Ha, interesting question, really cool answers all around.
For me, it was many years ago when I went with a friend to visit a common friend that was studying in Vermont (we 3 are from Europe), and using the occasion we went to visit new York as well. One night we went to have a walk around Times Square and took the subway to get there. I was just standing there checking out the map to keep myself busy when this huge black guy wearing an even bigger fur coat that was sitting started talking to me and asking where I was going and if I needed help.
At first I awkwardly said that I didn’t need any help, I was just looking at the map to keep busy. He insisted asking where I was going, to which I answered to have a stroll around times square. He got quite cheerful and said he was going in the same direction and he knew a shortcut. At that point I got a bit suspicious but the guy said changing the train we would get there faster, I confirmed that indeed the other train was going in that direction and he told us to follow him. Despite my suspicion as long as there was plenty of people around I decided to trust him and go with him.
After the change of train he told me he knew another trick about that station, everyone was going to the normal stairs but he told us if we go a bit further we can avoid those stairs. He took us to an escalator that took us into an exit straight at Times square.
In the meantime we started talking with him, he told us he was going that night to have a guy’s night out with his friends and they were going to Atlantic City. He started telling us about his life, he was a music editor, and was married, and loved to help people visiting new York. By the time we got out into the street it felt like we were quite close friends and we stayed there a bit still talking, he was one of the nicest random people I have ever met, we took a photo together and he gave me his contact card in case I ever returned to NY (which I didn’t).
I’ve thought about him ever since and wondered how he was doing. It’s a great memory I have of such a simple random encounter.
I am originally from Spain but have since moved abroad where partners changing names is common.
Personally I love the way it is handled in Spain, where you get your family name at birth and won’t be changed by marrying (you could change it but it is not normal to do it when you get married). And the family name is always a combination of both parents. Traditionally it was the first family name from the father and the first from the mother, but nowadays it can be decided which goes first. So officially everyone’s got two family names, one from each parent. Unofficially you can just go as far as you want, so you get your given name, then first family name from one parent, then first from the other, then the second from the first, then the second from the second, etc. So if you track your family tree you can take all family names to make a huge list of them, which is not used for anything but somehow makes you be more attached to all those roots without names being lost.
Of course that makes it a nightmare when going to other places, everyone thinks your first family name is a middle name and dealing with two family names officially can be a pain. And let’s not go into naming your kids then…
When I was marrying my wife she asked me how I felt about her changing her name to mine and if I wanted her to do that. She got her father’s name but her mother divorced him later on and changed her name back and my wife’s father was not much part of her life, so she was happy to just change it. I told her that for me that custom is a bit strange and I didn’t need her to do it but would accept it if she wanted to (knowing her background), so whatever she did I wanted it to be her choice, but notice how in Spain people who share family name are siblings, as it is extremely rare for two persons to share both first and second name if not related, so sharing family name with my wife is really odd in a way…
At the end she changed her name, but because in this country you only have one she only took the first one. While our kids had to take either both of mine or hers (we had our first kid before us marrying and her changing name, so we chose mine), so now we all share the first (and only, in the case of my wife) family name but me and my kids have both my first and second family name (any kids after the first kid must get the same name).
If that was not complex enough, as I got my kids both nationalities, in Spain the rule is always first of one parent plus first of the other parent, and as the first one was born before us marrying, in Spain he has a different family name than he does where we live.