Married women's name choices and sense of self

Abstract

It has been argued that women who forgo their birth names upon marriage will suffer a loss of personal sense of self. However, there is no study that assesses this proposal. The purpose of this study was to examine differences in feelings about self among women who adopted their husband's surnames, kept their birth names, or hyphenated their surnames or used their birth names as their middle name. Self‐esteem, relationship dependency, autonomy, and control mutuality were examined. The results show no differences among the three groups. The authors advocate caution in making claims that women's married name choices are associated with a perceived loss of personal identity.