The Name Game: Why Your Last Name Choice Isn’t Anyone Else’s Business

A celebration of choice, inspired by the women who fought for our freedom to decide

My husband and I eloped in Portugal. Just the two of us, a private ceremony, no guests. We announced our marriage after the fact, which was perfectly aligned with how we’ve always done things: on our own terms.

What followed the announcement was interesting. Along with the congratulations came the commentary about my name choice. I’ve always been an independent thinker who doesn’t quite follow what people expect. As a strong, independent woman, I chose to take my husband’s last name. Something some people think is contradictory.

But it’s not. And we should stop judging that way.

Here’s what struck me most: many people seemed to have a strong opinion about a decision that was entirely mine to make. And that’s when I realized we’d somehow turned one of women’s greatest victories into another battlefield where we judge each other’s choices.

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The Freedom Our Grandmothers Fought For

Let’s pause for a moment to acknowledge what previous generations of women endured. They couldn’t vote, couldn’t own property in their own names, couldn’t make financial decisions without male approval. Their identities were legally subsumed under their husbands’ names not by choice, but by law.

These women fought courtroom battles, marched in streets, and challenged centuries of legal precedent so that we could have something radical: the right to choose.

They didn’t fight so we could all make the same choice. They fought so we could make our own choices.

The Modern Judgment Matrix

Somehow, we’ve created a new set of rules about what makes a woman “feminist enough” or “traditional enough” based on her surname decision. The irony is breathtaking.

Take my friend Kathryn Marshall, a brilliant lawyer who calls herself a feminist and decided to take her husband’s last name. According to some people’s logic, this decision somehow negates her legal career, her advocacy for women’s rights, or her fierce independence. As if a surname could erase decades of professional accomplishment and personal conviction.

Consider my own choice: I became Anaida Poilievre Galindo after my wedding, combining my husband’s surname with my family name, just like our children carry both Poilievre and Galindo. In Latin American culture, we already carry both our father’s and mother’s surnames. When I had children, I wanted them to carry both their father’s name and mine. To match our family unit, I chose to mirror their naming structure.

My best friend made the opposite choice, deciding to keep her last name and not take her husband’s. Despite our different name choices, we share the same values of strength and independence for women. That’s the point: strong women can make different choices and still champion the same principles.

The Judgment Trap

We’ve somehow convinced ourselves that feminism means all women must make the same choices. That’s not feminism; that’s conformity with a progressive twist.

Real feminism is recognizing that a lawyer can choose to take her husband’s name while continuing to fight for women’s rights in courtrooms. Real feminism is a woman keeping her birth name because it represents her identity, while respecting her friend’s different choice. Real feminism is making authentic decisions about your own life without needing to justify them to anyone.

The Historical Perspective

When I think about the women who came before us, I imagine they’d be amazed by our current debates. They fought for the right to vote, to own property, to make legal decisions. They fought for agency over our own lives.

They didn’t fight so we could all choose the same path. They fought so we could choose different paths.

The suffragettes who chained themselves to government buildings weren’t trying to create a new set of rules for women to follow. They were trying to break the rules that told women what they had to do.

The Personal Is Not Political

Your last name choice is deeply personal. It involves your family history, your professional identity, your relationship dynamics, your cultural background, and your personal values. It’s not a political statement, even though others might interpret it as one.

I didn’t choose to become Anaida Poilievre Galindo to make a statement about feminism or tradition. I chose it because it felt right for my family, honored my heritage, and reflected how I wanted to navigate my new role as a mother and wife.

The fact that this choice sparked commentary from people who’ve never met my children or understood my cultural background says nothing about my decision and everything about our collective need to police women’s choices.

The Respect Factor

Here’s what I wish more people understood: respecting women’s choices means respecting all women’s choices, even when they’re different from what we would choose. The woman who enthusiastically takes her husband’s name deserves the same respect as the woman who would never consider changing hers.

The Next Generation

I want my daughter to grow up in a world where her surname choice is met with curiosity rather than judgment. Where people ask, “What factors helped you make that decision?” instead of, “How could you make that decision?”

I want her to understand that the women who came before her fought for her right to choose, not her obligation to choose a particular path.

Most importantly, I want her to make whatever choice feels authentic to her, whether that’s keeping her birth name, taking her partner’s name, or creating something entirely new.

The Celebration

Instead of judging each other’s surname choices, what if we celebrated them? What if we saw every woman’s name decision as a small testament to the freedom previous generations fought to secure?

The woman who keeps her birth name is celebrating her professional identity and family heritage.

The woman who takes her husband’s name is celebrating her new family unit and shared identity.

The woman who hyphenates is celebrating both her past and her future.

The woman who creates a new name is celebrating the fresh start of her family.

All of these choices are victories. All of them represent women exercising the freedom to decide for themselves.

My Truth

I chose to become Anaida Poilievre Galindo because it felt right for my family. It honors my husband’s heritage, preserves my own, and matches my children’s names. It doesn’t make me less independent, less feminist, or less committed to women’s equality.

It makes me a woman who made a choice that aligned with my values, my family’s needs, and my cultural background.

That’s not a political statement. That’s just life.

The Real Victory

The real victory isn’t that we all make the same choice about our names. The real victory is that we get to make the choice at all.

Our great-grandmothers would be amazed by our debates because they’d be amazed by our options. They fought for our freedom to choose, and we honor that fight by exercising that freedom, regardless of which choice we make.

So here’s to the women who keep their names, take their partner’s names, hyphenate, or create something entirely new. Here’s to the lawyers who take their husband’s names and the homemakers who keep their birth names. Here’s to the women who blend cultural traditions and those who break them entirely.

Here’s to choice. Here’s to freedom. Here’s to respecting each other’s decisions about our own lives.

And here’s to the pioneering women who fought so we could have this beautiful, messy, complicated freedom in the first place.

What name choice did you make, and what factors influenced your decision? Share your story in the comments. I promise I won’t judge you, regardless of your choice.