I never even considered changing my last name when I got married. After having children, I'm the odd one out in our family.

• My husband and I got married in 2017, and I chose to keep my last name.
• When we had kids, we talked about whose last name they'd have, and we chose his over mine.

The band introduced my husband and me as "Sarah Hunter and Andrew" when we walked onto the dance floor at our reception. I never planned on being a "Mrs." I never even considered it, which makes me a minority among married heterosexual women in the United States.

I don't think there's anything wrong with a spouse taking the other spouse's last name, but I was never interested. One reason was the historical ties of patrilineal naming to coverture in England, a law that said women didn't have their own legal identity; they belonged to their father when they were born, and then they belonged to their husband, symbolized through the use of his last name.

I didn't have the same last name as my mom

In addition to viewing the tradition as inherently patriarchal, I grew up in a divorced household. My parents separated when I was 2, and my mom remarried when I was 7, taking her second husband's name — so I don't really remember a time my mom and I were both Simansons.

When I was a kid, people were always getting our names wrong. I have a double first name — Sarah Hunter — so people often called me "Sarah" and her "Mrs. Hunter." If they did get my first name correctly, then they called her "Mrs. Simanson." When friends came over to play, she rarely corrected them; it was usually me telling them they had it wrong.

My mom passed away four years ago, so I don't know if it bothered her that we didn't share the same last name for most of my life. The only context I have is that once when we were out at dinner with a pregnant friend who was trying to decide whether she should change her name, my mom said it's nice when you have the same name on the birth certificate.

It gets more complicated when you have kids

That's where the name-changing question gets complicated. It's logistically easier to have the same name as your kids. Still, among heterosexual couples, it's even rarer for kids to take their mom's last name than it is for a woman to keep her name — the few studies that exist suggest it's about 3% to 4% of kids born to heterosexual couples.

When my husband and I got married in 2017, we didn't discuss me taking his name or him taking my name. But when my daughter was born a year and a half later, we did discuss hers. I didn't want to hyphenate my daughter's last name because I felt it'd be a bureaucratic pain. And because so many systems — like health insurance — default to patrilineal naming systems, it was easier to have her use my husband's last name than mine.

When my son was born 19 months later, we had the conversation again. Again I defaulted to my husband's last name — because while giving my son "Simanson" may have been parity, I wanted him to share the same last name as his sister.

So now I'm the odd one out. And I'm OK with it.

After my mom's second marriage ended, she legally returned to her maiden name, and after marrying her third husband she kept it. It's the name on her death certificate and in her obituary, which lists her accomplishments and the names of us, her children, the ones she left behind. It's another official acknowledgment I don't share the same last name, but that doesn't make her any less my mother or me any less her daughter.

To me, our differing last names symbolize a departure from the patriarchal traditions of ownership, a reminder that we are individuals connected through love who maintained that connection through choice.

I hope my kids grow up to feel the same way.