If you have to hyphenate your name, ladies, please have a legitimate reason for doing so. Legitimate reasons are listed below:
1. You’re a doctor who graduated before getting married. Your degree says Jones. Your husband’s last name is Miller. You can be Dr. Jones-Miller.
2. You have (a) kid(s) already and are getting married. (Especially true if he also has kids and/or the two of you intend to have more kids.) You, Ms. Smith, can be Mrs. Smith-Barney.
3. Your last name is at the end of its bloodline. You have no brothers. Your dad, Mr. Williams, is all worked up about it. You have my blessing to be Mrs. Williams-Sonoma.
4. Your husband has passed. You can hyphenate with your maiden name, your married name, and/or a new married name, should you choose to remarry. You have unlimited creative license here. You can be Mrs. Hyphen-Asterisk-Ampersand.
5. You’re a celebrity. Julia Roberts shouldn’t be Julia Moder (and not Julia Lovett, either!). She’s Julia Roberts. Hyphen whatever, but she’s still Julia Roberts.
That’s about it. Vanity hyphenation is stupid. There’s a 99% chance that it doesn’t matter because YOU’RE NOT FAMOUS. If you’re doing it for an inane reason like “so my high school friends can find me on Facebook! omg lol brb ❤ fo realz," you probably aren't bright enough to be reading this blog, so I'm not too worried about offending you.
Please do your part to stop the vanity hyphenation madness. Mrs. Oglethorpeson-Ziminikowski just shouldn't happen.