What's In a Name?

Wow...so my apologies for being away for so long, but studying for and taking the NY bar exam kinda saps your extra time and energy. For realz. But I'm finished now (HURRAY!) so I have some free time to play around with wedding planning while emailing lots of resumes and waiting for the job calls to start coming in.

During this awe-inducing period of a lack of required things to do, I thought I'd share my thoughts on the ever-pressing name-change debate. The day after the bar, I stumbled to my laptop, booted up, and went to my fav wedding website, the Knot, for a day of lazing on the couch, watching bad made-for-tv movies and knotting.

The first question I noticed seemed like a simple one: "Help a feminist address her invites." Ah, but of course, on the Planning & Etiquette board, NOTHING etiquette related is simple. In my women's studies-trained, feminist-minded brain, addressing an invite to:

"Mr. and Mrs. John Doe"

is the ultimate in a line of sexist wedding etiquette related nonsense. Do women who choose to change their last names also lose their first names in the process? In the mind of the world's great etiquette nazis, apparently so. But then, I'm of the opinion that words MEAN something; they have a material effect in the world (i.e. the words we choose can change the world - for better OR worse). In this case, refusing to acknowledge a woman's first name once she's married is a de facto erasure of her identity.

And it's not as innocent as it looks. For instance, when I questioned other brides about WHY an invite had to be addressed this way, I was told that it was "tradition," "etiquette, "and that adding the woman's first name either (a) separated the man's first name from his last (apparently a gasp-worthy etiquette blunder) and/or (b) it was simply "too wordy." But when I asked whether addressing an invite to Mr. and Mrs. JANE Doe would be appropriate, I received silence. A very telling silence. Because, obviously, this second option would be just as brief as using John Doe, yet no one was willing to do it.

Women (and men) have fought too long and too hard to bring women OUT of the shadows simply to have them thrust back into darkness due to some antiquated notions about who the head of a household is or should be. Following a sexist tradition just because it's "tradition" is an inherent acceptance of the sexism behind the tradition - and that's just wrong.

This debate, of course, sparked a new debate. Should married women change their names at all? Was it anti-feminist to do so? Asking the question is, of course, itself loaded. Why not ask if married men should change their names? More and more are deciding to hyphenate both names or creating entirely new names in the process, so the procedure isn't SOLELY related to women any more (even if the overwhelming majority of name change applicants are female).

Women getting married are often forced to endure criticism no matter what choice they make about thier surname. If they take their husband's name, they criticized for beind too traditional. If they keep their own, they criticized for being a (*gasp*) feminist, and told that their children won't feel connected to them, told that their husband's name might die out (oh the horror). And god forbid they hyphenate their last names. Because, after all, what if your hypothetical child then decides to marry someone with a hyphenated name. The world might just explode from the chaos that would create!

And for women who are well-known in their fields, the task is even more daunting. What if your clients (both old, current, and new) don't recognize you anymore? For lawyers, particularly, this can be an issue. In New York (as elsewhere) an attorney who changes her name must wait for board acceptance of her new name (which can take anywhere from 1 month to a year) before she can practice under that name.

Reports indicate that more and more women are choosing NOT to change their names; not surprising given the hooplah that one has to go through to make sure that social security cards, credit cards, banks, mortgages, student loans, jobs, insurance policies, retirement plans, magazines, etc all must be notified of the change.

This upsurge in non-name change marriages has led to a post-feminist backlash. More and more women are speaking out against those who keep their given surnames, claiming that women should be "free" to change their names to their husbands without "feminists" badgering them about their personal decisions. While I agree with many that the decision to change one's name is a personal one, I think that the societal implications of a personal decision should also be considered. For women, changing one's name upon marriage is based upon a sexist tradition, denying married women their autonomy, and the decision to follow this tradition shouldn't be made lightly. However, changing your name doesn't HAVE to indicate your acceptance of sexist values. Many women do not feel any connection to their birth surname or feel a distinct dislike for it (enter the Butts, Bottoms, Weiners, Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorffs, as well as the simply unfortunately named - Ms. Ginger Snaps- here). Others weigh their attachment to their surname with their future husband's attachment to his against their desire for a common name.

I think my point is that, as any good feminist will tell you, every woman should have the right to change, or not change her name as she sees fit. Feminism is, after all about permitting women to make their own choices about their own lives. I guess all that I would ask is that this choice be made intelligently, with full awareness of the historical beginnings of the practice and to the current societal implications of changing one's name, and not blindly done to accomodate "tradition."

.....

For what it's worth, our invites will be addressed to: Mr. John and Mrs. Jane Doe (assuming spouses share the same name) or Mrs. Jane Doe and Mr. John Smith - etiquette be damned. But I'm still not sure precisely what I'm going to do in terms of my own name change. The feminist in me is screaming that I shouldn't give in, that I should keep my current surname - but given that (a) I'm not yet terribly well known in my field, (b) I have no real attachment to my surname (it's not my birth name), and (c) my fiance actually has some level of attachment to his last name, I'm leaning towards changing it.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see...