Should women still change their name when they get married?

This weekend marks the 70th wedding anniversary of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. 

Though marriage is still as important as it was when they were first married, traditions have evolved and changed since then.

Divorce, for example, is much more common, and couples are opting to get married later in life, live together without being married, and have children first before they take time to plan a wedding.

Other traditions are not as universal as they once were. For couples over the age of 55, 97% of them have adopted the husband’s name.

In contrast, nearly three-quarters of young married couples today have adopted the husband’s name.

The Duke of Edinburgh famously took issue with adopting his wife’s last name.

After the Queen’s accession, the monarch declared the Royal Family’s surname would continue to be Windsor and not Mountbatten.

“I’m just a bloody amoeba,” it’s claimed he said. “I am the only man in the country not allowed to give his name to his own children.”

Today, the Duke of Edinburgh would be in better company – one in 10 men between the ages of 18 and 34 choose to take their wife’s surname.

However, many families are choosing not to change their names at all – particularly since marriage is happening later in life, many women have established careers using their maiden name and choose to carry on using it after they are married.

More often families are also choosing to have children use the mother’s family name, rather than automatically using the father’s, signalling a shift in thinking since the Queen was first married.

Today at Speakers Corner we’re asking you: should women still change their name when they get married? Is this an important tradition that should be preserved or one that should change with modern times?