About: List of people who adopted matrilineal surnames

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. In mediaeval times where a great family died out in the male line, an alternative male heir to the estates was selected as one of the younger sons of a daughter, who was required by the bequest to adopt, by royal licence, in lieu of his patronymic, his maternal surname and coat of arms for himself and his descendants. This was also the origin of double-barrelled surna