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>The US doesn't enforce this rule of course, and therefore it's not unusual to meet a female American with Polish roots with the surname "Kaminski" (or sometimes even "Cumminskey").

Also it's a common choice for translators of books written in those languages to give female characters the masculine versions of their surnames so readers won't be confused about who is related to who. Perhaps an extreme example is that some English translations of a particular Tolstoy novel have the title Anna Karenin.



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