Shane, a podcast listener, emails in to ask this, "Pastor John, is there any truth about roles in marriage given in Scripture that would encourage the tradition of a wife taking her husband's last name in marriage? Stated in a different way, based on your knowledge of the Bible and its revealed truth about marriage, would you encourage or discourage a woman to keep her last name in marriage?

And why or why not?" Okay, let me give you my viewpoint first, my conviction, and then try to put some foundation under it. I would encourage, in our culture especially, a woman to take her husband's last name, and if she wants to give special honor also to her given name, to her family of origin, to make it her legal middle name.

So that every time she signs her whole legal name, she includes her given name. That would be my encouragement to any woman who asks me, or any man or a couple who are pondering what to do in marriage. And here are my reasons. I've got a cultural reason, a practical reason, and a biblical reason.

Culturally, that's the way it's been done in the West for a long time. And to push against it usually signals a resistance to something good, namely that the man, and this is what's good, that the man bears a special burden of responsibility and accountability for leadership and provision and protection in this relationship.

And I think giving the family that his name signifies that. I'm aware that other cultures may handle naming in different ways. I don't know enough to pass judgment on those cultures, but I would guess that the custom in the West has its roots in biblical reality, even if it has been forgotten.

Culture is not absolute, and our culture and others all are in need at various points of change for the sake of God's truth. So my guess is it's a good thing and a biblical thing that the West has over time taken on this particular pattern of naming. That's my cultural argument.

Second, practically, in our culture it creates difficulties over the long haul for children if the mother and father have different names or a hyphenated name. It's culturally confusing to explain, and it makes the naming of the child and the grandchildren unworkable in the long run. If Noel and I had taken the name Piper Henry, so her last name was Henry, my last name was Henry, so if we call our children Carsten Piper Henry and Benjamin Piper Henry and Abraham Piper Henry and Barnabas Piper Henry and Talith Piper Henry, and all of them were Piper Henrys, what happens when they marry?

And suppose they marry, let's just say one of the boys marries a woman whose last name is Smith Jones, and they want hyphenated names. So now would it be John, suppose they named their first child after me, John Piper Henry Smith Jones? Well, sooner or later that just becomes unworkable, and you have to make choices somehow.

So it's just not very practical to try to go another route than the traditional one. But neither of those arguments is compelling apart from something more substantial. And so here's my word from Scripture. I think generally the Bible calls the husband to be, if he's physically able, the one who bears the special responsibility for leadership, provision, and protection.

And each one of those words is chosen very carefully, and I've written a whole book on what I mean by every one of them. Special responsibility, the book is called "What's the Difference?" Special responsibility for leadership, provision, and protection. And I based this on Ephesians 5, "Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head," so that's where I get leadership and initiative from, "of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior." So the husband is not a Christ in the full sense, but he's a Christ in a mini-sense for his wife in that he saves her from any danger that is encroaching upon her.

He feels a special responsibility, "I protect this family," like Jesus has protected his church. And then it goes on, "Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her." So now we know this responsibility for leadership and provision is costly.

Many men have lost their lives to protect their wives, to provide for their wives, and they should. Husbands should love their wives, Paul says, as their own bodies, and then he comes to this third piece, "He who loves his wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes it and cherishes it." So now we have the third piece of provision and nourishing.

So leadership and protection and provision in Ephesians 5. So husbands are to be like Christ in leading, rescuing from danger, nourishing with what the church needs and what their wives need. And this is not thought of as a right or a privilege, it's thought of as a responsibility and a burden, a very costly burden.

Many men have lost their lives fulfilling this role. It's especially appointed because God has this man there as an agent of his own care and provision and authority for his family, and the name over that family is very suitably the leader's name. That just makes so much sense if you buy the biblical vision of manhood and womanhood.

One more thing, there is, I believe, a more specific illustration of how that works out in Genesis 5, 1 to 3, where it says this, "This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, Adam," same word, man and Adam are the same, "he made him in the likeness of God.

Male and female, he created them, and he blessed them and named them Adam, named them man." Some people translate it man, and they will say, "So it really doesn't mean that he gave them the man's name." But think about it. He gave them the generic name man, just like he gave the whole race the generic name man, and there is another word for woman.

Verse 3, "When Adam," now this is why I think the personal name is meant in verse 2, so I'm going to read verse 2 and 3 together again. "Male and female, he created them, he blessed them and named them Adam when they were created, when Adam had lived 130 years." So he's not talking about man in general here, he's talking about the specific Adam that he had in mind in verse 2.

"He fathered a son in his own likeness after his own image," and so on. So the generic name for the man and the woman was man, or Adam. The generic name was not woman. Could have been, but God didn't do it that way. And then God called the first man, man, to distinguish him from the other men, and so he's called Adam over against Noah, say.

So it seems to me that God gave us this pointer toward the naming of our families. Both man and woman are created in the image of God, but the man bears a special responsibility before God for this union, and that's signified with putting his name on the banner that flies over the family.

Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. You can email your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org and visit us online at DesiringGod.org to find thousands of books, articles, sermons, and other resources from John Piper, all free of charge. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening.

1. Desiring God. A book by John Piper. By John Piper. A book by John Piper. By John Piper. By John Piper. By John Piper.