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About <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/09/07/about-eight-in-ten-women-in-opposite-sex-marriages-say-they-took-their-husbands-last-name/">80% of married women</a> in America still take their husbands’ last names. Some, by simply dropping and replacing their maiden names. (I did this.) Others, by dropping their middle names and replacing those with their maiden names, and then adding the new last name. (This is quite popular among my friend set.) 
But this norm of a marital name change for women has long met with resistance from <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12147-017-9183-z">some feminists</a>, who claim that marriage should not uniquely entail a woman’s forfeiture of her “<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/07/19/health/last-name-change-marriage-reasons-wellness/index.html">identity</a>.” Why can’t women just keep their names? Or, if sharing a name is an important aspect of an enduring marriage, <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/can-sharing-a-last-name-save-your-marriage-it-depends">which some argue it is</a>, why can’t the whole family take the woman’s name instead of the man’s?
In my view, these questions themselves — far more than any practice around last names — undermine the fundamental unity that is supposed to be marriage. 
Here’s what I mean: I have no problem with a woman legally retaining her last name after marriage for practical or professional reasons. I can quite easily imagine the circumstances in which I’d have done so myself, had I gotten married <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-dating-reality-check">later than I did</a> or with more professional accomplishments under my maiden name. And, obviously, there are cultures in which it is customary for women to retain their names after marriage, and even for men and women to take one another’s names. None of this meets with any objection from me because I am not advocating for traditional Western naming practices per se. 
I am advocating for avoiding the temptation to let incoherent ideological inclinations infect personal relationships, particularly the marital ones. 
To me, the crux of the surname debate is not surnames. It is the turning of marriage into a forum for identitarian self-expression, when it is supposed to transcend the self by definition, for women and men alike. 
Name That Patriarchy 
The primary objection to the norm of women’s name changes upon marriage is that it rests on patriarchal foundations, the origins of which involve women having no individual rights and being essentially the property of their fathers before being transferred to their husbands. This is, of course, true, though I’d argue it’s not particularly relevant to today’s brides. Relevant or not, however, the patriarchal origins of Western naming practices cannot be overcome by women retaining their maiden names. 
A woman who keeps her own name rather than taking her husband’s is almost always keeping her father’s name. The patriarchal origins of said name are inescapable. So, the refusal to change a name on that score is futile.  
No one can change a distant past peopled by the long-dead. It’s unclear why anyone would want to let said past burden her most sacred relationship in the here and now. More importantly, women who enter marriage with a “his and mine, everything equal” mindset, searching for <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-pursuit-of-equality-is-ruining-your-marriage">egalitarianism and androgyny</a>, are setting themselves up for disappointment. 
When Two Don’t Become One
So much of today’s discourse on dating and marriage <a href="https://metropolitanreview.com/not-all-husbands/">pits women and men against each other</a> over concerns that really amount to a false gendering of the human condition. Men complain about feeling undervalued by women; wives complain about “the mental load.” Often, these accusations and our reactions to them take for granted that a war between the sexes is afoot, when in reality, many of these concerns simply reflect our shared humanity and its limitations. 
Feeling undervalued and overwhelmed are not gendered experiences, but gendering them gives us an enemy to blame. That’s more fun than admitting the truths at play. First, to be human is to exist within a fallen world shaped by our own fallenness; second, to be a husband or a wife is not to look for things to be an interchangeable 50/50 but to accept that (if you’re collectively doing what you ought), they’ll be a likely non-interchangeable 100/100. It’s not that there’s men’s work and women’s work; it’s that there is work that each of you, as specific individuals, will be better at. Who is the man and who is the woman will, if you are honest, be a factor in determining who does what. 
I would not want my son to marry a woman who wanted to keep her own last name rather than take his for pseudo-feminist reasons specifically. That’s not because I care about the name. It’s because I care about an adult relationship to reality, uncontaminated by a flimsily politicized lens that puts signaling some impotent blow against historical patriarchy ahead of signaling oneness with one’s husband today.
Within marriage, there is exactly zero room for him vs. her; it should be him and her vs. the world.
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Elizabeth Grace Matthew writes about books, education, and culture, including <a href="https://elizabethgracematthew.substack.com/about" target="_blank" rel="noopener">on Substack</a>.

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Marriage Was Supposed To Mean ‘Us.’ Then Came Identity Politics.

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Marriage Was Supposed To Mean ‘Us.’ Then Came Identity Politics.