19% of women in Latvia do not change their surname after marriage, according to data compiled by the Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia (CSP), referencing information about marriages registered in Latvia in 18 years – from 2004 to 2022.
Compiled data indicates that every year more than 10 000 marriages are registered in Latvia. In 2022 alone there were 11 848 marriages registered in the country. At the beginning of 2023 a total of 49.1% of men and 41.2% of women in Latvia were married.
CSP reports that the older the woman is at the time of marriage, the less likely she is to change her surname after marriage. Of the women aged 20 to 29 years, 10% decide not to change their surname. 31% of women aged 40-49 years keep their surname. 54% of women aged 50-59 years keep their surname. In the 60-60 years group 78% of women keep their surname, and 88% of women older than 70 years keep their surname.
Women change their surname the most often in cases when their husband is a peer or older.
The possibility of a woman keeping her surname goes up if she is at least ten years older than her husband – 35% of women who are 10-14 years older than their husband choose not to change their surname.
Data also indicates that most often surnames are changed by Latvian women (15%) and Romanian women (13%), and kept the most often by Uzbek women (76%). CSP explains that the reason for this is because it’s traditional for Uzbek people that the woman keeps her surname after marriage, but her children are given their father’s surname.
The nationality of the husband also affects whether or not women keep their surnames. According to data, women keep their surname the most often if their husband is of Roma nationality (58%) and the least often if their husband is of Latvian nationality (15%).
Data also indicate that the more women earn, the more likely the possibility they will keep their surname after marriage.
CSP data also indicates that every year approximately 2% of men accept their wife’s surname and 0.5% add their wife’s surname to their own.
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