Yes, though as I understand it, that still leaves a public record. Also, I looked into it when I got married, and the sense that I got was that name changes for men are logistically challenging.
A lot of the "deep web" stuff is behind paywalls (like background investigation sites) now. But a number of years ago when some of them were still pretty open, I was pretty floored by how much information you could get on a person if they had an uncommon name and/or you knew just a little bit about them.
There is a lot of information that's public as a matter of law--which arguably, in many cases, hasn't reconciled that a lot of public information is no longer just stored in a file cabinet in some dusty county or town clerk's office.
>sense that I got was that name changes for men are logistically challenging.
To the degree that's true I assume that women changing their names when they get married (or divorced) has been such a norm for centuries that it doesn't invite scrutiny (although I've heard plenty of complaints about what a headache it can be in terms of various IT systems etc.) I assume when men do it, there might be at least a suspicion that something shady is going on.
While I can't speak for what specific tradition GP might have been thinking of, but it seems like a special case of what happens in systems where typically a bride marries "into" a groom's family, with the occasional exception where a groom marries into the bride's family for e.g. inheritance purposes. This is globally quite common in cultures where inheritance is relevant with male preference.
