Last names

[Glamourcide]

My maiden name is Danish and all my life I've copped mispronunciation, had to spell it out loud three and four times to people before they get it, had it misspelled on important documents, and was made fun of at school simply because it wasn't 'Smith' or 'Taylor' or 'Jones'.
I couldn't wait to throw it away and change my name to DH's (which is much, much simpler!), so when we found out we were expecting, I pretty much demanded that we get married because I wanted everybody in our house to have the same name. I understand that a lot of people keep their maiden names for various reasons and there's nothing wrong with that, but I guess I was raised pretty traditionally - mum and dad get married *before* kids arrive, everybody under the one roof has the same name, and there is no confusion about which child belongs to what parent, or which person belongs (okay, not 'belongs', ykwim) to which person.
My mum did at one point suggest that DD could be given my family's surname (which offended DH so much I still don't think he's forgiven her, especially seeing as I have a little brother so there's a very good chance the family name will continue through him), but I never even entertained the thought. DH, DD and I are our own family and it's just tradition for the woman to take the man's name and give the kids the same name. So that's what we did.
Maybe if I'd been raised or lived somewhere different, it wouldn't have been such an issue for me, but around here, an unmarried couple just isn't taken seriously, and if you throw kids into the mix then you become downright tacky (which is stupid, none of my friends are married and a lot of them have kids, but I admit I did feel a bit of that 'what will people think?!'), so that was another motivation for me to get married and take DH's name when we found out we were having a baby. Having all of us with the same name not only saves a lot of confusion, but kind of sticks it to people who expect that a pair of early-20-somethings are just 'shacking up' and by the time I'm 30 I'll have four kids to three different dads (not that I see a problem with that, relationships don't work out sometimes, but around here people can be very judgmental).