Understanding surnames

I read an article in The Star today about keeping one's surname after marriage. It made me think of something I've been wanting to blog about for a while...but never got around to it (sounds familiar, doesn't it? :P )

When I was in Lyon, my parents came over to see me. And to use the public transport system, there was a special "family ticket" for Wednesdays and weekends, where family members can ride really cheaply. (4.20€, I think, for the whole day, and all of us!) But to be able to use that ticket, we have to get a special card made, so that they can verify that we are really related.

So I went to the TCL (public transport company) office with our IDs (I can't remember what I brought...was it passports?) and my (translated) birth cert. The birth cert was to show that, well, they're really my parents! ('Cos the French have something called livret de famille, which I guess lists a couple and their children's names. And I don't have one, of course.)

The lady there put my father and me on the card without any problem...and arriving at my mother's name, she said "But she doesn't have the same surname!" That was where I showed her the name on my birth cert. But come to think of it, she probably thought I was born out of wedlock. -_-

So that's that... and another thing I thought of was, so if I find someone with the same surname and go and make the card, we wouldn't even need proof that we're related? Hmm....