In the UK and in many other countries, a woman who marries generally takes her husband's surname, losing in the process, the identity she has had since birth.
I find this extremely odd; why in an age of emancipation do we continue with this practice. I guess it had some validity in the back in the days when a wife was just part of her husband's goods and chattels and had no legal rights of her own, but today?
Moving to Belgium some years back brought this home to me as, there, woman do not, as a rule, change their name upon marriage nor do they do so in many other European countries.
Do any of my Prehistoric Elephant friends have a strong view on this?
@Paulos_the_fog Is it "generally" in the UK? - what are the numbers? I am occasionally surprised when I come across someone who actually has done this - it seems that many of my generation and acquaintance don't. Although there are some women who have one name at work (the one under which they'd established their career) and a different name at home ... why??
@TimWardCam
I believe hitching the two surnames together is growing in popularity; particularly amongst showbiz types (e.g. Victoria Coren Mitchell), but so far as I can make out, the tradition persists in the UK without very many people questioning it!
I was born in 1950 and I was under the impression that my generation generally disparaged marriage as an institution, as I do and that therefore the problem didn't arise. However, I see little evidence of marriage dying out.
Another aspect of the same general area of cultural tradition is the use of Miss and Mrs for single and married women respectively. Why do we or did we change the term of address from Miss to Mrs upon marriage when no such change is made to the term of address for a man? The use of Ms is a welcome update of that tradition but it is still far from universal.
@Paulos_the_fog I knew someone with a combined surname who un-hitched his name from that of his ex wife when he got married again ...