Do you think women should have to take their husband's last name?

It honestly depends on who has the cooler last name.

so you don't care about keeping your own family name but you wouldn't take your husbands surname either? that sounds stupid

It's the couple's choice.

I don't think they "have" to today, though.

In most places just making up a name would not be legal. I am a man married to a man, he took my last name because we did both want to be unified under a single family name, and we collectively decided he would take mine. I also have a cousin who is a man married to a woman. He took her last name because they wanted a unified name, but he hated the name he got from his father that abandoned him as a small child and he was happy to change it.

I performed marriage ceremonies for a living for about 4 years and I did about 1500 services in that time. Part of my job was to record the new last names on the marriage license. I can tell you that a large number of couples did not change their names at all. I also had couples where the female hyphenated, where both the man and woman hyphenated, I had couples where the man took the womans name. I even had one couple where he took her name and she took his, so they still have different last names, but they both had new ones. Some couples would actually be sitting at the signing table discussing it as if they had never thought about it before, or ask me what I thought they should do.

The point is that it is not always exclusively decided or expected that the woman take the mans name. People make their own decisions for their own new families. If you would never marry a man that required you to take is name, that is your personal choice. Some men would never marry a woman that would not take his last name, and that is an equally valid personal choice.

My personal feeling is that it is just easier to for a married couple to have the same last name because the legal family relationship is automatically recognized. If you have to, for example, go see your spouse or your child that has been hospitalized, when you have the same last name questions are never asked, the fact that yout family is assumed. But that is my opinion and reasoning. Like I said, different people have different opinions on the matter and I don't think one opinion is any more or less valid than another.

"Tradition" isn't an "excuse". It IS the reason that many do it. It was the default in Western society. How is that not "the reason"?

Obviously, now it's optional, only I'd say most marrying couples wouldn't be putting as much thought in or be getting so concerned as this. Generally, people don't give a flying fuck about most things...

If you're cool with taking his name, do it. I personally wouldn't because I hate tradition and because I don't want to submerge my identity.

No, your husband's father is not your father.

We don't have to but it's just tradition. If you want to, great but it doesn't make you less of an individual to take on a different last name

as if..in the past women depended from their husband in every matter imaginable..today its totally different..women are more independent, more aware, bring even more money than men..so I dont think that its normal for nowadays..It's kind a degradation ..like she is loosing her identity and melting to somebody' elses

Remember that in patrilineal kinship, the name follows the Y chromosome.

It's less confusing to share a last name when doing taxes, buying a house, car etc.

I don't think a woman should have to do anything they don't want to do. Or anyone for that matter.

For me, depends on his last name. My last name is pretty plain and lame so I wouldn't mind giving it up but if his last name is some dumb bullshit like "Cournholl" or some shit like that then... No I might consider "Cournholl"...

As a gay man, it's not something I have to worry about because no man would ever have me.

In the Philiphines I've heard the mothers maiden name would be the childs middle name

One word: Hispanics. A Hispanic child gets both a paternal and a maternal surname.

As an Anglophone or person of Germanic descent, instead of getting two surnames, you can have just one double-barreled surname. That's what the Germans do when they get married, but for them those are only "alliance names" (Allianznamen) and as such not heritable.

I suggest that when the couple has children, the children inherit the double-barreled surname, and that the specific sequence depend on the child's gender. When the child enters a different-sex marriage, the second element of their double-barreled surname would be replaced by their spouse's first element.

Yes, they are KING.

Never forget that.

Many people overcome this by using Hyphenated names.

I like my last name. I never changed my name when I got married.