I think that’s what people are assuming, yes. That the guy is giving up power and can’t put his woman in her place. It doesn’t make any sense to assume that, but I think you’ve correctly identified the assumption.
Who said that’s the situation, though? That’s not what happened to the blogger. He chose to give up his own name.
Interesting timing on this survey, eh?
Every day, in every way, I am getting reminded of why I fucking hate people.
God, I always was looking forward to taking his last name but this thread makes me obstinately not want to change my name. Ever. Ever-ever.
God has a last name?
It’s Bergren.
That’s what I get for posting semi stream-of-consciousness style. Sorry.
Men have had too much power in history. I say make it mandatory that husbands take their wives’ names, at least for a couple hundred years.
Seriously though, let the guy have his wife’s name. I’m personally proud of anyone of my gender that is secure enough to do such an untraditional thing. Good job to him!
Tsh, your sentence was perfectly clear. I’m just a knee-jerk smartass who can’t pass up an opportunity like that.
On the contrary. If people passed up opportunities like that all the time, there’d be nothing funny left except fart jokes. Please, have at it.
When we married, we sorted things out like so:
We each keep our own last names. Mainly because we are lazy, and saw no reason to do the work necessary to change them.
Kids would inherit their presumptive ethno-religious identity for ritual purposes matrilinially (naturally, when they are old enough to understand such matters they can make up their own minds). That is because it accords with both our traditions, and also because her parents care for that sort of thing and mine are indifferent.
Kids would take their last name patrilinially, for balance. Hyphenated names are a bit of a pain.
In this way, a sort of equality of tradition is established, with minimal fuss and inconvenience; no-one is imposing on anyone and no-one has to take any inconvenient measures.
An unanticipated benefit of this approach is that, as both our names are listed in the phone book, everyone who doesn’t actually know us assumes our family name is hyphenated - letters and phone calls asking for “Mr. or Mrs. [hyphenated name]” we know automatically are sales people or the like. 
While I don’t care one way or the other about who takes who’s name, I rather suspect, reading the article, that at least some people are likely to disparage him because he’s making such a self-congratulatory big deal about it.
To paraphrase, ‘Look at how enlightened and loving I am. I even took my wife’s name!’
This part makes me think the author’s very likely an insufferable egoist:
‘Not only am I noble and loving, I’m also amazingly artistic’.
Bah… he’s an amateur.
The right way to do it is to take both your last names, mash them into a single non-hyphenated last name, and then change your names so that you’re Mr and Mrs Wemashedournamestogether.
(and yes, one of the girls I went to university with actually did that)
You know, it’s been mentioned several times in this thread that some couples blend their names into one unhyphenated name. The above post reminded me of Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa who combined his last name, Villar, with his wife’s, Raigosa.
Post #46. 
What I didn’t know until the other day is that Jack White got his last name from Meg White. And, obviously, the former Mr. Gillis kept that name even after getting re-married.
Heh, right.
Err, I *had *to post it again. You know, for emphasis.
Oh, believe me–I intend to. But damn you for not giving me a good opening in that post to which I could respond with a fart joke.
I think this was different, though. It was my impression that if it had been **Smith **+ Jones, it was **Smithjones **instead of Smones: mashed up against each other instead of blended.
ETA: And per the Wikipedia article linked above, I was right. (No big shock there–I’m right about everything, always.) It was Brügger + Gosman = Brüggergosman.