Not arguing that Christianity and other religions aren't misogynistic - I mean, seriously, there is a borderline unfathomable amount of serious misogynistic baggage there.

However, on the point of last names, I feel the urge to point out that I personally know several, very devout and traditional, catholic couples who kept their last names in wedlock.

We have records of patronymics as old as the writing itself. It's hard / impossible / pointless to decouple religion from culture though.

On a slightly different note: Hammurabi's name means literally "his uncle is a healer" (related to Arabic عم (ʕamm) meaning paternal uncle, and the latter part to rabbi).

I my mind there's a mildly funny* movie where Hammurabi, the person who created/codified the foundations of our law, someone remembered for 1000s of years... was an insecure overachiever. "You conquered the Elamites? And Larsa? Oh, that's cute my boy. Now get a real job like your uncle who is a doctor!"

* (for me, my bar is low)

You raise a good point (and I'd enjoy the hell out of that movie!). Whilst I still stand by my point, I agree it's more of an anecdote and effectively meaningless in the context I presented it.

Yep, look at the Spanish naming system for example. It doesn't get much more Catholic than that, but they combine both partners' family names.

Sure, but traditionally only the man’s name gets passed down to children

There are places with a Christian tradition where that is not the case. For instance, Spain.

How’s that related to Christianity?

It’s not a strict requirement but it was part of the culture when the Bible was written, and fits with the general hierarchy which is specified in various scriptures – the most common justification cited is in Ephesians where there’s an injunction for wives to be submissive to their husbands. Coupled with the way the Bible assumes the traditions of the time (e.g. sons taking their father’s name, the patriarchal line of inheritance, etc.) it’s common to many Christian cultural traditions even though there are exceptions.

It was part of our culture before Christianity emerged, it remained part of the culture afterwards. Seems like Christianity didn’t have much to do with it.

It wasn’t “our” culture unless you still live in the Bronze Age but I’d think of it more as a historical artifact which was preserved in part due to reinforcement based on that religious text. If Christianity did not give that text special significance you wouldn’t have millions of people saying they _must_ continue the practice.

Culture is a continuity that builds upon the past - in that sense it's our culture. Also, I've never ever heard anyone say that wives need to take names of their husbands, because the Bible says so. Is that an American thing?

> Culture is a continuity that builds upon the past - in that sense it's our culture

Cultures share history but the whole point is that they’re not continuous. You specified the pre-Christian era, and there have been many significant changes since then which any common definition of the term would consider discrete boundaries.

> Also, I've never ever heard anyone say that wives need to take names of their husbands, because the Bible says so. Is that an American thing?

It’s not specific to the US but there are certainly American churches which have strong opinions on this point. One thing to remember is that these things aren’t just the literal text of the scriptures in whatever version of the Bible they use but also the collection of interpretation and custom around it, and people have a history of interpreting scriptural text differently based on a position which they want to support.