What a lovely idea!
My girlfriend & I aren’t married and have no intention of ever being so.
Her surname is Fox, mine is Handy. Why should our children be Handys when their mother’s name is Fox? The automatic assumption that children should have their father’s name is an anachronism from our patriarchal society that had women as subservient possessions of their husbands.
There is no valid argument for it other than personal choice, and personal choice makes a hyphenated name, the use of the mother’s surname, or indeed a different name from both parents just as valid as any other.
So our children both have the surname Foxhandy.
We’re far too pretentious for a hyphen. 
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Nobody is saying that the children from a marriage/partnership, should be given only the father’s name rather than the mother’s. The question was that, in the case of two people already with different double barrel surnames before marriage/partnership, what should they call themselves or their children (if they have any) to prevent themselves or their children ending up with unmanageable surnames, if the same ethos of equality of surnames is to be continued down the line. A suggestion may be that any daughter/s take their grandmother’s family name and any son/s their grandfathers or even vice-versa. That way the the females will keep the name of the female family line and the males the male family line, if you get my drift. Trouble is, a child does not have much choice on what surname is entered onto their birth certificate but they can change it later by Deed Poll. Just a thought 
My wife has an old Devonian surname. There are only about seventy with the name and very few, if any, surviving male descendants. Years ago we considered adding it onto my family surname, to keep it going (we have three sons and a daughter).
We decided chequebooks didn’t have enough room for the combined signature so we didn’t bother……well, that was one minor reason! Another was that we thought it would appear very pretentious and we never got around to it.
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In my family history the middle names given to children are either family members or friends who have died.
What’s a chequebook? 
(it won’t be long before that’s a genuine question 
).
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My bank doesn’t even issue one, it’s on-line only. Have used their card all over the world and never had an issue. Great bank. STARLING bank if anyone is interested.
On-line only. How do you pay in a cheque?
They still do arrive from the bigger institutions, even if only for pennies…
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Under £500 ypu photograph it with your smartphone. That’s all. Over the amount, post it free.
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I had a refund for Road Fund Tax after SORN-ing my campervan which came in the form of a cheque. I was able to feed it into a Cash Dispenser which reads the cheque and credited my account. I am with Santander bank. Maybe you will be able to do the same.
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Both very useful, many thanks.
My local branches of Bank and BS are closed and nothing helpful found after half an hour going round in small circles on their excessively “helpful” websites, phone chats were automated and similarly useless (maybe wrong time of day?)
But sub-PO, local convenience stores and Shell garage have cash dispensers, all in walking distance, one of these could save me a trek. I’ll have another look on the Bank and BS websites now with a better informed set of search key words.
Off-Topic - sorry peeps!
What can you do at the post office?
If you can get to a post office, you can just pop in and:
- Withdraw cash from your usual bank account using your card
- Pay cash into your usual bank account using a card or paying-in slip
- Check your bank balance using your card
- Deposit a cheque using a paying-in slip (though Nationwide customers can’t do this)
These banking services are available for free to customers of 28 banks, including all the high street big names such as HSBC, Barclays and NatWest. The Post Office says it’s able to serve 99% of UK banking customers.
Before you go, check which banks and services are available at the post office you’re heading to, to avoid a wasted trip.
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Interesting. My paternal grandmother was the only female sibling and my dad has her maiden name as his middle name. That has passed down to my brother and his son too. For some reason I don’t have it as a middle name.
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Middle names are curious, and when historic can be quite archaic in the spelling - witness the DVLA ‘correcting’ mine on some car docs until I made sure they had it right.
My mother’s father’s side and me have the same middle name. We’ve traced it back to the time of Henry VIII as a middle name, for both men and women in that branch of the family. My mother, sister and my girls are the first not to have it.
In 1977, when we got married and when we were considering changing the surname, most people paid by cheque.
Where did those 44 years go?
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I once asked my Spanish colleague the same question, because it seemed they all have a double-barreled surname. He told me that they’re changed at marriage and that the new couple take both their fathers’ names as their new surname. I thought it slightly odd as it would mean that there’s no familial consistency of a name continuing as ours do, but didn’t know enough to say anything about it.
Similar in Iceland; The naming system in Iceland is the old Scandinavian system which all the countries once used.
It is a paternal system where the father gives his children his first name as their last name adding -son if the child is a boy and -dóttir if the child is a girl.
My middle name is Thorburn, no idea where that comes from? It was often mistakenly used with a hyphen joining my surname? So, Thorburn - *******, so I stopped using it but still signature with B T ******. no one seems to mind. 
Barrie
All except sell you a stamp, true.
I popped into a Co-op local also converted to the area PO because they closed the proper one down. They had no stamps though, run out.
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So how big a name can you fit on a bank/credit card now cheques are so infrequently used?
I think our proposed double barrel name would just fit on a credit card (I looked) but it’s a bit late now. My sons are now all in their thirties with their own families so there’s not much hope of them changing their surnames by deed poll to include their mother’s maiden name!