My parents have kept separate surnames and gave me a hyphenated last name. It's been a minor annoyance for my whole life. Half of the time they scheduled something it was under the other's name and they had to clarify. My name is too long for credit cards and id so parts of it constantly get cut off. When I was in school it was too long for attendance spreadsheets and part of my first name got cut off as well. When I get married, am I supposed to tell my wife that I'm keeping both my mother's and father's last names but we can't slap hers on the end? Will my kids have three last names, and their kids have four or five, until we end up like British nobility that needs a professional crier to announce their paragraph long last name? It's not a practical standard for naming people. The old standard of everyone in the family taking the father's name is perfectly functional and the expected standard, which makes it the best kind of standard.