[rushking]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naruto_Uzumaki#Background

The author better comes up with a good reason for that and the whereabouts to his mom.

[James Carmack]

It's not an unheard of practice in Japan. If the wife's family is more prestigious or if they don't have a male heir, the husband will take his wife's name.

Take, for instance, Evangelion. Gendou takes his wife's name there, too. That way our hero's name is Ikari Shinji and not Rokubungi Shinji. The latter doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

[saintjon]

I have to get back to reading naruto, I think I'm way behind now and I want to see this mom of his.

[dits]

He could be a bastard. But most probably its just a result of poor plotting skills. The mangaka probably just pulled that parent thing out of his ass.

[James Carmack]

Unlikely. If no one in Japanese culture (or any world culture) ever took their mother's name (and if it was beyond all imagining for such a culture to exist even in fiction), then maybe that line of thought would have some weight, but as the practice has precedence, I'm not going to assume sloppiness on the author's part. If that's what you want to think, though, you are, of course, welcome to it.

[saintjon]

After being linked to this super-elaborate plot-prediction theory on a different forum by a friend of mine I no longer think anything in Naruto is sloppy or accidental. The implications of what this guy laid out went impressively deep, and he certainly made an impressive case for what he believed.

[rushking]

Well, I can't wait to see Naruto finds out who his father is and brags to everyone, "My father is the XXXXXX!" That will be funny.