A TikTok user asked a simple question that got thousands of women talking. The user @lumomoneyyy wanted to know why some women keep their own last names after getting married instead of taking their husband’s name. Her post got so many responses that it started a big conversation online about this old wedding tradition.
Most American women still change their last name when they get married. A survey from 2023 found that about 79% of married women took their husband’s last name. Only about 20% to 30% of women keep their birth name. The practice of women changing their names comes from an old law in England that said women belonged to men. First they belonged to their fathers, then to their husbands after marriage.
The woman who posted the TikTok video said she never thought about changing her name. She wrote that it was her given name and she did not understand why she should change it for someone else. She said “I’m me, not him” when talking about why women might want to keep who they are. Thousands of women left comments sharing their own reasons for keeping their names.
Careers and identity matter more than tradition now
Studies show that younger women are more likely to keep their birth names. Women under 50 are twice as likely to keep their names compared to older women. Women who have gone to graduate school are much more likely to keep their names too. When women get married later in life, they often already have jobs and careers under their birth name.
Work is a big reason why women keep their names. Many women spend years building their careers and making a name for themselves in their jobs. If they change their name, people might not be able to find their work anymore. Some women see their name as part of their business that they worked hard to create. Just as a son discovered his father had made major financial sacrifices for his future, many women know how important it is to keep what they have built.
The women’s rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s helped make this choice more normal. A woman named Lucy Stone was one of the first American women to refuse changing her name when she got married back in 1855.
But it took over 100 years for more women to start doing the same thing. Some states would not let women vote or get a driver’s license unless they used their husband’s last name. Courts finally stopped these rules in the 1970s.
Even with all these changes, most women still take their husband’s name. Hispanic women keep their names the most at 30%. Only 10% of white women and 9% of Black women keep their birth names. Very few men change their names when they get married. Only about 3% of men take their wife’s name or combine both names together. Much like the Florida man who exposed how companies don’t always deliver what customers pay for, this talk shows how old traditions often stay the same even when they are not fair. The TikTok video showed that this choice is still a big deal for many people when they think about marriage and who they are
