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When I married the first time at age twenty-four, I briefly experimented with using my maiden name and my new husband's name in hyphenated form. It was 1987 and hyphenated last names were decidedly in vogue. To many younger women of that era, having a hyphenated last name was something of a badge of yuppie authenticity. In addition to that, my father, the only son of an only son, at times seemed rather sad when contemplating the idea that the family name would "die" once my sisters and I eventually married. So, the hyphen may have been an unconscious nod on my part to Dad's sentimentality regarding the family name.

Ultimately, however I abandoned the hyphenated surname and simply adopted my then husband's last name as my own, because I found the hyphenated format cumbersome to write and, quite frankly, far more trouble than it seemed to be worth. Whenever I had to introduce myself, I found that I was highly self-conscious about speaking my hyphenated surname aloud. It seemed to possess a level of pretentiousness that was clearly at odds with my generally down-to-earth, "low maintenance" nature.

When my former husband and I divorced five years later, I elected to keep "his" name, mostly for the benefit of our young son, whom I feared would become confused if my last name were suddenly different than his, but also because my married name had by that time become a significant part of my professional and personal identity.

When I married again after a dozen years as a single mom I changed my name without hesitation. My son, by then a teenager, was all about asserting his independence and creating his own identity separate from mine. I sensed that he probably would welcome different last names at this stage in life in that it provided for him a way to establish a separate identity. I also rejected the notion of hyphenation or substituting my former husband's name for my middle name. I had already discovered that hyphenation was too complicated and it seemed disloyal somehow to combine the surnames of husbands #1 and #2. And because I hadn't used my original maiden name in eighteen years I no longer felt a very strong connection to it. My family name represented childhood to me and while I loved my family and felt much pride in belonging to such a loving group I no longer felt that the name captured the real me.

I think, however, that one of the truly wonderful aspects of being a woman in America today is the complete freedom of choice that we enjoy. Women today have many advantages that our mothers, as recently as thirty years ago did not. We attend college and earn not only undergraduate but also graduate degrees in record numbers. Our presence is felt in the corporate and industrial worlds from the factory floor to the executive boardroom. We are police officers, firefighters and serve our country in the military. We can choose to be doctors or lawyers or owners and CEOs of our own small and not so small businesses. We are free to choose motherhood or not. We are free to choose marriage or not. And if we do choose to marry, no longer are we considered to be the personal property of our husbands but equal participants in what we hope will be happy, satisfying, life-long partnerships.

When it comes to the question of what name should a married women use there really is no singularly right or wrong answer. Having the freedom to choose the name we will use is simply an extension of all of the other freedoms that we currently enjoy. For me, my maiden name did not represent an essential feature of my personal identity, but for other women it might and that's ok. Perhaps William Shakespeare said it best, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

Learn more about this author, Robin Landry.
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