[quote florascotia2]poppy I know all that, and you are correct, but naming patterns and the law did not always coincide. Quite a few heiresses, from medieval times to 18th/19th cent, didn't change names. And sometimes men changed their name to their wealthier wife's family name; it could be a condition of inheritance for future children, or might be because the wife's family had higher social status - Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, for example.
As I'm sure you know, the femme couvert doctrine was most clearly set out by Bracton (13th cent) but at that time a lot of ordinary women did not have surnames. They usually appear in documents as eg Anne, wife of Joe Bloggs.
And even by around 1600, when documents do show that married women were taking their husband's names, the doctrine of coverture was not universally followed.
I'm sorry to quote Wikipedia but it is a useful summary of some recent work on married women in the middle ages/early modern era:
^While it was once assumed that married women had little or no access to legal recourse, as a result of coverture, historians have more recently complicated our knowledge of coverture in the Middle Ages through various studies of married women's legal status across different courts and jurisdictions.[5] Collectively, many of these studies have argued that 'there has been a tendency to overplay the extent to which coverture applied', as legal records reveal that married women could possess rights over property, could take part in business transactions, and interact with the courts.[6] In medieval post-conquest Wales, it has been suggested that coverture only applied in certain situations. Married women were responsible for their own actions in criminal presentments and defamation, but their husbands represented them in litigation for abduction and in interpersonal pleas.[7]
The extent of coverture in medieval England has also been qualified by the existence of femme sole customs that existed in some medieval English towns. .....However, it is unclear how many women took up this status, the extent to which it was legally enforced, or whether the legal and commercial independence it offered were advantageous...^
This article below is very interesting, and shows how real life could be less clear-cut than law textbooks. (And interestingly, the writer argues that the existence of femme sole status has been exaggerated by feminist historians who relied on those lawbooks.) It contains documentary examples of both old style and new style names . Plus a (wealthy) singlewoman with an occupational name (Baxter) that might have been her trade, perhaps? Or perhaps her own name?
legalhistorymiscellany.com/2019/02/08/femme-sole-status-a-failed-feminist-dream/[/quote]
My point being, that a woman had no need to change her name as it was changed for her when she married: Mrs John Smith for example. Legally, it didn't matter as her children would have her husband's name. In England and Wales, mothers aren't included on marriage certificates. When a woman married, she in effect, gave up her family and moved into her husband's.
Some of these laws and traditions, wouldn't have applied to the aristocracy but marriages were often arranged for them. You must be aware of the royal family marrying in order to draw up peace agreements with other countries/royal families. These were arranged marriages.