This is so interesting to me! Thanks, Kristin, for writing on this topic! 

I kept my name when I married my husband. [BTW - I'm on a total campaign to have us all stop calling our original names a  "maiden" name. It bothers me a lot that this is only a designation for women and implies marital status. I think we should say "birth" name. But I digress...]

I didn't keep mine for any major political reason (above rant notwithstanding), but just could never really see the need to change it. Partly because I was 29 when I married, partly because it seemed like a pain to change it, partly because I like my unusual name a lot. I'm sure the fact that my parents are divorced, and that I'm a bit skeptical about the feasibility of life-long marriages played into it all.

My then husband-to-be had some misgivings, but wasn't super strongly opposed to my wishes (obviously). It did give us a chance to have long discussions about what is in a name, what marriage stands for in our current society, what we wanted from our marriage, etc. I think those discussions were very helpful to us as a couple and have helped us enjoy 11 years of marriage in a way that makes sense to us. 

When we had our daughter, we gave her my last name as a middle name and his as the last name. (I'll be honest, I did lobby a bit for doing it the other way around, but DH was a bit too traditional for that!). We never really considered hyphenating anywhere along this journey.

In Pittsburgh, PA where we lived before, we were the anomally to all around us. Now that we live in Portland, OR, it is much more common for a woman to have a different last name. But, in either place, we've never run into any feelings of having to explain our decisions and/or that people don't get our relationship to each other. And, I think with all of the families in some state of marriage, divorce, re-marriage, it's VERY common for children and parents not to share names. 

I've always loved the idea of everyone keeping their own birth name and then naming sons with the father's name and daughter's with the mother's name (see Passionata's post above). That would be so darn sensible!