When I got married, I switched from Khanna, the name I was born with, and took on Bhandare, the name my husband was born with.

Pick your battles, I rationalized at the time. In any case, my last name was taken from a man, my father, so dropping it for another man, my husband, didn’t seem that terrible.

Over three decades later, trying to connect with a college alumni group I had not been in touch with for some years, I couldn’t remember my user name. Namita Khanna Bhandare or just Namita Khanna as I was back then?

The debate over the last names of women post-marriage remains even though more and more Gen Z and millennial women are asserting their right to retain the names they were born with. If I was to take a decision on my last name now, it would be very different from what I took back then.

“The question of changing my last name after marriage never came up,” says Nisha Prasad, married for 11 years. There was no need for discussion with either her spouse or his parents, she says. “I am no less than him, so why would there have been a need to change my name?” Moreover, she adds, changing her last name would have entailed a ton of paperwork and hassle of changing all documents from her driving license to her passport.

For photographer Suasti Lye of Sri Lankan Malay origin, keeping the last name she was born with was a conscious decision to retain her identity. “There is a long tradition behind my family name that goes back generations. By changing it I would have erased all that,” she said.

Both women said their children had taken the last names of their father.

The push to retain birth names crosses borders.

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