diff --git a/XmlParser.lua b/XmlParser.lua
index a916ef4..c29ab81 100755
--- a/XmlParser.lua
+++ b/XmlParser.lua
@@ -159,8 +159,12 @@ end
 -- where name is the name of the tag and attrs 
 -- is a table containing the attributes of the tag
 local function parseTag(self, s)
+    local tag_name = string.gsub(s, self._TAG, '%1')
+    if self.options.subHyphens then
+        tag_name = string.gsub(tag_name, '-', '_')
+    end
     local tag = {
-            name = string.gsub(s, self._TAG, '%1'),
+            name = tag_name,
             attrs = {}
           }            
 
diff --git a/xml2lua.lua b/xml2lua.lua
index 813cf1e..71c129e 100755
--- a/xml2lua.lua
+++ b/xml2lua.lua
@@ -87,6 +87,8 @@ function xml2lua.parser(handler)
     local options = {
             --Indicates if whitespaces should be striped or not
             stripWS = 1,
+            --Should we replace hyphens with underscores in tag names as we parse
+            subHyphens = 0,
             expandEntities = 1,
             errorHandler = function(errMsg, pos)
                 error(string.format("%s [char=%d]\n", errMsg or "Parse Error", pos))