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June 29, 2015 3:00 am
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Analysis: Jewish Women Less Likely Than Catholics to Take Husband’s Name

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avatar by Shiryn Ghermezian

A new analysis shows that women married in Jewish ceremonies are less likely to take their husband's last name than women married in Roman Catholic ceremonies. Photo: Jason Hutchens via Wikimedia Commons.

A new analysis shows that women married in Jewish ceremonies are less likely to take their husband’s last name than women married in Roman Catholic ceremonies. Photo: Jason Hutchens via Wikimedia Commons.

An analysis of New York Times wedding announcements showed that women married in Jewish ceremonies were less likely to take their husband’s last names than those married in Roman Catholic ceremonies, the Times reported on Saturday.

The largest gap between the two groups was in 1995 when 66 percent of Catholic women took their husband’s names and 33 percent of Jewish women did the same.

Nearly half of the women featured in the publication’s wedding pages since 1985 took their husband’s name after marriage, while about a quarter kept their maiden name and another quarter declined to comment. The analysis factored in 7,835 opposite-sex wedding announcements in five-year intervals.

In 2014, 29.5 percent of women listed in the newspaper’s wedding pages kept their maiden name. The figure went up from 26 percent in 2000 and stood at a low of 16.2 percent in 1990.

Roughly 20 percent of women married in recent years have kept their maiden names, according to a Google Consumer Survey. Roughly 10 percent chose to hyphenate their name or legally change it while continuing to use their birth name professionally.

The survey also found that higher-income urban women were much more likely to keep their names, a discovery which was reflected in the wedding pages of the Times.

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