In my generation, it was a fact that if you married, you took your husband’s name. If Mary Jones married John Smith, Mary Jones removed her maiden name and adopted her husband’s last name and Mary Jones became Mary Smith or Mrs. Mary Smith. Many of these women chose to omit their own name entirely and adopted their husband’s full name so that all legal documents would be signed by Mrs. John Smith.
Then, for a long time, hyphenated names became popular. Mary Jones, after getting married, became Mary Jones-Smith and let the public know that she now had a husband. But that was in the days when women didn’t change husbands as often as they changed underwear. Because the divorce rate is so high, hyphenated names can be confusing. If a woman has been married four or five times, she may end up with a name like Mary Jones-Smith-Forrester-Thompson-Kelly-Griffin.
There are many reasons why women want to keep their own last name and it has nothing to do with feminism. In many cases, it has more to do with the fact that women marry later in life and have spent more years as single women than married women and want to maintain their identity. Or it might be less of a hassle for kids with multiple stepparents when they enroll in school.
In other cases, women have started careers and made a name for themselves with their maiden name and it is too confusing to try to get the public used to their new name. If an author has built a solid reputation like Mary Jones, her readers will continue to search for her books by that name. The average reader would not think of looking for her under another name so as not to buy her newest books.
In the entertainment industry, Elizabeth Taylor remained Elizabeth Taylor no matter how many husbands she has accumulated over the years. The men didn’t turn into Richard Taylor or Eddie Taylor and she didn’t turn into Elizabeth Burton or Elizabeth Fisher and yet no one was fazed, so why is it a problem with couples not in the entertainment industry? ?
Then there is the question of credit history. If the woman has an excellent credit history and her husband does not, she could be denied credit due to her husband’s bad credit history.
For whatever reason, it seems that more women are choosing to keep their maiden name than ever before and, in the future, it may become the accepted norm.