More than 20% of younger, educated women are refusing to change their names after marriage, while 5% of men now decide to take the WIFE’S NAME

Women still largely choose to take their husbands’ names after they get married, but younger, more educated and liberal women are more likely to keep their own names, a new poll shows.

The poll also found that about five percent of men change their own names after marriage.

Attitudes about changing your name have shifted somewhat in recent times, with paralegals in the first year of the pandemic filing applications from people wanting to use their maiden names after they tie the knot.

A large majority of women in opposite-sex relationships, 80 percent, confirmed that they had taken their husband’s name, with 14 percent keeping their own names and five percent hyphenating them.

However, when broken down into subcategories, you see left-wingers and younger women, among others, moving towards keeping their surnames.

Hispanic women (30 percent) saw a much higher percentage retain their own name than white (10 percent) and black (9 percent) women.

Among the subgroups, women with a postgraduate degree (26 percent) showed the greatest likelihood of keeping their own name.

The Liberal Democrats — 25 percent — were the most likely political identity to keep their name, even outpacing the more moderate Democrats — 16 percent.

Moderate Democrats saw similar numbers to their moderate Republican counterparts, 15 percent of whom said they kept their names.

Only seven percent of conservative Republicans surveyed said they keep their original surname.

Overall, 20 percent of Democratic women and 10 percent of Republican women refused to change.

There was also a clear divide between older and younger women: 17 percent of women between the ages of 18 and 49 said they would keep their names.

In contrast, only nine percent of women over age 50 said they had stuck with their birth name.

Attitudes about changing your name have shifted somewhat in recent times, with paralegals saying applications from people wanting to use their maiden names after they tied the knot have skyrocketed in the first year of the pandemic.

The poll also found that about five percent of men change their own names after marriage

The tradition dates back to the covert laws in both Britain and the US, which stated that women had no legal identity and were passed from their fathers to their husbands.

“When women talk about marriage, we talk about becoming it,” said Catherine Allgor, president of the Massachusetts Historical Society. “With secrecy you become one, but that one was the husband.”

Those laws—which were eventually rescinded nationwide in 1972—also barred women from voting or getting credit in their own names.

While only 14 percent of women surveyed overall said they keep their surnames, women who weren’t yet married were less sure of what the future held for them.

At least 40 percent said they would keep their own name (23 percent) or break it down (17 percent), while only 33 percent said they were sure they would take their spouse’s name.

Another 17 percent weren’t sure what they’d do when they walked down the aisle.

Men remain largely committed to keeping their own names, with 92 percent saying they have.

However, one in twenty (five percent) said they took their wife’s name and one percent said they used it with a hyphen.

Brooklyn Beckham changed his name after marrying Nicola Peltz, after adopting his wife’s last name as a new middle name – a trend that is growing in popularity

TV presenter Dawn Porter unusually changed her name to Dawn O’Porter after marrying actor Chris O’Dowd

The survey, conducted by the Pew Research Center, asked 2,400 married people and 955 single people about their views on the issue of changing your name after marriage.

The Deed Poll Office, a British law firm, said requests to keep maiden names increased by 30 per cent between 2020 and 2021 – the biggest annual increase ever.

It suggested that couples whose weddings had been postponed due to Covid had more free time during the lockdown to sort documents about their new names. Same-sex partners are asking for it, as are parents who are separating and want to ‘keep the bond’ if they live at different addresses.

Nicola Peltz, who married David Beckham’s son Brooklyn earlier this month, chose to keep her maiden name and was known as Nicola Peltz Beckham. Placing girls’ names as middle names is another emerging trend, according to the Deed Poll Office.

And the number of questions about “meshing” — combining surnames after marriage — had increased sevenfold in the past two years, the online service NameSwitch reported in September.

English television presenter Dawn Porter changed her name to Dawn O’Porter when she married actor Chris O’Dowd.