It may continue, however, to be used in certain families, for the sake of tradition, and may evoke the memory of a particular Mary whenever mentioned. In many societies, especially in the past, people's names have been regarded as closely linked with their owners' inmost natures. They are often intimately associated with those to whom they refer and in a non-rational way are considered to possess great power. Such names have often been conferred in special acts, such as the Christian rite of infant baptism, or such rites of passage as the taking of vows on entering a religious order, when monks and nuns give up worldly names along with worldly interests and assume new names to mark a new life. A change of personal name can be a powerful symbolic statement.
Current practice is variable.
Occasionally, both partners will combine their surnames, as in Heather and William Gibson-Smith . A comparable reaction, especially in the US, is the dropping of traditional surnames by African-Americans who, seeing them as 'slave names', adopt instead African or Islamic names, as when the American boxer Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali . See -Onym . T.McA. Algeo, John. 1973. On Defining the Proper Name .