What Do the Majority of Hetero Married Women in Your Country or Culture Do?

I keep finding interesting articles and mentions here and there about how other countries and cultures handle surnames post marriage. The New York Times survey article sum-up quoted one woman as stating that most women in China don't change their names upon marriage. The NYT dedicated an entire article to that subject here: For Chinese Women, a Surname is Her Name. The article states:

But in China, as in other Asian societies shaped by Confucian values, including Korea and Vietnam, women traditionally retain their surname at marriage. This is an expression not of marital equality, Chinese feminists are quick to note, but of powerful patriarchal values. A married woman continues to be identified by her father’s lineage.

Chinese folk art painting of a wedding

The article noted that as a result, women were often left out of genealogical records. But in 1930, China gave women the legal right to take her husband's name at marriage in the new Civil Code.

In contrast, in Japan, all married couples are legally required to use one surname. 96 percent of women assume their husbands' name. Another NYT article (really, New York Times, way to go on the top notch name change coverage lately!)--In Japan, More Women Fight to Use Their Own Surnames--discusses the December 2015 decision by the Japanese Supreme Court that held that the law did not violate the Constitution or place an undue burden on women. 

I'm working to create a Google Sheets file tracking all the laws and traditions of various countries and cultures just so I can start to get a handle on it all. It's accessible here if you'd like to look at it or contribute!

Kitsune no Yomeiri – The Fox Wedding (Learn more about the story behind this painting here - https://hyakumonogatari.com/2013/07/19/kitsune-no-yomeiri-the-fox-wedding/)

The New York Times' Survey on Marital Name Decisions

'I Didn't Want to Lose My Identity': 16,000 Readers Reflect on Their Surnames
By Hanna Ingber, The New York Times

This is a great read. I particularly identify with the introductory story about Katherine Yuk, who hated her name as a child due to schoolyard teasing but eventually decided to keep it. I, similarly, was teased as a child for having the last name Dickson. I mean, kids can be mean when you have a slang word for male genitalia hanging out in your surname.

"The Wedding Morning" - John Bacon

I've also had some fun with automatically generated email addresses that cut off after so many letters; I believe my automatically generated one for law school was along the lines of "RDickso" or "DicksoR." It was bad enough that I called the IT department and begged them to change it for me, but they refused. I'm pretty sure I logged into that e-mail address only once, to set it to forward all my e-mails to my personal e-mail, and then never used it again. 

It also doesn't help that I have the less common spelling of a fairly popular last name, so my entire life, I've had to fight people spelling my name as Dixon, or alternatively, Dickens or Dickinson. (Nope. Fail.) It's become enough of a problem that if I don't receive an e-mail I'm expecting, I call and make sure they had the right spelling of both of my names (oh yeah, my first name is the less common spelling of a fairly popular first name as well, so that just adds to the fun). But as I get older (I'm 29 now), I've grown to embrace it more. I wouldn't call it my identity, but at the same time, I'm not certain I'd recognize myself by a different name. Dealing with the problems that go along with my name are just part of the package, to me now.

I'm actually a bit disappointed in this NYT article. The stories from various women about their choice is truly lovely but that's all there is. Give me some statistics, people! Did you survey 16,000 women and then not come up with numbers about how many kept their name vs. changed vs. combined? How many gave their own names to their children? How many women in homosexual relationships responded? What trends showed up among those couples? Really, this seems like a failed opportunity. I'm very much hoping that there are more installments in the future that provide more information from the survey.