The Name Game: Your Opinions on Changing After the Wedding

You've ordered the invitations, reserved a hall and hired a caterer. But now comes the most important question -- okay, the second most important: what do you call yourself? You are ready to take the vows, but what about his last name?

Most English-speaking countries have a long-standing (some would say archaic) tradition of a woman's assuming her husband's last name after marriage. Besides the red tape and long list of necessary notifications -- the bank, post office, Social Security office and so on -- a whole barrage of other issues accompany the changing of one's last name.

Some women feel that by adopting their husband's last name, they are relinquishing their identity; in our society, names are a touchstone of who we are, they delineate the way we are identified in both our professional and social lives, and many women refuse to give up their "names," the names they've grown and changed with, simply because they have fallen in love. Other women find fault with this tradition because of its archaic origin; last names are patrilineal -- a woman goes from her father's last name to her husband's -- and so, they say, a woman is only valued in relation to the man in her life.