A childhood belief about marriage

I once believed that when couples got married, they decided together on a last name that described them somehow, and passed it on to their children. The belief was logical for me. It so happened that my grandmother on my father's side, whose last name was Foote, had a deformed foot. On my mother's side, my great-grandmother who loved to cook did indeed have the last name of Cook... it just worked out that way in my family, and I thought it was that way in all families.