Would you take your husband's surname? How more young brides are embracing retro trend to abandon their maiden names It is estimated that just 18per cent of women in the U.S. will keep their last names after marriage, down from a record high of about 23per cent in the Nineties. But recent studies have shown that that number is on the rise again, as a new generation of young brides are opting to take their husband's name, or at least have it hyphenated. Facebook recently looked at 14million married females, ranging in age from 20 to 79 who wed in the U.S., and determined that 65per cent of women in their twenties and thirties changed their name after saying 'I do,' according to The Daily Beast. New life, new name: Recent studies have shown that a new generation of young brides are opting to take their husband's name, or at least have it hyphenated, because they want to While the data does not include women who have simply neglected to update their name-change on Facebook, the already high percentage reveals just how many brides are leaving their maiden names behind. And last month, Huffington Post Weddings partnered with YouGov to poll 1,000 U.S. adults the prospect of men and women changing their last names after marriage. Sixty-one percent of respondents said a woman should take her husband's last name after marriage, and 39per cent said hyphenation is 'a good way [for couples] to show they respect each other.' Another study published in 2011 by Names: A Journal of Onomastics, confirms that this generation's brides are leading the charge. Women marrying between the ages of 35 and 39 were 6.4 times more likely to keep their maiden names than those aged between 20 and 24, the study found. And not everyone is happy about it. After fighting marriage-induced name changes for more than twenty years, many feminists are watching the trend reverse in what they believe is a large step in the wrong direction. When 48-year-old Kerre Woodham, a well-known New Zealand Herald on Sunday columnist changed her last name to McIvor, she said was 'amazed' at her readers' reactions. She wrote in an option piece for the newspaper: 'There were a couple of woman emailers who felt I was a sell-out - submissively acquiescing to an outmoded patriarchal construct. Why, asked one writer, could he not have taken my name? I think women like taking a new name because it is a new start Her husband, Tom, has spent years included under the heading 'The Woodhams' in invitations, or has been simply refereed to as 'partner'. She continued: 'In a way, over the past 16 years we've been together, he has [taken my name], actually. As the silent partner in this relationship, most of the mail is directed to the Woodham household. Our dog is registered at the vets as Toby Woodham. 'He's had 16 years of being the other and so I think it's only fair that I have a few years of being McIvor,' she said. Besides, I like the idea of being Kerre McIvor. We're a team - and becoming Mrs McIvor is the best way I have of showing it.' But for those who have attracted fame before marriage, one New York-based divorce lawyer explained to MailOnline that 'they most likely will not change it for fear of being mistaken for another person.' He continued: 'But this is a rather modern phenomenon and it does contradict convention. On being proposed to by a man, a woman is essentially being asked to join his family line, and with that, it has always been the rule, as it were, to recognize this gesture by taking the other's name. Especially since in most case, the offspring of that union will follow that route, too. One woman named Fanelle, agrees that women generally change their name because they have been conditioned by society. She commented in an open forum: 'It is a subtle discriminatory practice that sets the man up as a superior being to rule over a woman. Traditionally it signified who you belonged to - who owned you. It was a brand that men used to protect their property. And before you belonged to your husband, you were the property of your father. But when 25-year-old Julia Hunsaker, from Portland, Oregon, married her longtime boyfriend, Connor, she immediately became Julia Hunsaker-Martin - because she wanted to. She told the Daily Beast: 'It's exciting! I think women like taking a new name because it is a new start. I get to take these new years of my life to define who I am as "Mrs. Julia Hunsaker-Martin." It's a different Julia than the one before.' However hyphenated names can cause their own problems. Cathey Writes questioned the practice on Huffington Post Weddings. 'If the couple has children and the children marry a hyphened mate. . . don't you think there will be some serious positioning of which names get retained and which get dropped? And if you say none get dropped and the four names hyphened marry some day....yikes. Just yikes. Isn't that problematic any way you look at it?'