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BY spike gillespie
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CONFERENCING
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Wondering whether to keep your own name? Want to meet other women who did (or didn't)? Join in the conversation in the Women's Zone Conference.
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THE NAME GAME
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Just Call Me
Bernadette Noll changed her name too, but she's not going to bang it into anyone's head. Unless they call her "Mrs. Kenneth Anderson," that is.
Conversations with Married Women
"The hyphen is just ugly. What can I say, I'm a slave to aesthetics." — Margaret Gould Stewart, Tripod's Creative Director..
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RELATED POD
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Women's Issues
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Meet the women, surf the pages, and join the conversation, in the X-Squared Pod.
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Names are funny things. I know this because a lot of folks think I have a funny one. Back when I was 19 and beginning to experiment with various...uh...punk styles, people figured out pretty quickly where the moniker "Spike" came from. As I grew older and grew my hair out, I'd grown so accustomed to my handle that I feared people would stop using it, once the picture no longer matched the word.
That never happened though. Sure, new friends are sometimes confused — how could this woman who can (when she covers her tattoos and puts on the right clothes) pass for conservative have such a wacky name? Past glory days winning volleyball matches? A career installing railroad tracks? Former butch lesbian? Mostly, though, people accept pretty quickly that my name is my name is my name.
Nonetheless, the name game goes on. It just takes on wacky new dimensions. The world may have gotten used to my adopted first name, but trouble arose when I had my son, Henry. I wasn't married at the time and even if I had been, choosing a last name was even harder than choosing a first for him. My then-partner, a laid-back liberal if there ever was one, said to me just what I said to him, "It doesn't matter. We can give him your last name." Since he was such a good sport about not shoving patriarchal views down my throat, I happily gave our son his father's last name.
Ah, but then things got tricky. My partner left. I was alone raising this child and paying all the bills. He and I were a family but we had different names. I started toying with the idea of legally changing his name. Some friends said I should let him keep his given name. Others said if I was doing all the work, I should get all the credit, starting with my baby's last name. I was confused — did I want to change my son's name from the name of the man who left me to the name of the man who raised me (and, in the process, pissed me off the entire time)? The observation that settled it, though, came from the friend who said, "Look, Gillespie isn't just your father's name, it's YOUR name, and has been for nearly 30 years." I went ahead and changed my son's last name to mine.
Two years after that name crisis, just as we were
settling into our changes, a funny thing happened. I got
married. I had no doubt, not even a shadow of it, that I
would not take my husband's last name. That's feminism 101.
Taking your husband's last name dates back to when women
went from being the property of their fathers to the
property of their husbands. I'm dead serious about this
feminism stuff and even the little things are, I believe,
crucial in our advancement as women. Not only that (as if I
needed further prodding), changing my name would leave my son with a different name from me, defeating my original purpose of changing his name. And I wasn't about to make him learn yet another new name.
At my wedding reception, a conservative cousin-in-law
asked me what my maiden name had been. Same as it ever was
and will be, I answered, trying to be polite and remember
he's entitled to his opinion too. But when I got a letter
from my mother-in-law with my husband's (and her) last name
affixed to my first name, I got a little miffed. Not at my
mother-in-law, mind you. She is one of the strongest, and
definitely the most gracious women I have ever met in my
life.
What got to me was the principle of it — that to this day we still think it's okay to assume one name fits the whole family and, by a huge landslide, it's the husband's name. Why do women keep taking men's last names? Why do friends and family keep addressing us as Mrs. So-and-So? Because they assume that is the case, or — if they know otherwise — because they figure it's okay anyhow to send correspondences to Mr. and Mrs. HisLastName?
As I said, my MIL is truly gracious and made no fuss
over my request that she use my last name. She was so quick
to rectify the situation in fact, that when the next letter
came with my name on it, I felt a little guilty for having
made a big deal about it in the first place. But I had to.
My identity is that important to me. Just as I would correct
someone who, for whatever reason, started calling me "Judy"
out of the blue. Just as I correct someone who calls my son
by his father's last name, I think it's important to make my
last name clear until everyone gets the point.
If women are going to ever make any real progress
toward bigger goals like equal pay (we're still not even
close), we have to insist that the so-called smaller changes
happen too. I say, keep your name if you get married, and
make sure others use it too. This doesn't call for
rudeness — polite and simple reminders to those who persist
in the Mr. and Mrs. game will help us all move forward.
Okay, so now that's taken care of, what next? Hmm.
The next baby? My husband and I have discussed what to do
about a last name for our hypothetical child/children. I
believe I sensed a wince the first time I suggested we give
our children my name. And this from a man who, as much as a
man can be, is a feminist himself. Okay, then, I said, let's
have two. We'll give one my last name and one his. This, he
said, might confuse the kids. But wait, what about my
already existing son? Won't he feel ganged up on if his
siblings all have different names from him?
We haven't resolved this one yet. I suggested maybe my husband should change his last name to match mine, and then we'd all have some peace on the issue. He said, if that's what I really, really wanted, he'd consider it but that it might hurt his family's feelings. Ah, but how come women's families aren't hurt when a daughter changes her name. See? It IS a big issue.
I don't really want my husband to change his last name. I just like to argue. Maybe we should just give any kids we have completely different names from both of us. Regardless, I'm going to teach them from the start to gently correct anyone who casually — and maybe incorrectly (depending on how we settle this) — assumes that their last name is that of their father.
Meet the other players in The Name Game:
Just Call Me
Bernadette Noll changed her name too, but she's not going to bang it into anyone's head. Unless they call her "Mrs. Kenneth Anderson," that is.
Conversations with Married Women
"The hyphen is just ugly. What can I say, I'm a slave to aesthetics." — Margaret Gould Stewart, Tripod's Creative Director.
Spike Gillespie writes a weekly online column for Prodigy Services. (You can subscribe by dropping a note to [email protected]. It's free). To
view her other Writing and pictures of her much-more-exciting-than-yours life, tune to www.spikeG.com. Spike is currently working on a memoir for Simon and Schuster.
© 1997 Tripod, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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