What Did You Say Your Name Was?
Diane E. Dees

Even when I was a little girl, I couldn't understand why women changed their names when they married. Later, when I understood that children received their father’s name and that the entire family had one last name, something still bothered me.

As I grew older, I noticed that when divorced women remarried, members of their families had different names. More confusion. As a young woman, I was very active in the second wave of feminism. At that time, women frequently retained their family names. Only anti-feminists and people who had been living in a hole for most of the late 60s and early 70s balked at the notion of couples with hyphenated last names.

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When I finally married, in the mid-90s, I had every intention of retaining my name, and not just as a "career name." I continued my life as Diane E. Dees, and oh, the explaining I suddenly had to do. When I used "Dees" in the return address of a letter, the reply often came to me addressed with my husband's last name. When people called the house and asked to speak with "Mrs. Husband's-Last-Name" and I would say, "This is Diane Dees," they sometimes hung up, because, of course, they must have dialed the wrong number.

It would be easy to attribute this clueless-ness to my living in the southern part of the United States, where tradition reigns, but at least half of these calls came from the East and West Coasts.

Even my friends had no idea how to handle it. They addressed envelopes to us using three names for me, using my husband's last name only, my name/my husband's name, or both first names/both last names, instead of the screamingly obvious:
Ms. Diane E. Dees
Mr. Husband's-Name

I finally gave up, and began using three names in order to cut down on the time that I spent explaining myself regarding the fact that my otherwise intelligent friends and acquaintances suddenly had become cognitively deficient.

But I wasn't happy. I wanted my name back, and I eventually reclaimed it. I sent brief emails to friends with whom I regularly correspond, explaining that I had never really wanted to be called anything but Diane Dees, and asking them to continue to call me that. A few have honored my wishes, but several continue to use three names or to use my husband's name. One or two even commit what I consider the deadliest name sin—calling me "Mrs. Husband's-First-Name Husband's–Last-Name."

Some Americans still struggle to use the honorific term "Ms," even though it has been in standard usage for many decades and was created so that a woman's marital status would not be anyone's business. As Judith Martin (Miss Manners) points out, the honorific term "Mrs." may be used only when the husband's first name follows it; any other use of it is incorrect. Martin also said that if children are going to be given a parent's last name, it should be the woman's, because the divorce rate is very high, and children almost always wind up living with their mothers.

I know women who used their family names (not their "maiden" names—that is as sexist a term as I can think of) until they had children, after which time they began using their husband’s names. And I know several women who use their family names, but whose children carry their husbands' last names. This causes endless confusion for their children's teachers who, it seems, never have heard that women sometimes retain their names after marriage.

Some women hyphenate their family and married names, but it doesn't mean much unless both partners do it. Years ago, a woman I knew—I'll call her Judy Brown—married a man I'll call Robert Miller. She became "Judy Brown-Miller." I remarked to a friend that it didn't seem fair that he wasn't calling himself "Robert Brown-Miller

"But Miller was his name before," she protested. I reminded her that Brown was her name before. She just stared at me and said, "Well, I'm just an old New Orleans girl," or some such evasion; this came from a woman identified as a feminist.

Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden did not give either of their last names to their son, but created a new one for him, an act I always have admired. Ironically, famous anti-feminist Laura Schlessinger's son carries her last name. Go figure.

Cultural nitpickers like to remind feminists that even if we retain our family names—unless we are Jane Fonda's son—we are still carrying a patriarchal label, for we are using our father’s name. True But at least we are carrying the names we always have had as our own. Some things are central to one's identity, and a name is one of them. Right now, during America's major feminist backlash period, retaining one's name seems quaint. Those of us who do it are not freaks. We recognize that our identity is equal to any man's, and we are doing it through language, the most powerful tool we have.