Many of my fellow female scientists are eventually faced with the decision of changing their surname. Here at LargeU, most of the women that get married before they have publications change their name, while the ones with publications hyphenate.
NA and I actually have had the Name Talk already. (I know. So fast. The next thing you know, we'll have a family-share cell phone plan.) We both have multi-syllable last names, so he agreed that hyphenation was dumb. Our nonexistent kids will have his name, while I will keep mine. (NA is very progressive and not at all territorial, but I had to give up something--in this case, our non-existant kids' last name-- in order to have his promise of me keeping MY last name upon our nonexistent wedding).
While most think that I'm keeping my name because I'm staying in academia or because I have several publications.
Nope, I just like my last name. I think it goes very well with my first name, and, barring marrying into a royal family, I just simply don't want to change it.
My mom (don't even ask how this whole thing came up) thinks NA is extremely awesome for being so agreeable about me keeping my name. I don't particularly understand why guys would care either way.
What about you? Guys, do you think it's important for your wife to take your name? Fellow female scientists, are you planning on changing your name? Have you have problems with pubmed, etc if you hyphenated?
