Why do married women take their husband’s last name?
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This is a byproduct of patrilineal inheritance in Western cultures. In a patrilineal system, your pass on your position/property to your sons. Because of this, daughters join their husband’s family rather than the reverse. Since they’re joining the family, they share the name.
As we moved towards more modern times, the custom persists because it tends to match how people live.
Sharing the same last name is useful, especially when you have children. While you can eventually convince the school principal that you’re legitimately the child’s father rather than some rando off the street trying to kidnap them, it’s a lot easier when you can just show your driver’s license with the right name.
However, changing your name once you’ve established a professional identity is difficult. Since men tend to marry once they’ve done so but women often marry prior to doing so, it is more common for women to change their names. Indeed, even when women already have a professional identity, it’s very common for them to separate their social and professional identities – if you read a research paper by Dr. X, it’s quite likely that her driver’s license actually reads ‘Dr. Y’. She established a professional identity as X, but changed her legal name to Y.
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