At 01:15 PM 5/13/1997 -0400, Luigi Mattera wrote:

On Tue, 13 May 1997, Reid Carson wrote:

    If I recall Devil Hunter Yohko correctly, (it's been a while),
do the Devil Hunters actually marry?  Yohko, her mother, and her
grandmother Madoka all have the last name Mano, (that's her maternal
grandmother by the way), and once Yohko became a full fledged

Japanese tradition lets a family with no sons absorb one by giving him a 
daughter's last name.  For example, Ranma would be Mr. Tendo after marrying 
Akane because he'd literally be the son Soun never had.

Devil Hunter her grandmother was urging her to start sleeping
around immediately, to start the next generation.

 If Nodoka wants to marry into the line, then she would probably accept
something as trivial as Ranma changing his last name to Yohko's.  Even
in the United States, the husband sometimes takes the surname of the
bride.

In the U.S. it's pretty rare (you'd think William Kennedy Smith would have 
been Mr. Kennedy otherwise).  Last time I heard of it here, a Ms. Tuesday 
Hood and a Mr. Robin Thursday got married and wanted to share a name.  He 
took her name because Robin Hood sounded less stupid than Tuesday Thursday.

In Russia it was a bit more common when many Jewish men who married Gentile 
women used their wives' names to avoid anti-Semitic pressures.

    I might be wrong about that, of course, and you needn't
follow that line if you don't want to, but you could have for instance
Madoka telling Ranma, "You can stay engaged to Akane, as long
as you go ahead and sleep with Yohko."

 She could suggest that, but Nodoka wants the name recognition it seems..
but mistresses are common in Japan.

And everywhere else, it seems.