add my mother's last name to my name

I want to add my mother’s last name to my name. I don’t know how to go about it. What documentation do I need?

I think it’s important to have both of your parent’s names.

i didn’t so much do it myself as have it done. i’ve had my mother’s last name, only, from birth. i love it. and i love how confused it makes people.

when my husband and I got married and added my married name. No hyphen or anything, just another name to add to my line of relationships. Then when I was pregnant, we talked about “losing” a family name which neither of us wanted to happen. So my son took on several new names: his first, his grandfather’s first, my family name (which is my mom’s), and my husband’s last name. Alot of names, but mostly just for history and family lineage.

is that if I add my mother’s last name to mine, that will be my entire surname, and if I got a child and s/he decides to do the same, the entire surname will have to be added. In few generations we’ll have to add some pages to our DNI.

I finally got around to doing this – and my mother was really surprised when she found out, and I think she was a bit moved too :) Don’t regret doing this at all!

It’s funny, in North America, we consider ourselves SO advanced and we speak of Latin American cultures as “machista” (chauvinistic), yet we completely discard our mother’s family name.

Also, in the US, whenever I specify my last name (paternal), I have to spell it 5 times repeatedly for people to be able write it correctly. Even then, there’s NO way they are ever going to pronounce it correctly. I consider myself lucky if they get the right number of sylables.

So it is SO refreshing when I am in Latin America or speaking to someone from Latin America and I tell them my name and they just write it—correctly without any questions. Or maybe they write Ferreyra (which is the alternate conventional spelling (my name is literally Smith or Smyth).

Anyway, just do it. Use your mother’s last name after your father’s (or before, Portuguese-style).

Just go for it. No need to explain. Much of the world already does it.

David Ferreira Martíns

My mom died three months ago. I never took my husband’s last name but I took my first husband’s last name and kept it because of our child, after he died. I have one child, a daughter, and I like the idea of including a matrilineal connection in my name.