Interesting to note the extent to which this poll is at odds with the population at large. From NY Magazine
The lower numbers are consistent with what I’ve seen.
I changed my last name to my hubby’s. We married young, both still in college, so I had no professional reason to keep my name. It’s also something that was just done in the family and in my circle of friends. I never seriously contemplated keeping my maiden name.
If I were to remarry at some point in the future (highly unlikely), I think I would keep my current name. I’ve had it longer than I had my maiden name. 
John Mace -
Historically, a woman in England would assume her new husband’s family name (or surname) after marriage, usually compelled to due so under coverture laws. This remains common practice in the United Kingdom today as well as in common law countries and countries where English is spoken, including Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Gibraltar, Falkland Islands, Ireland, India, Philippines, the English-speaking provinces of Canada, and the United States.
Boys get their fathers’ names, too. Does that show which man he belongs to? If I had my mother’s name, would I belong to her?
I have my dead first husband’s last name instead of my living second husband’s. Who do I belong to?
There’s a lot to be said against assumptions about names, but if I belonged tomy father, then to my first husband, by dint of having their names, whose name could I have without belonging to them? Sounds like I’d have to create my own name to avoid belonging.
Your culture is English (as in England)? If so, I think your post was, at best, misleading. But whatever. I’m sure you had some point you thought you were making…
I gladly took my husband’s last name, as my own is somewhat unfortunate. I kept my maiden as a second middle name.
My wife kept her last name; I didn’t care one way or the other - as far as I was concerned, that was her choice, and I was cool with it.
Our kid got my last name, because we both decided that having a double-barreled last name for him was problematic, and would cause future problems if it was different from either parent (another option was for all of us to change to a double-barreled last name, which was also a big hassle).
The quid pro quo was that he would learn her ancestral language as well as English, and generally participate in her ancestral cultural activities.
This way, each of us has only a single last name, neither of us has to change their name, the kid shares a last name with one of us, and relative equality is preserved: he takes his personal name from his paternal line, and much of his early learned cultural identity from his maternal line.
I kept my name. It’s a huge part of my identity and I like how it reflects my Irish ancestry.
My husband had no problems with it. We don’t have kids, but if we did we’d probably give them his last name, with mine in the middle.
I’m 38 and got married in 2014. I took my husband’s name.
I half-seriously say that I took it for the self-amusement value – both my first name and my husband’s last names are English names (he’s Irish), and I’m full Japanese-American. I’m mildly entertained by the idea of defying people’s expectations of what I look like based on my name.
My Japanese last name was uncommon, and being from Hawaii, it was occasionally misspelled to a Hawaiian-ish name. So I figured one perk of taking my husband’s name would be less frequent misspellings. (His name’s spelled simply and pronounced exactly how it looks.) On our wedding day, we arrive at the chapel and there’s a sign outside the door announcing our wedding ceremony there… and his last name is misspelled on it. I give up.
My wife kept her last name. She’d been using it for 45 years before meeting me, and neither of us saw any sense in her changing it.
I kept my own surname, partly for work reasons and partly because I couldn’t see any particular reason to change it. If my husband had cared a lot about me changing it, I would have, but he didn’t. I use his name a fair amount of the time, though, for stuff like making appointments or signing up for the kids’ school stuff.
The kids have his surname because I didn’t care about that and he did, and I like his surname a bit better than mine anyway.
By that logic, men don’t have last names either. All they have is their father’s last name.
Also, among most of the unmarried parents I know, the kid has the mother’s surname.
My answer is identical to this. My wife didn’t have a professional reason just didn’t want to go through the hassle of changing it and as she already chose an English first name to go by she wanted to keep her Chinese last name (she’s Taiwanese). There’s a lot more to learn about her culture and the language than mine (English Canadian with UK ancestry). She did get a lot of people at the school calling her by my name but she’s now heavily involved in PTO and that doesn’t happen any more.
I didn’t want to give up my surname, and he wanted his wife to take his name, so we compromised and I hyphenated. When my mother heard that she said “You two will probably last a long time as a couple.” Well, 25 years and counting…
It has always amazed me how many people can’t wrap their heads around this concept. There is a sub-set of humanity who are outraged that I didn’t take his name alone, who keep asking “which name is your last name?” (Answer: the whole hyphenated unit is my last name), or keep trying to make the first of the pair into a middle name for me (there’s another sub-set of the population who seem to think it’s the law you MUST have a middle name. No such law, no such requirement).
Basically, you can’t win no matter what you do.
Don’t even get me started on the jerks who insist on calling me by [HIS first name] [his last name] rather than granting me the dignity of having a name of my own.
I changed it, grudgingly, because we thought it would look better for USCIS - I was applying for a green card. But then, USCIS screwed it up, and I have both surnames listed (his, then mine) on my green card. And because of e-verify, I’ve had to go by that name at my last few jobs. AND, on my CA driver’s licence, it’s listed as HISNAMEHERNAME run together, stupidly enough. So I don’t know what my official name is. I’ve kept my (Australian) passport in my original name.
I kept my name - neither I nor my husband ever contemplated any other option. On kids, before I got pregnant we decided that a boy would get his last name and a girl would get mine. However, I really wanted to buck the trend of children always getting dad’s last name, even when mom kept her own. My marvelous husband, sensing that, offered to let our first (and only - we never wanted more than one) child have my last name.
A good thing, too, because it was a boy 
Honestly, it’s been far less confusing for our son to have my last name rather than his dad’s, since I’ve had more contact with schools as he has grown up, and they always assume we have the same last name.
I wish I remembered who said this so I could give credit where credit is due, but as some wise person once said: “Why would you change your name? You’re getting married, not joining a witness protection program!”
My maiden name was Pitts. No way in hell I was keeping that. My married name is nice and neutral and I even kept it after I got divorced. I always thought the last name and the kids were the only decent thing to come out of that marriage.
If you decide to naturalize, as part of the process you can change it to whatever you want.
Nah, not interested, but thanks
As far as I know, USCIS doesn’t care if you change your name. I know several women who got green cards through marriage, and none had changed her name.
We had the same initial plan, or a randomized way to assign one of our last names to the first kid, and have the second be the other. But when we realized that we may not have more than one, decided to hyphenate.