Sasha Harris-Cronin and her partner struggled with their daughter Shannon's last name.

Hyphenating has waned since its peak in the '80s and '90s, in part, experts say, because it's become less of a feminist statement and more of a bureaucratic nightmare. 'We can go the route of Prince and just drop our last names just, be like, 'I'm Brendan.' ' - The Brendan formerly known as Brendan Greene-Walsh. 'We could put all four of the names on pieces of paper in a hat, and just draw one,' he says.Īnd there's always option 'C': none of the above. Too much like Grolsch beer, Brendan counters.Īnother option, Brendan says, is blind chance. 'Take, like, three letters from each name, and mix them up into a new word,' Brendan explains. 'I just don't have any good answers,' sighs Leila. Now, four years later, these hyphenated honeys are still in love - but also still stumped on what they would possibly do if they decide to get hitched. 'It just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?' 'My names would probably be Leila Rathert-Knowles Greene-Walsh,' Leila says, laughing.īrendan smirks, too. They both hoped things would continue to go well - but they both also knew they were a pileup waiting to happen. Ian Camera, formerly known as Ian McKenna-Thomasīrendan's last name is Greene-Walsh, and Leila's, Rathert-Knowles. Which sounded too much like a law firm, really. We had the potential of being the McKenna-Thomas Camera-Smith household.

Like when Brendan first noticed the name on Leila's mailbox. Those were the good old days, before they started discovering the kind of issues that inevitably pop up later. 'And I saw her, and I was just happy there was at least one babe living in the apartment building,' Brendan says. Not to sound too cliche, Leila says, but 'I could tell there was something different about him.' She was in the lobby of her apartment building when this cute guy started moving in. Their story is one of those fairy tale stories of love at first sight. There's the perennial confusion at school and at the doctor's office, and the challenge of squeezing your name onto forms.Īnd now that the hyphenated generation is marrying and parenting, a whole host of new tricky situations has emerged. Those born at the height of the name-hyphenating craze will be the first to tell you - having two last names can be more trouble than it's worth. Despite many creative ideas, Brendan Greene-Walsh and Leila Rathert-Knowles have yet to hit on a good solution for their last name, should they get married.

Unique girl last names