself...
