Hyphenated last names

[AOII Angel]

Originally Posted by MysticCat

Half the people in my family go by their middle names, including one of my children. Very common in this part of the world. I don't think any of them have found it to be a major inconvenience to simply say "I go by MiddleName." Meanwhile, when my sister got married, she just stopped using her first name.

Or we could do it the Icelandic way. I've mentioned this at GC before, so I'll cut and paste.

In Iceland, your last name depends on your father's first name, and a family of four can have four different last names. Say dad's name is Eric -- his son, Leif, is Leif Ericsson (Eric's son), and his daughter, we'll call her Katrín, is Katrín Ericsdóttir (Eric's daughter). Meanwhile, Helga -- Eric's wife and the mother of Leif and Katrín -- is the daughter of a man named Jón, so her last name is Jónsdóttir; she doesn't change it when she gets married. Oh, and Eric's dad's first name was Stefán, so his name is Eric Stefánsson.

So, in one family, you have Eric Stefánsson (husband) and Helga Jónsdóttir (wife) and their kids: Leif Ericsson and Katrín Ericsdóttir.

Love it! I suspect the Swedes are similar with Johanson, etc. from the Viking tradition.