One night this past December, I got a piece of mail I’ve thought about countless times. There, in the stack of flimsy junk mail and our monthly magazine subscriptions, was the familiar shape of a holiday card. When I saw who it was addressed to—not “Chip and Ashley Walker,” as almost every piece of joint mail we’ve received in our nearly nine years of marriage has been, but to “Chip Walker and Ashley Edwards Walker”—I got so excited that I grabbed my phone and texted a photo of the envelope to my husband.

It may seem a small distinction to some, but it was significant to me. We were invited to at least six weddings last year, with save the dates and invitations and rehearsal dinner info mailed out for each, and received a dozen or so holiday cards. Out of all that personal mail, that envelope was the only one that acknowledged I don’t go by my husband’s last name, but one that is entirely my own. The gesture was so important to me that I hung it proudly on our refrigerator.

I was only 22 when I got married—years before I called myself a feminist, but even at that age I knew I didn’t want to take my husband’s last name, Walker. I just felt like my maiden name, Ashley Edwards, was who I was. Still, my husband was raised very traditionally and, at the time of our wedding, it was important to him that we have a shared name. We compromised—the first of many!—and I became Ashley Edwards Walker, two last names no hyphen.

In the almost-decade since then, I’ve been on the receiving end of a lot of unsolicited feedback about that decision. But I’ve come to love being a three-name person. It feels right that my two last names reflect some of the most important relationships of my life, yet I’m the only one with this specific order of characters. I say my name proudly—via social media handles, my email address, my bylines—to make it clear that I am Ashley Edwards Walker, not just Walker and not just Edwards. Which is why it really irks me that so many people still default to using my husband’s surname. I’m not talking about people who are just confused by the whole two last names thing; people who clearly understand I go by Ashley Edwards Walker take it upon themselves to decide it’s OK if they just call me Ashley Walker. It’s not. To quote a personal hero of mine (Queer Eye’s Jonathan Van Ness): WHO GAVE YOU PERMISSION?

The return of The Handmaid’s Tale got me thinking about this specific way we diminish women. Similar to the way married women in some Western cultures have traditionally been expected to take their husband’s last name, Offred—as in “of Fred”—was given her name to signify that she belongs to her commander. The women of Gilead have their individual names stripped away and replaced with a new one that reflects the identity of the man they “belong to” instead of who they are and how they identify themselves.

I understand we’re not dealing with life or death scenarios like those characters. And yes, there are a handful of headlines that claim “maiden names are on the rise again” and “married couples are inventing new last names.” But a study published last year shows how far we have left to go before society truly accepts married women as independent beings outside of their relationships: According to that data, more than 70 percent of U.S. adults still believe a woman should change her name after she gets married. Fifty percent believe it should be required by law. Let me repeat: 50 percent of those participants think the government should have the right to rename women after their husbands, even if they don’t want that. That’s terrifying in any era.

Recently, I attended a panel honoring rebellious women throughout history at The Wing, a women-only co-working space in New York City and Washington, D.C., held in partnership with Hulu to promote season two of Handmaid’s. The moderator, Alexis Coe, a historian and author of Alice+Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis, mentioned Lucy Stone, a famous suffragist who fought tirelessly for inclusion and equality. “Not only did she write her own vows at a time when few people did that, let alone women,” Coe told me when I followed up with her after the panel, “but Stone also refused to take her husband’s last name.” Alas, the powers that be (i.e. the patriarchy) were resistant to the resistance. When women were granted the right to vote in school elections, officials refused to count Stone’s vote unless she registered using her husband’s last name. Eventually she agreed, but only for the greater good of the suffrage movement. And besides, she had made her point.

The importance of a name really can’t be overstated. Dodai Stewart, a writer and editor formerly of Splinter and Jezebel who also sat on the panel, pointed out just how much our last names can reveal about our lineage—and how far back our tradition of renaming people as property dates. “The conversation surrounding a woman taking a man’s last name and the names in Handmaid’s Tale has a different context for me as a black woman in America,” Stewart told me. “My last name is Stewart because that’s the name of the Scottish slave owner who held my ancestors as property. I’ve always known that my last name was from a slave master, but it was also the last name of my father and his father, both proud and prominent black doctors. So I, in turn, was proud of it. When people make jokes or assumptions about black people having last names like Jones, Jenkins, Williams, and Johnson, what they’re really pointing out is that those were the names of white families who owned a lot of slaves.”

Additionally, women taking their husband’s last name is not even A Thing in a lot of other cultures. “Muslim women are not religiously obligated to take their husband’s last names because Islam acknowledges women’s individual autonomy,” Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, founder and editor-in-chief of MuslimGirl.com, told me. “It’s just one of the many ways that Islam exudes feminist principles, and I’m really proud of that. Muslim women suffer a huge double standard in that people tend to attribute any misogyny we experience to our religion rather than patriarchal issues, when in actuality one of the founding principles of Islam is gender equality.”

There are tons of examples, both big and small, of how important we consider our names to be. It’s the first thing you want to know when someone has a baby. We wear them handwritten on nametags, monogrammed on bags, and write on personalized stationary, all as a way to identify ourselves. Think about how exciting it was when you were a kid and saw a pencil or a keychain or whatever with your name on it. (Just ask my sister Whitley, whose name ensured she never experienced that simple pleasure.) Sometimes, as we’re talking about here, a name can also reveal your relationship status.

To be clear, I’m not trying to say what’s right when it comes to the names we choose to embrace—or not. The decision to change your name is deeply personal. I asked a handful of women I love and respect about their choice and their answers varied. My friend Chelsea, 31, from Detroit, got married in September, and while she added her husband’s name on her work email and all her social accounts, she still hasn’t gotten around to filing the paperwork to make Chelsea Appleby Fugate her legal name. “I decided I wanted to keep my last name because it’s part of my accomplishments and identity,” she said. “But I also wanted to take his because I wanted to be linked to him and so our kids (if we have any) will share a same name with both of us.”

But for Lacy Kuhlenschmidt, 31, from Murray, Ky., not taking her husband’s last name was never an option. “I changed it a day after we got married,” she says. “I was so excited to showcase my new name. I’ve wanted to be married basically my whole life, and there were times I didn’t think it would ever happen. I love having my husband’s last name.”

For Kelsey Saia, 31, from Denver, the decision came about more gradually. “My mom hyphenated her maiden and married name, so growing up I always assumed I would do the same,” she said. “My partner supported whatever I decided; I think we may have even briefly chatted about us both hyphenating our last names together, which I am sure he would have done had I felt strongly about it. I didn’t. Then, closing in on almost one year of marriage, I felt like I needed to make a decision and weighing my options was suddenly much easier. I wanted to change my last name to be the same as my husband’s because we were a team.”

And for Naomi Hirabayashi, 34, of Brooklyn, keeping her maiden name was an important way to honor her heritage. “I’m third-generation Japanese-American, and my last name is something that connects me to my roots,” she said. “My husband is also first-generation Scottish-American and his last name, Campbell, carries a lot of meaning for him. We talked about it a few months before we got married and he was incredibly supportive. He understood this was my decision, and respected how important it is to me to keep my birth name, the name I have built a life, career, and identity around.”

“It’s kind of funny,” she adds, “because my mom purposefully didn’t give me a middle name because she wanted me to make Hirabayashi my middle name when I got married. Whoops! Still don’t have a middle name! But with a last name as long as mine, I still feel fulfilled character count-wise.”

For me, it’s not that I mind being associated with my husband via his last name. Sometimes when we’re killing it at trivia or have just finished a joint project we’ll even high-five and say “Team Walker” to congratulate ourselves on a job well done. I feel OK about referring to myself as just a “Walker” in that specific instance because I know that outside of that, my husband respects what my chosen name is.

That respect and acknowledgment is key. That’s what the African slaves, Lucy Stone and, yes, the Handmaids didn’t get. But it’s 2018 now, and there’s no excuse for calling women by any other name than the one she’s chosen for herself.

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