What different time do you even mean?
Dr rdrz will doubtless have heard yr hedjog perorate about people being described as 'products of their time' to excuse their noxious opinions, even though a very little research will reveal that, no, those opinions were far from universal, and those held by persons in question may even have been considered pretty much Out There and Not Done by their contemporaries.
But okay, that is that amorphous time period, The Past, and I will not, you may be glad to hear, elaborate on popular misconceptions about when the Victorian period actually was, the duration of the Regency, the 'Dark Ages', and general plethora of ahistoricity in the popular mind etc etc.
Imagine my beswozzlement, my dearios, when reading an advice site the other day I came across a young woman who had been proposed to, and had been, as far as one could tell, happy at the prospect, until she discovered that her intended, some ten years her senior (which still made him, from my perspective, pretty much a mere whippersnapper) assumed she would take his name.
Cue ruxxions.
However, at least one person in commenting argued that, o, he is of a different generation when laydeez unthinkingly subscribed to this patriarchal custom.
Ahem.
This was A Thing for Ma G-G-Generayshun, which did not die before it got old (and two of The [original] Who are not only still alive but still in the band).
Nor was it a new Women's Lib thing even: Lucy Stone (1818-1893), and Marie Stopes (1882-1958), though in the latter case may have had something to do with a professional scientific reputation under her belt under that name by the time she married a male fellow scientist who did not have quite such a track record.
But, anyway, surely we have had over half a century of its being not uncommon for women to keep their maiden names or hyphenate them upon marriage? or even for men to take their wives' names? Not to mention cultures in which it had always been a usual practice?
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