The romanization of my Chinese given name, like most Taiwanese names based on Wade-Giles, has a hyphen between the two characters, connecting both to form my English first name. So when I got married, there was no way I was going to hyphenate my last name because I would have become H-H L-T, which looks totally ridiculous.

I used to spell my name out and say “hyphen” when I got to it, but I found that many people didn’t know what I meant. For several years now, I’ve said “dash” instead, even though it’s grammatically incorrect.

In Eats, Shoots & Leaves (which is still boring despite its snarky tone), Lynne Truss writes,

…I have heard that people with double-barrelled names are simply unable to get the concept across these days, because so few people on the other end of a telephone know what a hyphen is. As a consequence they receive credit cards printed with the name “Anthony Armstrong, Jones”, “AnthonyAmrstrong’Jones”, or even “Anthony Armstrong Hyphen”.

It’s no wonder hyphenated marital names are on the decline. (USA Today, May 30, 2005)

“People don’t do hyphenation because others ignore it,” says Laurie Scheuble, a senior lecturer in sociology at Penn State University. “People will just choose one of your last names.”

Combining Marv’s last name with mine actually makes a legitimate Anglicized name, but that was never under serious consideration. My sister made her maiden name into her middle name, which was clever because we didn’t adopt English names after becoming American citizens. I’ve become a “situational last-name user” who uses my maiden name at work and in other situations uses the last name that belongs to both Marv and Stephen. It works out fine, but I’m still stuck with the hyphen in my first name.

What do you think people should do with their last names when they get married?