New Zealand has rules about naming of children that people may find interesting:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=10523288
I have a name that, before I married, was 26 characters long - this is including middle names. When we married, both my husband and I added each other's surnames to our own. (We went for my maiden name first simply because it runs off the tongue easier than the other way around.)
My surname is now 15 characters long and my entire name is 35 characters. Every so often I suggest to my husband that we change our name to "Brown". lol
When we first married, I had a number of people, who had known me previously, who said things like, "Why didn't you go for just one name?!" or "What are your children going to do?!" Yes, these comments came from men (I don't think I ever heard it from a woman). I would turn around and reply with, "We did; it's just hyphenated." and "What children?" or "They'll have our surname." or "Why don't you ask so-n-so (a friend given a hyphenated name at birth) how she copes?"
And to the old chestnut of "What about when they marry? What if they marry someone else with a hyphenated surname?! [horrors! :-0]" I would reply, "They can choose their own surname."
My sister kept her surname when she married. She married a man of Italian decent. In Italy (and China) this is normal practice. She and her DH gave her surname to their eldest child. My father-in-law is from Scotland. He has surnames as his given names - a not uncommon event for 1st-born children, particularly sons, in Scotland.
In certain parts of South America, not having two surnames means that you're an illegitimate child. I expect the stigma of that was a bigger thing a generation or two ago.