In Khmer, women keep their 'maiden' name by default, their kids however take up the husbands name.

Because of the turbalent history in the last century for my country of heritage, people have often changed their names for political reasons: for instance it wouldn't reveal their bourgoise background and might have prevented themselves from being killed. This rhethoric and flexibility in name still rings true until this day. I know a lot of Khmer people in the West hold a surname that has been 'invented' the moment their parents had to fill in the asylum papers while they were in the refugee camp - myself included!

Khmers have an interesting relationship with names, I think. The majority have (sometimes pejorgative) petnames, such as 'porky' when they are chubby as a child and hold them even when they have grown up to be far from chubby. They also 'believe' that you are as 'beautiful' as your name (I have a very fancy name, one guy even said upon our first meeting"Ah! I knew you would as stunning as you are just by reading your name") and heard of a story where a girl thought she couldn't 'live up to the beauty' of her name and changed it. Sad!

Thanks for sharing your story.