Requesting a surname change in an inheritance happened from time to time or for reasons of maintaining a title or family name.
In the case of titles, when a title is made, e.g. Baron Splogefeller, of Chipping Sodbury, their will be various conditions to succession such as:
- title can(not) be inherited through female line
- title can(not) be inherited through nephews and so on
The other case is when someone (who was probably wealthy) and had no children made their will, they would usually leave it to their god-child (usually a nephew). Sometimes they might request they change their name in order to inherit their estate.
I have an example of this in my family, which you can see on the Nat. Lib of Wales wills database online by doing a search for George Withers, in which he left his estate to his nephew and godson, George Edwards on the condition that he change his name to George Withers. However, George Edwards only changed his name to George Withers Edwards, but still took the estate of his uncle George Withers ontop of what he got from his father and his other uncle, Thomas Bill.
There are all sorts of other circumstances in which a name may be changed, such as this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Vennegoor_of_Hesselink#Name
