Fewer Women Keeping Maiden Names — But Not In New York

3:00 pm, February 27th | by Hillary Reinsberg

You would think, that in the 21st century, the era of Twitter and Facebook and a kind of obsession with personal identity, that people might want to keep their last names after marriage. Not so! A study shows that more women are interested in changing their last names post-nuptials.

The study found that more women are taking their spouse’s last name than they were 20 years ago. Particularly in the Midwest.

The study also found that the number of women in the midwest who wanted to change their names was far higher than the number in the East Coast. So expect more ladies who are holding onto their maiden names in New York and Boston than in Chicago or Cinncinnati.

How to explain the geographical difference? Researchers are blaming it on more conservative values and family pressure in the Midwest. Interesting. We’ve heard that applied when talking about politics before, but for last names, it’s a first.

And still, regions aside, it’s surprising that so many American women are looking to go for the name change. Why? First, as we’ve written about before, it just makes sense in terms of professional relationships. Just yesterday, a friend told me he was working on a project with a client who recently married and changed her name. She didn’t go to the trouble of changing her email address, but was using the name professionally otherwise. Things got confusing. We also noted a study a while back that showed that women who keep their maiden names are actually more successful (of course, there are a lot of reasons for that).

[Daily Mail]

TAGS: maiden name | women changing name