What's In A (Last) Name?

“Adopting a husband’s last name remains an entrenched tradition that is on the upswing, despite a temporary blip in the ’70s, ’80s and early ’90s where many young women tended to want to hold on to their birth names,” said UF linguistics professor Diana Boxer, who led a series of studies. “I think it reflects how men’s power continues to influence American society despite the fact that women have made great advances economically and socially.”

The exception is highly educated women in academic and professional positions, said Boxer, whose research in 2005 was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.

The survey involved 134 married women ranging in age from their 20s to their 70s who lived in various parts of the United States. Boxer found that only 24 — 18 percent — had kept their own names, compared with 107 — 77 percent — who took a husband’s name. The rest used hyphenated or other names. Family unity was the most frequently mentioned reason.
    
“Taking on my husband’s last name was an outward sign of our union,” explained one woman. “It served to make me feel that I was ‘really married’ and that we were forming a brand new family.”
    
For divorced women with children, keeping their ex-husband’s last name was a way to avoid the confusion of having two names in the same family, Boxer said. 
    
While all the women who retained their birth surnames were satisfied with their choice, some who didn’t expressed regret, Boxer said. “I associate my new surname with my husband’s relatives, whom I dislike,” said one participant. Another woman was disappointed to lose a symbol of her ethnic heritage in giving up her last name.

Understanding naming traditions is important because they give clues about underlying social patterns and shifts in attitudes about expected roles for women, said Boxer, who presented some of the findings at the International Association of Applied Linguistics meeting in Madison, Wis., in July. “People say ‘It’s only a name, what’s in a name?’ Well, we think there’s a lot in a name,” she said. “Linguistic symbols tell us how people are treated in society.”