Are American Newlyweds Blending Their Last Names?
tracking the “trend”

The name question jumps at me - there are a number of phases of my life where I’ve had mutually exclusive opinions on this issue. I remember being young and wanting to marry someone with a simple last name. In retrospect, it seems like this would have been a deal-breaker for me at the time. Now it doesn’t make any sense to me to take another name, both practically and politically. On the other hand, I am scared that my parents will feel that this decision reflects my disapproval of their own, and that saddens me. What really scares me is this thought: for a long time, I thought things would be perfect if my partner took my last name. Then I realized that the world would just assume that I had taken his if our names were the same. I don’t want that. It makes me wonder if and when my thoughts on this will develop past representation.