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Change addresses aren't part of the design at all. Multiple outputs are. By convention, an output to an address you control is called a change address, but it's just a convention on top of the protocol, not something the protocol is aware of.

And yes, their purpose is very explicitly extra anonymity. Gavin named a branch without change addresses a "noprivacy" branch:

http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/1629/why-does-bit...

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>By convention, an output to an address you control is called a change address, but it's just a convention on top of the protocol, not something the protocol is aware of.

I'm aware of that, it's part of what I was trying to say.

>Gavin named a branch without change addresses a "noprivacy" branch:

That branch apparently just sends it to the sending address.

There are other reasons not to reuse addresses unrelated to anonymity, see https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Address_reuse.

So I still don't see a design choice that is specifically for anonymity.

Anonymity and lack of susceptibility to a certain class of quantum computing attacks

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