POSTREL *IS* MY NAME
I get a mildly ticked off whenever I read in the NYT's Vows section that So-and-So Bride "will keep her name." What they mean is that she'll keep her father's name. ("Her" name is her first name.)
On the many occasions I've been asked to defend my choice of surnames, I've always said that I love my father but I chose my husband and, besides, I legitimately get the initials V.I.P. (Another bonus is a name no one else has. Postrel is an Ellis Island concoction and, since most Jews wrongly believe my first name refers to Jesus's mother rather than Elizabeth I, there are no other Virginias in the family.) Fortunately, today's brides don't make such a big deal of the name game, as Katie Roiphe (her maiden name) explains:
Interestingly, over the past 10 years fewer and fewer women have kept their maiden names. According to a recent study by Harvard economics professor Claudia Goldin, the number of college-educated women in their 30s keeping their name has dropped from 27 percent in 1990 to 19 percent in 2004. Goldin suggests that this may be because we are moving toward a more conservative view of marriage. Perhaps. But it may also be that the maiden name is no longer a fraught political issue. These days, no one is shocked when an independent-minded woman takes her husband's name, any more than one is shocked when she announces that she is staying at home with her kids. Today, the decision is one of convenience, of a kind of luxuryï¿which name do you like the sound of? What do you feel like doing? The politics are almost incidental. Our fundamental independence is not so imperiled that we need to keep our names. The statement has, thanks to a more dogmatic generation, been made. Now we dabble in the traditional. We cobble together names. At this pointï¿apologies to Lucy Stone, and her pioneering work in name keepingï¿our attitude is: Whatever works.
True liberation makes the personal apolit