"Why I Didn't Take My Husband's Last Name"
By Alice Elliott Dark, REDBOOK
You exchanged vows-but did you swap your last name for his? Many women take their husband's name, others stick with the one they were born with, but these couples took a more novel approach.
1. "I'm on my second marriage, so I took my new husband's name and hyphenated it with my first husband's last name. It's a mouthful, but I have children from my first marriage and wanted to respect the part of my life that gave me two amazing sons." -Susie Martinez-Dominguez
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2. "My husband took my last name when we got married. My first name sounded silly with his, so he took mine instead." -Chanda Tipton
3. "We didn't like our last names, so we combined parts of our mother's maiden names when we tied the knot. So Pena and Glenn turned into Penn. We'd watched a lot of Sean Penn movies when we first dated, so I took that as a good sign!" -Aryn Penn
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4. "We decided to just pick a word to be our new last name, because my husband didn't want to change his to mine and I didn't want to change mine to his. Our only requirement was that no one in the New York City phone book had it. We thought Dark was beautiful, and we checked and it wasn't used. We've been happy with it for 25 years." -Alice Dark
Do you know anyone who chose a new last name after marriage?
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