I'm from the United States and kept my maiden name (I also call it my REAL name) when I got married. I got married in 1993 and my decision was met with a lot of confusion and sometimes outright disbelief. I was only 23, a recent college graduate, no real career yet, and a lot of people were just baffled. Sometimes it was funny and sometimes it was annoying. When our first child was born in 1995, my own (very sweet) granny questioned his legitimacy. If I were just getting married today, I wouldn't change a thing. We are still married after 28 years, our last names are still different and we are still very happy. We made an agreement that if/when we had children, females would get my name and males would get his. That's the only part I messed up...we had three sons.