On Mon, 10 Nov 1997, Thomas Schmidt wrote:

Let's see...feel free to mail me for the first part.  

The Eternal Lost Lurker has informed me that Japanese tradition 
requires that a husband take his wife's family name.  Since I didn't 
know this when I wrote the first chapter, and the change in family 
name is a fairly important part of the fic, Akane and Ranma are 
following Western tradition.

Er, actually, the husband _can_ take the wife's family name, but it's not
the normal state of affairs. There are certain circumstances under which
the husband would take the wife's name. The taking of the name signifies
that the husband has essentially been adopted into the wife's family. This
would usually be done if the husband is not the primary successor to his
own family line (ie, he has several older brothers), and his wife's family
line has no successors (ie, no brothers, no male cousins, no uncles). By
taking his wife's family name then, the husband would become the successor
to her family line, through adoption into the family. It could be
considered unmasculine in some respects, in that his wife is the
blood-member of the family, but still done sometimes.