Couple who can't agree on a married name asks their wedding guests to vote on it

Traditionally, women are expected to take their husband's surname when they marry, though some choose to keep their maiden name alongside it. But what happens when both the husband and wife have unique surnames that they’re deeply attached to? When stop motion animator and art educator, Danielle Bonadona got engaged to her fiance Jacob Bartlebaugh, the question arose of what the couple would choose as their married last name. Bonadona, who goes by @bona.bones on TikTok and @bonadona on Instagram, shared a brief, humorous video about the surname dilemma, which quickly went viral.

"I don’t know if I want to take your last name," Bonadona says in the video, pretending to talk to her partner. "What if we hyphenated?" she suggests, posing as her fiancé. "Our last name could be Bonadona-Bartlebaugh," the text on the video reads as she looks confused at the camera. The video gained almost 280k views and hundreds of comments, prompting Bonadona to make a series of follow-up videos addressing some of them.

"People are going apesh*t over the idea that we could be named the Bonadona-Bartlebaugh," she said in one of them. The bride-to-be then revealed that after discussing it with her partner, they decided to take an interesting approach: giving their wedding guests the responsibility of choosing their married last name. The guests will get to vote on whether or not to hyphenate their surnames and officially become Bonadona-Bartlebaugh.

In a third video, Bonadona wondered if people would even be able to pronounce their combined last name. She joked that saying it three times in a row might create a "chaotic magic effect." She also addressed the option of not changing her name at all in another video. "The thing is we both really love our last names," she explained. "Neither of us wants to give up our last name, and so yeah, we're just going to have our guests vote on it. I've been called 'Bonadona' my whole life, and so that's the name I go by, and so everyone calls me 'Bona' or 'Bonadona."

"And so it feels almost like changing my first name in a really weird way. I couldn’t imagine not having 'Bonadona' officially in my name, but I would be happy to include or add his name," she added. The animator also put to rest concerns about any little ones inheriting the unique hyphenated last name. "That’s not an issue. You don’t have to worry about little Bonadona-Bartlebaughs running around in the world," she revealed.

People in the comments section of her video shared some wild remarks about the couple's potential hyphenated surname. The viral last name has also inspired a fun song and led to an animal shelter naming a kitten Bonadona-Bartlebaugh. @thefixerr commented, "By the way, when you get married you don’t have the limit to the name change. YOU Can literally CHANGE everything about your name first, middle and last. Both partners. For free." @peglegmegog suggested, "So I have friends who were Tungate and Johnston and they became Tungston after they got married. So Bonabaugh? Bartledona? Bonabartle?" @lucasbrown7356 wondered, "I have seen a bunch of your vids and love them and I do feel you might get tired of writing it when you file papers, maybe get a rubber stamp?" 

You can follow Danielle Bonadona (@bona.bones) on TikTok for more videos on lifestyle and animation.