Women are still largely choosing to take their husband’s name after getting married but younger, more educated and liberal women are more likely to keep their own names, according to a new poll.
The poll also found that around five percent of men are changing their own names after marriage.
Views on changing your name have altered somewhat in recent times, with paralegals saying applications from people who want to include their maiden names after tying the knot soared in the first year of the pandemic.
A large majority of women in opposite-sex relationships, 80 percent, confirmed that they’d taken their husband name, with 14 percent keeping their own and five percent hyphenated.
When it breaks down into sub-categories, however, you see an increase among more left-leaning and younger women toward keeping their surnames.
Women are still largely choosing to change their names after getting married but younger, more educated and liberal women are more likely to keep their own names, according to a new poll
Hispanic women (30 percent) saw a much higher rate of keeping their own name than white (10 percent) and black (9 percent) women.
Among sub-groups, women with post-graduate degrees – 26 percent – showed the most likelihood to keep their own name.
Liberal Democrats – 25 percent – were the most likely political identity to keep their name, outpacing even more moderate Democrats – 16 percent.
Moderate Dems saw similar numbers to their moderate Republican counterparts, 15 percent of whom said kept their name.
Only seven percent of conservative Republicans surveyed said they kept their original last name.
Overall, 20 percent of Democratic women and 10 percent of Republican women refused to change.
There was also a decided split between older and younger women, with 17 percent of women between the ages of 18 and 49 saying they’d keep their name.
By contrast, only nine percent of women over the age of 50 said they had stuck with their birth name.
Views on changing your name have altered somewhat in recent times, with paralegals saying applications from people who want to include their maiden names after tying the knot soared in the first year of the pandemic
The poll also found that around five percent of men are changing their own names after marriage
The tradition dates back to coverture laws in both the UK and US saying women did not have legal identities and were transferred from their fathers to their husband.
‘When women talk about marriage, we talk about becoming one,’ Massachusetts Historical Society President Catherine Allgor said. ‘With coverture, you are becoming one, but the one was the husband.’
Those laws – which were finally dissolved nationwide in 1972 – also kept women from voting or getting credit in their own names.
While only 14 percent of women surveyed overall said they kept their last name, women who were not yet married were less certain of what the future would hold for them.
At least 40 percent said they would keep either their own name (23 percent) or hyphenate it (17 percent) with only 33 percent saying they were sure they’d take their spouse’s name.
Another 17 percent were not certain what they’d do at all when they walked down the aisle.
Men remain largely committed to keeping their own names, with 92 percent saying they did that.
However, one in 20 – or five percent – said they took their wife’s name and one percent said they hyphenated it.
Brooklyn Beckham changed his name after marrying Nicola Peltz, after taking his wife’s surname as a new middle name – a trend that is becoming more and more popular
TV presenter Dawn Porter unusually changed her name to Dawn O’Porter after marrying actor Chris O’Dowd
Conducted by Pew Research Center, the survey asked 2,400 married people and 955 single folks about their stance on the issue of changing your name post-marriage.
The Deed Poll Office, a UK firm of paralegals, said requests to retain maiden names rose by 30 per cent between 2020 and 2021 – the biggest annual rise it has ever seen.
It suggested couples whose weddings had been delayed because of Covid had more free time during the lockdown to sort documents about their new names. Same-sex partners are requesting it, as are parents who split up and want to ‘keep the connection’ if they live at different addresses.
Nicola Peltz, who married David Beckham’s son Brooklyn earlier this month, chose to keep her maiden name and be known as Nicola Peltz Beckham. Putting maiden names as middle names is another emerging trend, the Deed Poll Office said.
And enquiries about ‘meshing’ – the combining of surnames after marriage – had risen seven-fold in the past two years, online service NameSwitch said in September.
English television presenter Dawn Porter changed her name to Dawn O’Porter when she married actor Chris O’Dowd.