What's in a name?

I've been reading this string of comments about women changing or not changing their last name when they get married. I have several feminist tendencies, I think, but this falls under the category of Mostly Unimportant as far as I'm concerned.

Granted, I'm not married and not about to be married, so I haven't spent a whole lot of time thinking about it. I also don't yet have a strong professional identity to consider, and that would be a larger factor if I were getting married later in life. It also gets trickier when there are children to consider. Keeping my name would seem very natural if it were just the two of us, but I feel strongly that my imaginary children should all have the same last name. Whether that's mine or his doesn't really matter, but I don't think some children should have one name while the rest have another.

Several commenters brought up the fact that the spouse that's changing their name can feel like they're losing their identity. I think I would feel a little sad either moving my current last name to my middle name or giving it up altogether, but it's not like I would lose my connection to my immediate family or extended relatives. Sure, I wouldn't have the same name on the family tree, but I wouldn't feel any less a part of it. My name is how the rest of the world addresses me; it's not the way I know who I am.

Again, a caveat here is that I have a pretty generic last name, and I suppose I might feel different if I had a very unique name or something that was very representative of my background. And maybe if my imaginary husband had a very ethnic last name, I would feel a little like an imposter taking on a name that presumes I'm much different than my regular white American self.

I want my family to be a cohesive unit, and I don't want there to be any confusion if I need to be with my husband or children in the hospital and we don't share the same name. So if that means me taking his name, him taking my name, or choosing a new name altogether, great. But I don't want to hyphenate, and I don't want to keep my name and then be forced to carry around a copy of my marriage certificate all the time so that I can prove that I'm a part of my own family. So if that means I become Melanie Y instead of staying Melanie X, so be it.

It seems like several years ago more women were keeping their names when they got married, and now the percentage of women who do that is down. This seems to outrage many women, but I don't really understand the drama. The feminist cause has bigger fish to fry than getting women to keep their names.