Things are a bit different here in the Netherlands, in that if you're not married and the MOB is not Dutch, then the father needs to officially 'recognise' the baby before birth so that it will be born as a Dutch citizen. Also it's important as it gives the baby another parent - if something happened to me before the birth was registered, then the baby wouldn't have any legal rellies in the country!

Anyway, at the same time as the father 'recognises' the unborn child, you have to choose the surname. The rules are:

*The child must have either the father's or the mother's surname, no other name.
*It must only be one or the other, not both (double-barrelling isn't allowed)
*All children from the same relationship must have the same surname.

It has always been really important to me to have the same name as my child(ren), so we chose my surname. The baby isn't born yet, but the forms show what its surname will be It just wasn't as important to my partner as it is to me.

Even if we do get married in the future, I won't be changing my name - and you can't legally change your name here anyway (only 'assume' your partner's name, so you can use it, but your legal name stays the same).

Anyway I think it's fair, I've given up my homeland and language to come and live here, and his family are all close by; it's nice that our son will have my 'foreign' surname as a reminder of his heritage!

Do you have plans to marry soon?

I would always say, that you should use your name if you are at all unsure. I did.
We are now getting married next May - and so the day isnt about the two of us, its about me, OH and LO - now that's extra special, both me and LO will be changing our names.

I was orginally going to use OH's surname, but decided against it.

When LO was born OH's family were quite peeved about it. I just replied with "Well, we're not married".

can you hyphenate it...yours-his. That is what I would do, at least for now.

Difficult isn't it? I really would love to double barrell our names (and I think they sound great together) but my OH is completely against double barrelled names and wants little one to just have his name. I prefer his name to mine, am not fussed about having a different name to my baby (my parents are divorced and I was the only person with my surname in a household of 5 people as a child, never did me any harm!) and when we do get married I have no intention of changing my name to his (have a career and multiple publications in my name and have never really grasped the whole name changing stuff anyway). Mostly, I don't really feel strongly enough about it to argue with OH so looks like baby is having his name alone.

My main worry now is telling my parents because (both sets of my parents) love the double barrelled sounding version and are used to me referring to the baby as that!

So I've been no help at all to you, but I've added my bit to the "what other people are doing" part of the question I suppose!

OH and I aren't married yet but we are engaged and living together.We're not expecting yet but when I do get pregnant,the baby will get his last name and when we get married,I'll take it also.

I had a similar dilemma - our solution was simply to get married!

I never liked the idea of having a different surname to my son, so him just taking OH's name wasn't an option for me. We'd talked about getting married before but decided we couldn't afford it. But we decided it was important to us and were going to have a quick registry office job. However, my parents stepped in with some funding which meant we could have a proper 'do'. I was quite happy with the registry office tbh, but DH wanted a bit more fuss than that.

The only thing I would stress to someone having the surname dilemma, is that it is easy to change away from your name, but difficult to remove fob's name at a later date. If in doubt, use your own name.

My son doesn't have his dads name because we weren't together.
But LO will have OH surname as we do plan on getting married.

Thanks for all the responses guys, I feel a bit more reassured knowing I haven't been the only one in this position and there is no wrong or right answer.

I have considered double barrelling our surnames, but I am really set on baby having a middle name in which case their name will be a mouthfull no matter what their first/middle name is. I'm concerned about filling in forms. For example my first name is 9 letters long, middle name 4, last name 7 so it makes it a push to fit my name onto some forms.

Another thing that was worrying me... I was talking to a friend about this and saying that maybe the baby should have my surname and just change it if we get married. She said that's what her mum had done with her, only her Dad had ended up being abusive to her Mum, and her Dad is no longer a part of her life. Her mum had to go through a solicitor and pay for the name change (which i was prepared to do) but now when my friend is applying for a job she needs to bring ALL the paperwork, not just proof of ID like birth certificate or whatever. She also works with children so has to be police checked every so often, and she says it's a nightmare because some certificates are under the name slater, and some taylor. It's put me off because I don't want to hassle my child kinda thing....

Someone posted saying the dad will always be the dad regardless of how he feels about me, and that is a very comforting thought.

I think after reading all these posts I'm siding with his surname. I'm quite a traditional person too.