In the 18th century, numerous European nations, such as the Holy Roman Empire, passed laws and issued decrees which mandated that Jews adopt consistent, legal surnames. While this applied to all Jews regardless of gender, for many, their surname came from their mothers, and not their fathers. As a result, a large number of today's surviving Ashkenazi surnames can be traced to a matrilineal ancestor rather than the more globally common trend of surnames being passed between male ancestors and their male descendants. Nevertheless, these surnames weren't matronymic in a strict sense, in actuality these were what are known as a matriname, since these particular cases don't derive family names from a mother's "fore"name, instead opting to do so from their surnames. The pattern even precluded instances where a wife would legally adopt the surname of her husband, children would still retain their mother's maiden name as their own surname. The trend was in decline by the early 20th century, however; the 1910 Austro-Hungarian Jewish Census of Tarnopol recorded around 2000 Jewish families, only 13 of which possessing a mark of recte indicating a legal surname adopted from a mother's maiden name.