What's in a (Last) Name?

So observes Rich Lowry on the declining number of women who retain their maiden name after getting married. I for one would be interested in seeing what the divorce rate is among couples where the wife chose not to take her husband's last name. To some extent, I would understand if my (hopfully) future wife didn't want to take my last name, especially if her first name was Heidi.

The number of women in the New York Times's wedding announcements keeping their surnames was 2 percent in 1975 and had reached 20 percent by the mid-1980s, according to the Journal study. Then the trend stalled. Among women in the Harvard class of 1980, 44 percent retained their surname, but in the class of 1990, only 32 percent did. According to Massachusetts records, the percentage of surname keepers among college graduates in that state was 23 percent in 1990, 20 percent in 1995 and 17 percent in 2000.

Why? The study's authors write: "Perhaps some women who 'kept' their surnames in the 1980s, during the rapid increase in 'keeping,' did so because of peer pressure, and their counterparts today are freer to make their own choices. Perhaps surname-keeping seems less salient as a way of publicly supporting equality for women than it did in the late 1970s and 1980s. Perhaps a general drift to more conservative social values has made surname-keeping less attractive."