High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! This is a list of notable people who have changed, adopted or adjusted their surnames based on a mother`s or grandmother`s maiden name. Included are people who changed their legal names and people who created personal or professional pseudonyms. Under longstanding Western custom and law, children are customarily given the father`s surname, except for children born outside marriage, who often carry their mother`s family names. However, in the 1970s, some women began to adopt their mother`s maiden name as their legal surnames. Recently, people in Sweden have been adopting maternal line surnames in an effort to broaden the number of last names in the country.