Back in the medieval ages when a woman was married to a man, they were basically considered property for my understanding and treated like an extension of the man’s person and family. So it was customary for women to take the man’s last name since they were being joined to his family. But now here in the 21st century women are fully independent and last names don’t really seem to mean much of anything. I mean what is Smith or McGregor or any last name really mean anymore? Especially in the digital age, lots of people have digital usernames like SarahSmith1727373. So the last name clearly doesn’t mean much anymore… Which leads me to wonder, why do the majority of women still take the man’s last name? Especially when some of them have a horrible last name? I have seen some butt ass ugly last names recently, like Fink, Weimer, Slotsky/Slotsky, Hiscock (no joke this is a last name), Hardman… And then you hear the woman’s name and it’s like something way more reasonable and less stupid sounding like Kingman, or Harrison, Walls, etc.
It’s pretty helpful for medical emergencies and getting through border police as a family.
Medical emergencies and also look up on social media.
I’m actually gonna be taking my girlfriend’s last name. Mine sounds hella stupid and is also slang for an unflattering body part, I got bullied a lot for it growing up so I will spare my children and take her last name cause it sounds super fancy and cool.
Mulva?
Pew Research has survey data germane to this question. As it stands, a clear majority (79%) of opposite-sex married women changed their family/last name to their husband’s.
But for never-married women, only a third (33%) said they would change their name to their spouse’s family name. 24% of never-married women were unsure whether they would or wouldn’t change their name upon marriage.
From this data, I would conclude that while the trend of taking the husband’s last name is fairly entrenched right now, the public’s attitude are changing and we might expect the popularity of this to diminish over time. The detailed breakdown by demographic shows that the practice was less common (73%) in the 18-49 age group than in the 50+ age group (85%).
However, some caveats: the survey questions did not inquire into whether the never-married women intended on ever getting married; it simply asked “if you were to get married…”. So if marriage as a form of cohabitation becomes less popular in the future, then the change-your-family-name trend could be in sharper decline than this data would suggest.
Alternatively, the data could reflect differences between married and never-married women. Perhaps never-married women – by virtue of not being married yet – answered “would not change name” because they did not yet know what their future spouse’s name is. No option for “it depends on his name” was offered by the survey. Never-married women may also more-strongly consider the paperwork burden – USA specific – for changing one’s name.
So does this help answer your question? Eh, only somewhat. Younger age and left-leaning seem to be factors, but that’s a far cry from cause-and-effect. Given how gradual the trend is changing, it’s more likely that the practice is mostly cultural. If so, then the answer to “why is cultural practice XYZ a thing?” is always “because it is”.
Thanks for providing this really detailed and interesting reply. Lots of good insight here. For the ‘Postgraduate degree’ group, I wonder if they’re dramatically higher due to the frustrating problems associated with name changes? Like if you publish an academic paper with your full name, you can’t easily go back and change it, so that may affect it… huh.
I have friends who published before being married, so now professionally still use their own last name (for continuity) but socially will go by their husband’s last name.
My wife did, despite me saying I’d rather she not. Me changing to her name was not legally possible in our situation (me US citizen, her JP citizen, both living in and married in Japan). (Edit: What I wanted to do was change to her name, but that doesn’t happen unless I give up US and my other citizenship, apply for and get JP citizenship, and choose her maiden name as my name or do that but a name combining hers and the sound from the start of mine rendered in kanji).
Her reasoning was that we could quickly and easily remove basically all doubt that we are related with just what ID we both always carry. Her usecase was one of us being critically injured or something and being able to gain access in the hospital or something else like that.
At least for my ex-fiancée it was about the link between husband and wife, plus tradition. It was basically “I’m married, you see?”. Just like a ring.
(We talked a fair bit about this stuff, as back then I was planning to add my maternal surname to my legal name. She was OK taking either surname.)
One other reason I imagine is to establish a single family name, especially with children in mind. I’m not sure it actually works better than a double damily name, but it probably seems so to some.
To all the people here arguing that it’s easier to have a family name, especially with children: It’s also possible that the husband takes the wife’s name. But from anecdotal evidence in my acquaintance, most men are very opposed to this idea. So if the woman wants a family name she has to change her name or have endless fights about it. That’s why most women I know did it.
Having one name is easier for social reasons. Going with the man’s name is easier for social reasons.
It all comes down to social pressure to keep the status quo. I even offered to take my wife’s last name and she declined and took mine instead.
In Sweden, a couple can choos to have a new last name not related to either.
You can choose another last name when you get married in the US too, but people just don’t choose to for the most part. The marriage license name change is a shortcut to a regular name change that can be made through the courts.
Oh didn’t know that
We had a brief talk where I said I like my name and wouldn’t change it. I also said that while I prefer the tradition of her changing hers, that I understood it’s not really my choice. She did anyway
I took my partner’s last name because I like their family more than mine, and I liked the idea of no longer being associated with my family.
But I think most people just want to do what is normal or expected of them, so I would imagine that is why most women change their name. Not doing so would go against the grain, putting them in awkward situations where they have to explain they didn’t take the last name.
This isn’t a thing in India unless there is a ‘value’ in the surname.
A. Many men would not marry a woman who didn’t take their name.
B. Makes parenting more difficult in social settings by not sharing the last name of your kids. I.E. Picking up your kid at school or making medical decisions about kids and having a different last name as the child forces you to jump through a lot more hoops.
C. Women tend to grow up knowing they are going to change their last name it’s not even an afterthought. My girlfriend told me her and her friends would often talk about what their name would be if they married a guy they liked.
D. In some states it is very difficult for a man to change their last name but for women the processes is already in place.
Regarding B, the way we do it in the latin world is just by having 2 last names, one per parent. So the child of Jose Perez and Irene Martinez is named Alberto Perez Martinez (the fathers last name is the first by default but you can change order). Its not a problem when picking up children from schools or whatever.
Because it is easier to have 1 family name if you intend to have children.
After we were married wife kept her last name, partially for professional reasons partially because she didn’t like my last name :-) When we had kids we decided that the kids would have my last name to avoid hyphen hell and her last name is super generic so any time she has to search for an account at the bank or anything like that she almost always has someone else with the same first and last name it can be a pain to find the correct “her”
My wife took my name because she liked it better than hers. Although if we had known that where we live, you can change your name to whatever you want when you get a marriage license, then we would have picked something cooler.
We couldn’t decide on something on the spot though.
Having the same last name is just an easy way to show togetherness and unity. My wife kept her last name because she earned her MD with it but she’s fine going by Mrs. (my last name) in a parental setting.
Because everyone knows who the mother is through birth and following months/years if they’re lucky, and the only connection a father has with his children is a last name.
It’s quite reasonable that mums want the same surname as their children so …
The trouble with that is that between twenty and thirty percent of children, depending on source, call the wrong person ‘dad’.
No child calls the ‘wrong’ person dad. Dad is an earned title between a parent and child. Ejaculating doesn’t make you a dad, just a sperm donor.
Same goes for Mom by the way unless you think adopted parents are also illegitimate.
Way to miss the point lol
Most of these “dad” are victims of paternity fraud. A serious crime that gets zero attention
Dude, I get that infidelity sucks but you have to be a real fucking asshole to think that makes the dads into “dads”.
This ain’t about infidelity that’s not a criminal issue…
Making a person support a child under false pretense is fraud which is a crime. Society just doesn’t give a fuck about it because “patriarchy” or whatever
Dude, just because your feelings are hurt doesn’t mean it’s a crime.
Let’s put mothers in jail for paternity fraud, then we cut the parental rights of the dad because he’s not the real dad. Then we put the kid in an orphanage, or maybe force the sperm donor (upstanding gentleman who nuts and runs with married women) to raise the now 10 year old who did nothing wrong.
If your partner commits adultery you divorce them, but you don’t abandon your kids. As a father if I found out my kids have a different genetic father, they’re still my kids. I love them. You can’t just give them up because they’re not your genetic legacy, that’s not how love works at all!
What a horrible image you have of masculinity to include a father seeing his own children as “criminal paternity fraud” and “theft of resources”. I can’t think of a single friend of mine that would give up his kids, or seek to jail their mother, if he found out they’re not his. Many would leave their wives to be sure, but they’d still love their kids, that’s not something they can give up even if they wanted to.
Also your stats are WHACK. 13% of women have EVER had an affair of any kind yet 20-30% of kids are ‘paternity fraud’. Bro imma need a source on those numbers, and I don’t want to see any qanon incel Jordan Peterson Andrew Tate shit. I’d be surprised if the real numbers were more than 2%.
https://techreport.com/statistics/lifestyle/cheating-statistics/
