Never considered changing or regretted keeping my name. DD is frustrated by her three-syllable hyphenated last name and sometimes uses only her dad’s one-syllable last name. I expect she will change it if she marries someone with a short and simple last name.
Took my husband’s name when we married in the mid-1980’s. My father, whose name my mother and I had, was intermittently physically violent. Changing my name is one of the ways I walked away from that.
Everyone in my generation in my family took their husbands names and our kids who have gotten married so far the women have all taken husbands last name. No hyphens either.
What we (and all my family and friends) have done is take our maiden names as our middle names.
My rule would be matrilineal patrilineal. Women and girls always have their matrilineal name. Boys and men always have their patrilineal name. When a woman marries a man, she takes his patrilineal name. When a man marries a woman, he takes her matrilineal name. When a man marries a man, he takes his husband’s patrilineal; when a woman marries a woman, she takes her wife’s matrilineal name.
Julia Kennedy marries Shaquille Jones. They have two children,
Megan Jones Kennedy
James Kennedy Jones
Megan marries Shaquille Avery Jackson. They become
Megan Jackson Kennedy
Shaquille Kennedy Jackson
In due course, they have boy-girl twins, Caden and Brooklyn
Caden Kennedy Jackson
Brooklyn Jackson Kennedy
@gouf78 I never took my husband’s name, however, our children do have his name. We have never had a problem at any time. In fact, our youngest daughter was internationally adopted as a toddler and we had to get her a passport and in to school and sports, etc. Never a problem. What problem do you think might arise?
I took my husband’s name and never regretted it. It will be interesting to see what my daughter’s do if they ever get married.
I took my husband’s name and never regretted it, but if I had married when I was older, I probably wouldn’t have. My line of work involves publications, and once you start having a string of them with one name on them, you had better keep that name.
My daughter got married a few months ago and took her husband’s name. She said that she would feel left out if she was the only member of her family with a different name. And she’s in a line of work that doesn’t involve publications.
I LOVED your post and explanation re: the Spanish custom.
When H transitioned to the “rules” here, he took his maternal last name as his middle name.
I did not change my last name when we married. It did not feel like “me”. The kids took H’s last name (only).
There were many times when I caught an elbow from one of the kids when I was called by Mrs. H’s Last Name.
“Mom! That’s you!”
I’m old enough to remember when my mom signed her name “Mrs. John Smith”. In the 70s, she got liberated, and began signing it “Mrs. Jane Smith”. I miiiiiiight have decided to keep my own name right about then, when the time came.
I use both last names (without a hyphen). DH said he was fine if I kept my name. Kids were DH’s last name. Have been careful with making sure names are consistent on various official documents. Since I don’t use an actual hyphen, that seems to have made the process easier. All my sisters and SILs took their H’s last names. My former DIL kept her name (which made sense, as she uses a variation of it as her IRL nickname).
When I married, I followed tradition. I took my husband’s last name. My maiden name became my middle name. I do not regret it. Our kids had the same last name. It seemed even convenient in many ways to all have the same last name.
Now, both my kids are married. My older D and her spouse each kept their own last names. My younger D took her husband’s last name as her legal name but is using her maiden last name professionally because she was already established enough in her very public profession and it was prudent to not mess with that.
I, too, have wondered how it works when two people marry who each have hyphenated last names and then have kids, as to what their last names become.
I figured I hadn’t really chosen either name-,one was from my father, the other from my husband. I thought it was simpler for us all to have a common family surname. Never regretted it.
@doschicos I’m still trying to understand that.
We have friends who kept their last names and combined their last names for their children with no hyphen. It came out cool sounding to something like Goldsmith or Brookstone.
I posted above that I kept my birth surname when I got married. I would have done so regardless of the particular last name or leanings of my prospective in-laws, but I will say that my former father-in-law thinks that wives become their husbands’ property, and over the years of my marriage I often had reason to appreciate the reminder to my former father-in-law that I wasn’t the property of his son (or himself).
There were a few moments of confusion for the outside world over the years. I live two blocks from my brother and his daughters and mine attended the same schools. My brother, my husband, and I all volunteered at the school and sometimes the teachers and students either didn’t know whose mom I was or didn’t know my name. We survived.
I never changed my name, and neither did most of my age-peer friends–from similar women’s colleges, in particular.
My kid–and those of the same group of women–mostly have their fathers’ last names.
One couple I know agreed that if the first child were a girl they kids would have her name, and if a boy they would have his. 
I offered to let my H hyphenate with me, but he politely declined. 
I hyphenated my name when I got married, and wish I had just kept my maiden name. Hyphenated names can be a real PITA since nobody in the real world treats it the same. I’ve had the hyphen left out many times, so the first half of my last name looks like a middle name. I’ve had the end of my last name cut off. I recently got my credit report which had several variations of my name, none of which were actually my hyphenated name.
DIL kept her last name, but she and S1 hyphenated my granddaughter’s last name. At least my granddaughter and I will have something in common that we can commiserate about. We’re the only 2 people on either side with a hyphenated name.
My dad and sister’s mom divorced in the late 80s. She was primarily raised by her mom and stepdad. So she had a different last name from them and her brothers. It was never, ever an issue.
My generation grew up with lots of mixed families. Different last names was extremely common
I kept my name. Happykid was born abroad in a Spanish-speaking country where the law requires that the child have the double last name. I put the hyphen in for the US paperwork to prevent confusion about a possible double middle name. Her social security card has no hyphen, but the passport and certificate of citizen birth abroad do. This means that her state-issued drivers license now has no hyphen as it follows the SS card. She’s all for multiply-hypenating any potential happygrandbabies. As far as we can tell, she is the only person on the planet with her last name (hyphen or no hyphen).
If you mean the Spanish two surname tradition, here is another explanation:
http://people.cs.vt.edu/~perez/twolastnames or https://webpages.uncc.edu/mperez19/twolastnames.html
I took my husband’s name, and never considered otherwise. I’d assume that he would have been upset if I’d kept my maiden name, but he would have gotten over it. It was an easy trade, I never liked my maiden name (very unusual) and like my husband’s name. It’s easy with the kids, everyone knows who belongs to who.
I know many women who kept their maiden names, professional people, doctors and lawyers. It can be challenging keeping them all together. So and so is married to whom again? There are people we’ve known for years, that are together as a family, but I’m not even sure that they’re actually married to each other. If you never refer to someone as your husband/wife, you have different names, who knows?
But at this point, many people are divorced anyways, so it’s rather rare to know people who have the same last names, and are still married. It’s hard enough for me to remember first names as it is, and remembering first and last, and kids first and last when they all have different names? Yikes!
We got married about three weeks before taking off for Germany where DH had a post-doc. I didn’t want to change my name anyway, but I couldn’t imagine how one could even deal with visas, changing credit cards and driver’s licenses in that time period - especially with a honeymoon and trip back to the East Coast in that time period. It really was never a problem having different last names - and if someone called my Mrs. His last name I didn’t take offense. My oldest child has my last name as his middle name. If I had it to do again - I’d do the same for my younger son as well.
Interestingly my father wrote me a very heartfelt letter asking me to consider taking my husband’s name because we were headed to Germany and DH had a very obvious Jewish last name. (He’s not Jewish, but his Dad is.) As it happens, almost no one in our generation in Germany seemed to be aware that DH’s last name was obviously Jewish.