Strange things that you see.
I was just looking at the BBC web page and noticed this story -
"A report from south korea says the country’s National Assemby has rejected a 691 - year old ban on marriage between people of the same surname.
An estimated 60,000 South Korean couples are believed to be living together but cannot marry because they share the same clan names even though there are no blood ties’
what a terribly odd law, and what a terribly off thing that they are keeping it. Where is the sense in this? If they don’t want relatives marrying, then say that, but not letting people with the same name marry is without sense.
Does anyone have any friends with the same surname who married?
Eleanor Roosevelt was Eleanor Roosevelt before she married Franklin. They were distant cousins, IIRC. I also seem to recall that their branches of the family prounced it slightly differently; for one it was ROWsevelt and for the other it was RUEsevelt.
My husband’s grandmother’s second husband had the same last name as her first husband (no relation).
My mother had a good friend whose last name was O’Brian who married a guy whose last name was O’Brien. Now THAT had to be a problem!
Interesting question. It occurs to me that maybe it is more of a twisted family planning policy than anything to do with inbreeding. A huge portion of the Korean population has one of only three or four surnames: Chun and Kim among others. So keeping them from marrying might be some weird way to reduce people in general, or perhaps a misguided attempt to reduce confusion in phone directories.
My solution would be to give anyone who wanted a free name change. That way, there would be tons of Ciccones, Mandelas, Gateses, and Winslets in Korea. Or something.