The majority of women who marry take their husband’s last name as their own.

Among my friends, some share a last name with their husband, some kept their own, some husbands and wives both hyphenated, and in a couple of instances, the husband took his wife’s last name. I don’t know any couples that chose a new last name altogether, but I’m told that a few do this.

When The Husband and I married in Minnesota 20 years ago, there was a space on the marriage application for name changes for both the man and the woman. Friends who married in Wisconsin found only space for a woman to change her name.

The Husband added my last name to his legal name, and I added his to mine. As a practical matter, we use his last name, so while that legal change was a nice gesture on his part, the fact remains that we use his last name.

I could give you all kinds of lofty reasons for this–family unity, for example–but really, his name is shorter and easier to pronounce. There was pressure from some of my friends to keep my last name as a sign of my individuality, and I did not disagree with the sentiment.

I’ve never used the Mrs. moniker, and the first time we received a letter addressed to Mr. and Mrs. The Husband, I threw it in the garbage, an act that appalled my mother-in-law. “It’s not addressed to me,” I told her.

She took this a feminist insult to her family. When I told me mother about the incident, she took it as a feminist insult to marriage.  (I’m good at bringing family together like that.)

I once ran a post by , who found out that his ex-wife kept his last name after she married another man. But what about taking a husband’s last name in the first place?

It was common in the early 20th century for new arrivals to the U.S. to ‘Americanize’ their surnames.

If a man’s ego was okay with a name change then, is it really a big deal any more when a woman keeps her last name? If not, why don’t more women do so?

[This post originally appeared on .]