For some women in the United States, last-naming practices have progressed from a patronymic system to a non-conventional one. An example of non-traditional last-naming choices is when a woman retains her natal surname at marriage. Women who choose to keep their own names at marriage are often questioned about their reasoning and are sometimes ridiculed for defying the longstanding patronymic system. The questions I seek to answer in this essay are: what are women's reasons behind keeping their own last names? Do they need a claim to a professional or academic accomplishment to justify their decision? Through the Feminist Last Naming Project, 82 women and one man were interviewed about their last name stories surrounding feminist last-naming practices. I used grounded theory methodology to interpret the data from the interviews and two theories arose: impression management theory and practice theory. Both theories provide a lens to understand women's academic and professional reasons for keeping their own last names at marriage as well as the practice of women imparting situational name use in their lives. Twenty-two people cited academic and/or professional reasons for their experiences with a woman keeping her own last name at marriage. Fifteen of these women discuss compartmentalizing their lives through situational name use. Costs and benefits exist for this non-conventional naming decision; however, for the women in this study, it appears that the benefits outweigh the costs. In order to reconcile the difficulties surrounding their decisions, many of the women use different surnames in different situations and compartmentalize their lives. These women appear to manage the impressions they wish to acquire from different people as well as garner different forms of symbolic capital that reflect the structures under which they live.