What's In A Name?

I responded to a Quora question:  should women take their husband's surname after marriage?  Why, or why not?

It is up to the woman what she wants to be called, just as it is for a man.

I never stopped using my maiden name, although I did hyphenate it with my first husband’s name, which I ultimately felt was just too much name to drag around, so I dropped the hyphenation upon divorce. Since I had always used my name, my children didn’t experience any confusion.

Although I have never particularly liked my name, I do associate taking a man’s name as a sign of ownership and am of an age where people often felt that way in the past. I also did not, and do not, identify with my inlaws, although they were all nice people.

Now that society has changed and people are free to take any name they like, they might see my choice as baggage, and perhaps it is, BUT choices like mine did lead to today’s freer trends. I approve of today’s choices for people to be called whatever they prefer for their own reasons, but it was different for women my age and my right to my name is one thing I decided to stand up for.

Here is a point of view people do not often discuss: I felt that if the law said I was no longer the property of a planter, why should I be the property of a husband? Speaking only for myself, I didn’t see how a husband’s name, taken after slavery, was any better than my birth name. However, now that I am married to a man whose name has never been mixed up in American slavery, I admit it has put some of my old thoughts to the test. Since we are both singular with family dying off or far away, I can now understand how a couple can bond over a common name and, no longer having anyone in close proximity whose opinion matters, I can also understand taking a person’s name just because I like it. But as you were kind enough to ask why, this was my process.