losing the culture? (name issue...semi long but EZ read)

mdotm0904

I know the general consensus on here seems that with unmarried parents & last names of children is that if you're not married (& have no plans to be) the child should bear the mother's last name. In my family (& those of many that I know, that's not really the way we do it. Usually if the father is there & claiming the kid, he automatically gets the "honor" of having the child bear his name). (in fact, i always thought when a kid had the mother's last name it's because she didn't kno who the father was....excuse my ignorance. i've seen the light lol)

When i first got pregnant I knew that my baby was going to have the father's last name. Even tho he was less than thrilled at first, he has joint custody of his 3 other children & is an amazing father & i know that he'd be a great dad to this child as well. He even mentioned very early in my pregnancy about the baby having his last name, he didn't object, he just assumed that the baby would have my last name (me being the primary caregiver).

So now that i've been looking into baby names, i've been trying to find some that paired well with my last name. (i didn't have the same last name as my mom growing up & it wasn't that big of a deal to me. but now that i think about legal forms, school papers, doctor's appts...seems like it'd just be easier to share a surname)

my issue is THIS....the father is of another culture & has a very ethnic last name. my fear is that giving the child my last name will take away a bit of that culture!! (altho i'm going to do my best to make sure my child knows their father's culture as well as mine, and i'm sure he will to).

Thought about hyphenating but the poor kid would have a 15 letter long last name! so my thought is to add the father's last name as a second middle name & just use my last name for legal purposes....

or perhaps i should ask the father how big of a deal it is for his child to bear the same last name (it's been a while since we discussed it)

any thoughts or ideas on the subject?