Grrr...

Would never change my name, my kids have my name and there was no way it was going to be any different. I don't explain any of it to anyone.

I changed my name, in huge part because I wanted to distance myself from my abusive father and his side of the family. I've told my DC they can do what they like. We have a nice surname and the children like it. Fair enough, they should keep it then!

I know very few women who have kept their own name after marriage (as I have).

Surely the proper form of address for a person is the form of address which they wish to be used. Even Debretts does not mandate the (frankly dreadful) Mrs DH's Initial DH's surname. You may expect a long-running battle on this issue with older/archaic relatives, even well-meaning friends may forget and assume you've changed your name. I find this particularly astounding when it's my own friends, some of whom have never even met DH, and thus must have to try much harder to remember his surname than mine.

Don't ignore it - just calmly point it out at every reasonable opportunity.

My favourite comment came not long after my wedding from my grandmother who was then in her eighties. She called me [My First Name] and then hesitated trying to decide which surname to use and then complained "it's so hard to remember your surname these days". Really - so hard to remember the surname I have had for my entire life? Sorry to make it so difficult

Oh found this

If I chose to take my new husband's name, I'd be far from alone. A Eurobarometer survey, conducted in 1994, suggested that 94% of British women took their husbands' names when they got married. Recent smaller-scale research, however, suggests that this proportion has shrunk over the last two decades, especially among highly-educated and younger women. In 2013, academic Dr Rachel Thwaites found that 75% of respondents took their husband's names. Just last month, the Discourses of Marriage Research Group, a multi-institutional network interested in marriage equality, found that 54% of female respondents did the same.

So numbers are growing, it seems.,

I think it's the case that 70% do change. Keeping your name is definitely the minority in my social circle. I've noticed that there's a very odd romantic narrative that's built up around name changing. Only for women of course. Men who change their name are ridiculed in my experience.

Where are you from?

On another thread, someone said 70% or so don't change name now.

Yanbu of course.

In the UK you can legally change your name at any time you want. You don't have to wait until you are married and obviously there is no legal requirement to change your name just because you get married.

My mother married twice and didn't change her name. I didn't change mine. My son has his father's surname (I wish I'd used mine)