Called Mr R my partner before and after marriage. What’s it matter if we’re actually married? Everyone who is important knows we’re together.
I know very few last names of people in my department because we all go by first. I’m fine with that. We just don’t use last names around here all that often.
I just do not and never will understand the names have to match thing.
I had a difficult last name and love my husband’s easy to say, easy to spell name that sounded better than my family name with my first name. I continued to use my maiden name for business but made the leap when j switched jobs a few years later.
Couldn’t wait to jettison my Czechoslovakian last name. Still tell my husband today that his four-letter last name and his hair were his best traits and keep me with him today. 
^I had a friend who’s last name was spelled very, very closely to slang word for an intimate female body part. You would have thought she might have switched to her husband’s plain name. Not only did she keep it but had her hard hat labeled with that name. I think the shipyard workers might have thought it was a set up from HR or they knew her husband and knew he would beat the living daylights out of them if they harassed her. I would have been mortified to walk around in that hat. It was one of those names which you don’t know how to say without saying the bad word so you give it a French accent to avoid disaster.
I kept my last name because I had already been practicing law for a bunch of years before I married and also because I just don’t look Irish. We hyphenated oldest son’s name but wound up changing it legally because it was just too cumbersome. H and I both have 8 letter last names. All 5 kids have a first name and 2 middle names, the second of which is my maiden name, and they have H’s last name. I like both of our names, although I did tell H that if he had a crummy last name, the kids would have had my name.
I am known as Mrs. H’s last name in town because it was easier for the kids when they were at school. The funny thing is that most of my friends work under our maiden names and are Mrs. H last name in town.
I was 35 when I married and couldn’t imagine giving up my name of 35 years. The kids have my husband’s last name ( but middle names from my family.) The only issues have been my having to write notes to school about kid and signing it My Name ( kid’s mom.). My daughter complained about not having the same name as me when she was in second grade but when she married a few years ago she kept her name.
I changed my name when I married in 1981. I remember my co-workers asking me what I was going to do about my name, so it was definitely an issue of the day. I did a lot of conventional things, but I don’t feel like I’m a conventional person. My son recently asked me what I would think if he changed HIS last name to his wife’s! It made me think, because my last name is now my husband’s. I guess the true answer is that I’d feel strange, but I’ll also feel strange if my daughter changes her name when/if she gets married.Kind of like a loss. Not really important, but I’d feel a pang.
I kept my maiden name and later hyphenated it. I needed to keep it because the degrees were in my maiden name when I was applying for jobs. I also wanted to honor my father’s NA heritage.
Funny though, when my husband and I went to try to deposit wedding checks, the bank personnel claimed that I HAD to change my name to be added to husband’s account(California First no longer exists). Hubby stuck up for me and said, “no, she’s not changing her name”. They said we couldn’t have two different names on the checking account. He closed his account. We walked down bank row, opened an account at another bank, and indicated our dilemma, but these bank personnel stated that it would NOT be a problem for me to keep my name. Our printed checks were as:
Andy Taylor,
Aunt Bea Taylor.
AKA: Aunt Bea Fife
Mayberry RFD, NC
Husband is not weak-willed.
When the HR department, of mostly women, saw my husband’s application to add me to health insurance plans, stock options, and other benefits, they surprised him because they would seek him out at lunch and ask how we were able to keep my name. He had become extremely popular with HR and they sent new employees to him when they had similar questions. This was in 1988 in California! Why was it such an issue back then?
The kids have Dad’s name and asked me to go by Dad’s name during school years. They didn’t like that Mom was Aunt Bea Fife because friends and teachers thought we were a divorced family. So I went by hubbie’s name while they were in school. No big deal.
I took my husband’s last name. It just seemed the thing to do. I never really thought about it either way and am not emotionally attached to either name. It was never something I cared about. I wonder if that is weird. It wasn’t a problem at work with the name change either.
I guess you have the choice of your father’s name or your husband’s.
And in practice, only one of the hyphens is chosen. Emily Ramsbotham-Henderson is called Emily Henderson in speech and in email addresses. You will introduce yourself as such to strangers.
If someone insists on both the hyphens when introducing themselves, they come across as douchy or stuck up prigs. This is especially true of hyphenated men or hyphenated Millennials.
Argue with me if you will, but I have been in HR for 20+ years and know thus to be almost always true.
@gearmom I don’t think it’s weird either way. Some are attached, some aren’t. Mr R and I both are. My (male) roommate on the other hand has no attachment and will happily take his wife/husband’s name if asked.
People should just do whatever makes them happy 
ETA: I reject the whole “father or husband’s last name” thing. Personally, I don’t care a lick if my name comes from my mom or dad. But it’s my name and has been my name since birth. My middle name comes from my mom and my last from my dad. I don’t plan on changing either.
@RecusantSam Hmmm. Never thought of it as my dad’s name. Just this family name or that family name. But no emotional attachment.
@romanigypsyeyes Thnx
I married at the age of 30 and, among my friends, those who liked their husband’s last names, changed theirs. Those who didn’t, stayed with their own. It’s sort of odd to state it so baldly but I can go through them, person-by-person, and see how it happened.
I was 36 and a health professional when I married. I took my H’s surname and and began using my maiden name as my middle name. I signed my notes with all three names for a while so that the doctors who had referred my patients would know it was still me. Our D has my H’s name as her surname.
Conventional, perhaps, but it has worked for us. I know who I am; taking his surname didn’t change that. I haven’t had any reason to regret it. Interestingly, my old friends, who knew me during my single years, still think of me by my maiden name, and I think of them that way, too. It’s like our married surnames are just an overlay.
Years ago I took a course at a hospital in Addis Ababa. An Ethiopian Roman Catholic sister who worked as a social worker there told me that Ethiopian women keep their surnames when they marry. She were amused at the Western custom of taking the husband’s surname.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29804450 describes the English tradition of the wife taking the husband’s surname.
https://www.quora.com/Besides-China-and-Korea-in-what-other-countries-does-the-wife-not-usually-change-her-surname-to-her-husbands-after-marriage lists many places (including some Western ones) where wives tend not to change to their husbands’ surnames.
But, UCB, how on earth do these billions of people know that family members are all from the same family?!
I married for the first ( and so far the only) time at 30.
Kept my maiden name.
COuldn’t imagine burdening the kids with hyphenation since the combined names would probably exceed the little boxes provided on standardized forms. And, it would probably take them the entire class period to write their legal names on each and every piece of paper.
They got my last name as a second middle name. Got dad’s as their official last name.
They are proud of both. All their official documents (grad certificates, passports, business holdings) include their full first, double middle and last names.
Grand kids may wind up with additional middle names.
All I can say is that you will understand the difficulty and confusion when you have kids. And they have plenty of friends. And sports/chess/math team friends. And schoolmates. And you are trying to be polite and keep track of whose parents are whose.
It’s easy as a young person not to worry about it, as an older person trying to keep track of people and pretend that you remember everyone…not so much. Get back to me in ten years about it. 
It’s not that I begrudge anyone for keeping their last name. But it makes it much tougher to remember, when you’re trying to get to know parents and kids, and there are large numbers of them.
I never changed my last name. Most people figure it out. If they make a mistake and call me Mrs. Married Name, no big deal. I did know another mother who was very militant about being called by Ms. Maiden Name and would correct people constantly and not so patiently. I would answer to both. My favorite name was when some of the little kids that were friends way back when would call me Mrs. “son’s first name”. Too cute.
As far as South Korea, posted above, when 20% of the population has the surname of Kim and another 13% have the surname of Lee, I guess they don’t worry about maiden/husband’s surname that much.
Someone calls me wrong last name
“Please, call me (first name)”
I do this even when people call me by my correct last name. I just don’t like being called by my last name. I also don’t like making people guess which is the correct prefix (Miss/Ms/Mrs) and never have.
My students do not know my last name very well… as I found out on their midterms lol.
At my undergrad, everyone called professors by their first names in my major. In my master’s and phd courses obviously too. I can’t really see myself breaking the pattern anytime soon.