I agree with everything you just said Bud. I wonder if anyone here has heard of an example where a husband has entirely changed his name to take his wife's last name (not hyphenated). I'm sure it's probably happened at some point, but I honestly can't think of an example that I've encountered personally.
The guy who fixes my computer is Michael Thompson-Brown. He used to be Michael Thompson; his wife was Brown. When I asked about the order, he said they both agreed that "Thompson-Brown" sounded better than "Brown-Thompson." There a practical approach to the name thing! I haven't looked in his wallet to see if his license is changed, but everything I see with his name: email, listing in the phonebook, has "Thompson-Brown" as his last name, so I suspect it is a total (legal) change.
When a friend of mine got married, she and her new husband took HIS mother's maiden name as their new last name. It was a situation where his father had walked out when he was very young, so the name he had grown up with had negative associations for him. My friend had a long Italian name with lots of syllables and she didn't want to hyphenate that to anything, so they just started fresh with a whole new (meaningful) name. Note: in this situation, they did need to go court, since the man was legally changing his name.
And I think I mentioned before, I kept my name, and my children have my last name. My son has the sort of unique situation of no middle name--just two names, first and last, since that was the family name. He says in some ways, that causes more problems than not having his father's name, since everyone is "supposed" to have a middle initial. LOL
L