I'm Keeping My Last Name!

If I ever get married, I'm keeping my name. Because I have a publication! *dances* And I hope to have more by the time I want to get married. My publication is going to referenced, and there's no way I'm changing my name and effectively turning "Starling" into a one-paper pony. [] Plus, it's neat to have a bird name when you work on birds. People remember it.

Similarly, my boyfriend wouldn't change his name, either. He has screen credits and is known for his work, so he won't be changing his name and effectively killing the person who did all that hard work.

I don't know any scientists who have changed their name after marriage. All of them have had publications beforehand, and wanted to keep publishing under the same name. Some people publish under the same name, but otherwise use their spouse's name. That's a little too much confusion for me.

I think that's great if you want to keep your own name! I wonder what started the whole "take your husband's last name" thing anyways, I mean is there actually a purpose for it? 
 
I will admit when I get married I will definetly take my husbands last name my last name is insanly long and also has a hyphen in it, everyone always thinks my parents put their names together but nope, it's all my dad's last name and it begins with a W, so I'm always at the end, of everything. Unless his last name was worse then mine, but mine is extreamly hard to beat.

I took my dh's because I figured we'd be having kids someday and I would rather we all had the same last name. I'm glad I did. If I had an established career when we got married, I would have given it more thought.

When I got married I took my husband's name oh 13 years ago.  I personally like it better then my maiden.  I did it because I wanted to. I still have the same intials which is very cool. 
 

When I got married the first time, 30 odd years ago, no one kept their maiden names.  When I divorced him he FOUGHT me on taking back my maiden name because then the kids would look like "bastards".  I didn't have the energy or resources for a prolonged court battle over MY name.  However, I was very glad to take 2nd DH's name and get rid of the ugly, hard to pronounce one I'd been saddled with.  Poor kids are still stuck with it tho!  And actually, my current last name is easier to spell and pronounce than my maiden name, even tho that's a relatively simple one.  The funny thing is tho, since Todd uses a professional name, everyone he works with thinks that I kept a name from a former life anyhow.

I kept the same initials , too. As a matter of fact both of our initials are the same, I thought that was kind of cute, but, hey you know how it is when you first get married, everything seems cute[8D]

I'm taking his, but I prefer it to mine.  Mine is easily misspelled and it always takes 5 tries to get someone to write it down properly over the phone.  His is a bit unusual (I've never met anyone else, other than his family of course) with the same surname, but it's still an easier name.
 
Kate

I kept mine.

I changed mine. I have a couple of rat related publications in my maiden name, but plenty of people know me in that community anyway and it wouldn't be that difficult for people to figure out who I am. My family didn't really care, but hubby's family would have been pretty upset and weirded out if I had kept my own. Not that that would have stopped me from keeping my own last name if I had wanted to, it just wasn't that big of a deal to me. His last name is shorter and easier to write out anyway, and I hear alot fewer stupid pronunciations and "how do you spell thats" with the new one. (Maiden name was Huddleston, married name is Poole.) Works out a bit easier for me.

Originally, wives were property, so not hard to see how the tradition arose.  Now, it's more of a convenience in naming children.  I took ex-DH's name in 1970, mainly because my own was weird LOL, and not actually our family name - just something that got hung on my paternal grandpa as he stepped off the boat from Lithuania.  BUT, when it came time to decide, on divorce day, what to do, I kept the SOB's name just to piss off the second wife.  I have always gotten some amusement from that.
Now, I cannot marry BF, else he would lose his medical benefits which I cannot afford to carry.  Before his mom died, she wanted me to change my last name to theirs anyway...even though I didn't, I thought it was sweet of her to want me to sound legal.  She knew we were married in our hearts, if not on paper.  So, I did the next best thing and gave him mocassins in the "old way".  []  But, the names have not been changed to protect the innocent.

I took DH's last name.  We had a little crisis right after we got married and I didn't change my name legally for about 6 months....I guess I was unsure we were going to make it and didn't want to deal with it.  But I took it eventually and am very happy I did. 
 
I still use my maiden name for work though.  I haven't changed it under my professional designation and am not sure I will.  It is nice for clients to not really know my last name and be able to look me up at home.  During tax season it is hard enough to get a free moment and I certainly don't want someone calling me up at home to ask me tax questions.

In Latin America the girls do not get rid of their name, they just add the DH last name to theirs, a good example is the actress Courtney Cox-Arquette, that way everybody's happy []

I don't know any scientists who have changed their name after marriage. All of them have had publications beforehand, and wanted to keep publishing under the same name. Some people publish under the same name, but otherwise use their spouse's name. That's a little too much confusion for me.

 
I agree, you definately want to get the credit for those publications.  I probably will keep my maiden name too at work, but take my husbands in my personal life.

I took my husband's name because it was shorter and started with the letter A, so it put me on top of lists instead of just boring in the middle.[8D]  Besides, I was adopted and that name wasn't really mine either.  My maiden name was hard to spell, pronounce, and too easy to make fun of.
 
When we divorced, I kept married last name just because I hated my maiden name.  I also thought it would be funny in a twisted sense to see how many other women he would marry and leave a trail of his last name from state to state. 
 
Unfortunately, my married last name gets screwed up a lot, too.  It's only 4 letters long, seems straightforward, but people always want to add to it.  And the wife after me has had major credit problems, so the collections agencies assume she must live at my house because we have the same last name and they keep calling me. 
 
If I ever get remarried, and I hope it will happen with my current bf, I will take his name.