For a woman to take her husband’s name is a statement of confidence, not just in herself but in her husband and in her marriage. //

When a woman gets married, her identity changes in the sense that being a wife to her husband becomes part of who she is. The same thing happens to a man, taking on the identity and responsibility of being a husband to her. What Richards is reacting so viscerally to is likely not the tradition of a name change so much as the giving of oneself that marriage demands from both parties. It’s a foreign concept to our self-promoting society, a disconnect she admits when she broadly concludes that “marriage is rooted in misogyny.”

“When I got married in 2009, I changed my last name to my husband’s,” Richards continues. “But it never felt right. It never felt like ‘me’. And how could it? I’d had my name, my identity, for 30 years. Yet overnight, I was expected to become someone else.”

Yes, Victoria — husband and wife alike are expected to “become someone else,” though in most ways not overnight. Marriage is not simply a transactional arrangement in which two self-sufficient people engage in a trade-off that is always instantaneously profitable to both of them. It requires self-sacrifice, on some days with no immediate or equivalent return. It is a lifestyle of dying to self out of love for another, giving yourself to the other person — and in a healthy marriage where both spouses give such love, both spouses receive it.

The beautiful paradox of a loving marriage is that you don’t lose yourself, even though you give yourself away. //

Taking your husband’s surname is a reflection of your respect for who he is and for his leadership of the new family your marriage begins. It’s a commitment to your newly pledged unity. That respect and unity, in all their many forms, are vital to the process of “becoming one” — husband and wife coming together to submit their own sins and selfishness to the sanctifying covenant of marriage. That act of becoming one is an act of loving submission, on both sides. //

While there are legitimate, practical reasons for a woman not to take her husband’s name in some circumstances, many times that name change is a declaration that “I am not so insecure in my own worth or so vain of my own perceived image and independence that I’m unwilling to mark my commitment with this external symbol.” It is a statement of confidence, not just in herself but in her husband and in her marriage. It communicates the willingness to give, serve, and love that healthy marriages demand from both spouses, albeit sometimes in different and complementary ways.