Recently, I came across a fascinating piece of news: a court in South Africa had ruled that men could take their wives’ surnames after marriage, overturning a previous law that banned them from doing so. This was in sharp contrast to what I had read a few years ago: Japan had upheld a 19th century rule that married couples must have the same surname.

While one ruling shuns gender-based discrimination and the other upholds an archaic tradition, in most parts of the world, married couples almost always end up using the husband’s surname as their own. In India too, while there is no legal impediment either way, the default is to take on the husband’s surname.

I decided to keep my maiden name, rather my birth name — the more politically correct way of saying it — some 30-odd years ago, when

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