I kept my name for a few reasons. First of all, I'm not really that into marriage to start with and never thought I would marry my partner, but after being together for 8 years, the idea became appealing to me and we thought it would be nice to have a celebration of our relationship and secure it for the future. It was an intensely personal decision to get married and had nothing to do with a sense of duty, tradition or expectation and that is the way I also look at keeping my name. I didn't feel any connection with my husband's name and I knew he wouldn't consider changing his name to mine, so why would I change mine? He's him and I'm me, our names are our own. I also don't like having a title, I am just firstname lastname, not Mrs, Miss or (my personal hate) Ms. I don't think it's anyone elses business whether I'm married or not, unless they are important to me and know me (and therefore probably came to my wedding). I'm not sure what we'll do when it comes to our children. Probably go with my husband's last name and maybe have mine a their middle name. It would be easier for them to take my lastname as it's much easier to spell and say, but that's not really an issue for me. I don't have a problem with not sharing names with my family, it's irrelevant to our relationship. We will probably have first and middle names that will carry on family connections anyway. I would never judge anyone for the decisions they make around their name as I believe it's totally personal to them and no one elses business.