Then there is a growing tendency for women to retain their maiden names after marriage, so you have John Smith and Mary Jones as a married couple, with little Freddie and Suzie Smith. I remarked to my wife (a Registered Nurse) once that there seemed to be an unusual number of couples in our church who kept their own names and mentioned some instances. She recognized the fact that the women were physicians and explained that a physician is forbidden by law to change his/her name.
There was an intersting case hee a couple of years ago involving difficulties with changing one's surname. A man who had brothers married a woman who had none. The man decided to change his surname so that her family name could be continued. All appeared to be fine until the groom applied for a passport and discovered that NZ's Internal Affairs dept, the issuer of passports could not recognise his name change, as the legislation made no allowance for a man's adopting his wife's surname.
