In many parts of Austria-Hungary (including Galicia, Maramaros, Bereg, and many more megye), Jews would often have religious marriages but wouldn't register their marriages civilly. This meant that while the community considered the couple fully married, the government considered their children illegitimate, and those children would generally have to use their mother's surname. Sometimes people would marry civilly many years after their religious marriage because it was needed for some purpose, and this would retroactively legitimize their children. (I saw this in my own family, when my great-great grandparents had a civil marriage after they were already grandparents.)
There are many implications for this in genealogy. It means that yDNA, which generally follows the surname line, does not do so in these cases. Sometimes, children of such a marriage would vacillate between using their father's surname and their mother's surname. Sometimes an individual who used his or her mother's surname in Europe would immigrate to America and begin using his or her father's name. An example of a confusion I've seen in my own family was with my great grandmother's first cousin Roza. Her surname use teaches an important lesson for making sure that you don't overlook records for an individual from this part of the world.
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Marriage of Roza Fuksz to Jakob Steinmetz, Maramaros-Sziget, Hungary (now Sighetu Marmației, Romania), 1914
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