Where my wife comes from, women never take their husband's surname, but the kids do.

Therefore, passports of married women all say on the details page:

SURNAME: (her surname) WIFE OF (his surname)

Was quite a surprise when I saw it.

it's a family name... and yes, we happen to live in a patriarchal society where family lineage follows the male line. Other societies deal with it differently - Icelandic names differ from most Western family name systems by being patronymic (and sometimes matronymic) in that they reflect the immediate father (or mother) of the child and not the historic family lineage (from Wiki!) or Spanish surnames where the child has a double-barrelled version of both father and mother's name.

At the end of the day, everyone needs to be differentiated and yet state their social grouping somehow.

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I have a dual identity. I use my married name for personal matters and my maiden name for professional.

we were going to call our daughter Isla. Had we, she would have grown up dying to get married so her surname could change.

it's the same in my (Dutch) passport...my maiden name in bold print and beneath it in small print wife of...
and same on the Dubai residency visa, my married name is too long so it's not even on it properly.

I am completely not interested in last names...thinking about it, there are loads of people I only by their first name...I am not attached to my last name, maiden or married, I wouldn't care what it was to be honest.

People like the notion that the entire family shares the same name. The little buggers are going to have the father's name so it does, even today after decades of feminism, still seem odd that the mother is the outlier when she keeps her name despite that she's likely the most important and beloved figure within the family.

But I'm not bothered one way or another. I have my last name because an ancestor took his mother's family name as a condition for inheriting some property. The woman unlucky enough to marry me, if she keeps her name, c'est la vie. If she takes mine, c'est la vie.

Well I get email from a Mr. Dik Shit in Dubai, so I suppose if he married a woman called Ava, she might want to keep her own surname.

Heheh. I hope they don't name their boy Mustapha....

Happy New Year, btw, old chap. Haven't seen you on here in a while.

I kept my own surname, hyphenated and added my husband's to it. My kids have just their fathers surname. I used to use my hyphenated name religiously because I really wanted to retain my own name, but now my kids are older, I just get called by my husbands surname by all their friends and teachers. It all becomes to complicated so I find myself using his surname on everything but official documentation.

..and a Guid New Year to you SYB. Been very busy on Iraqi projects but pop in to the BE bored when board.

Of course I wouldn't.

I used to go to school with a lass called Honor Marks- and coincidently she was a fantastic runner. Maybe she had lots of practice as people called out her name!