Case of a female spouse taking husband's last name as one of her middle names.

[Susan Cocker Hopkins]

Just learned of this situation in our extended family as I was asking for clarification in adding a newish family member to Reunion. Female spouse has long been known professionally by her birth surname and doesn't wish to change that. But couple didn't want to deal with a hyphenated name for expected baby or themselves. They wanted male spouse's surname for the baby and wanted mom to have some indication in her name that she is the baby's mom. Their solution, as soon as they can find an open registry office during Covid-19, will be to change her name to add husband's surname as a second middle name for the spouse / mom.

My present solution to her entry in Reunion is to indicate that it's a name change in the detail section for the source citation on her name.

Other ideas welcome.

[eventide]

This is what I would do. I would just add in the new middle name and create a source citation for the name change. Add more details once the formal name change goes through.

[Susan Cocker Hopkins]

As an interesting aside, a younger relative and his long time female partner were the source of my example. They had not chosen to marry, as far as I, or their parents knew, and none of us were going to bug these adults about it. When we had a zoom meeting set up so that my recently turned 100 year old mother could meet their new baby girl, born exactly 100 years from my mother's birth, I asked for how to spell the new mother's names for my genealogical database. That's when we all learned that they had quietly married a few weeks before, and had finally lucked out on finding a county, 1 1/2 hours away, that had a reopened clerk's office during the pandemic. Got a thank you e-mail from the new granddad.