Remember Olympic athlete Jackie Joyner-Kersee, former U.S. senator Carol Moseley-Braun, actress Farrah Fawcett-Majors and tennis star Chris Evert-Lloyd?

Researchers call them "the hyphenators."

Of these four, only Joyner-Kersee remains, and it's not just because the others are divorced. (Evert and Fawcett dropped the reference to the ex-husbands; Moseley Braun just eliminated the hyphen.)

Those who study marital names say the practice of hyphenating, though never common, is now increasingly rare.

"People don't do hyphenation because others ignore it," says Laurie Scheuble, a senior lecturer in sociology at Penn State University. "People will just choose one of your last names."

Taking a husband's name has long been common practice in the United States, but baby boomers kept their own names at higher rates than younger women marrying today.

But the most likely scenario for today's brides is to take their spouse's surname, researchers say.

Scheuble and Claudia Goldin, a Harvard economics professor, are among the few who have studied marital names. Both have used decades of New York Times wedding announcements in their studies. Goldin's research, published last year, focused on college-educated women, who are more likely to keep their own names. Based on almost 7,000 wedding announcements from 1975 to 2001, as well as other sources, she found that the percentage of women who kept their own names declined from 23 percent in 1990 to 17 percent in 2000.

Scheuble's research, conducted with sociologist husband David Johnson, analyzed more than 2,000 Times announcements from 1966 to 1996 and found that 86.3 percent took their husband's name, 12.2 percent kept their own and 1.5 percent hyphenated.

Pamela Smock, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Michigan, suggests a practical note. "I suspect young women who plan to be parents have heard how complicated it can be when your child does not have the same name," she says.