Choosing whether or not to take your partner’s surname after marriage is a deeply personal decision. Should you keep your own name or renounce it altogether? Use your name for work and your partner’s everywhere else? Go double-barrelled, or merge your surnames together to create something entirely new?

In an ideal world, it’s a decision women would be able to make without fearing or facing judgement from others. But that’s often not the case. Some women worry they’re seen as bad feminists if they take their husband’s name, while those who do keep their own name after entering into a heterosexual marriage may have to deal with archaic assumptions about their relationship. A troubling study published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal earlier this year revealed that men whose wives keep their own names after marriage tend to be viewed as more “submissive” and “timid” than those whose wives take their names, reflecting deep-rooted patriarchal attitudes towards the names we choose after marriage.

And the thing about patriarchal attitudes towards surnames is that they can often result in genuine bureaucratic headaches. This week, a British woman spoke out after her bank refused to update her account with her new double-barrelled surname after she got married – and a bank employee told her she was “supposed to take [her] husband’s surname”.

This story exposes the judgement women face for not taking their husband’s surnames