A husband from Lyon has become the first man in France to take his wife's surname under a new gender equality law.

　　A husband from Lyon has become the first man in France to take his wife's surname under a new gender equality law.

　　But the 37-year-old, who married in September, first had to cross an administrative minefield with his request rejected seven times because officials were unaware the law existed.

　　He said he finally had to print a copy of the law from a government website before he could be renamed.

　　"I contacted seven town halls, they all turned me down. They checked several times the boxes they could tick on their computer systems and said it was simply impossible to change it to my wife's," he told RTL radio.

　　The man from Lyon – named only as Philippe S – said he wanted to use his wife's French-sounding surname because his own Turkish one was hard to pronounce and made it difficult to find work.

　　But the civil servants could only offer him a double-barrelled name merging his current one plus his wife's.

　　"I needed my wife's name to be able to get ahead in life, not constantly get knock-backs, and I feel things are improving already," he said.

　　The change in the law was published in the French government's Official Journal in October 2011, but received little media attention.

　　法国里昂一名37岁的男子日前用妻子的姓氏取代了自己原来的姓，成为法国第一位随妻姓的丈夫。据悉，这名男子于今年9月成婚，在最终改换姓氏之前曾被行政部门拒绝了7次，因为这些部门并没有意识到法国于2011年颁布了一部性别平等法，允许丈夫随妻姓。他从政府网站下载并打印了该法律条文后才获准改换成妻子的姓氏。这名男子表示，想改成妻子的法语姓氏是因为自己的土耳其姓氏很难发音，以致于找工作都有困难。最终，工作人员将他的姓氏和妻子的姓氏结合成一个复姓给他。