Reply #81: I'll be keeping mine. Plus SO's dad made the family name up.

[Patiod]

My SO comes from breath-takingly dysfunctional stock.

His dad was an "illegimate" child whose mother died of pneumonia shortly after his birth and whose father (they married by that point) went crazy with grief after the death and ran off. He was shunted around from one family member to another, treated like a bastard child, and finally ended up with a family that beat him.

So when he left and joined the military, he changed his name to his middle name because he didn't want to go through life with the name of the family that beat him. People ask me "did SO make up that name as a stage name?" (he's an actor) and I'll say "no, his dad did".

So not taking SO's name isn't exactly breaking centuries of geneology.