Feminism, like many other social movements, has had its troubles with language, and especially with names. We have learned to say “chairperson” and “humankind,” and are gradually managing to replace the ungainly pronoun “he/she” with the new multi-person “they” and “them,” avoiding sentences like “Tell whoever has parked his/her van in my driveway that if he/she does not remove it I will report him/her to the police.”
On the other hand, many women are still not sure what to call themselves. For centuries wives were concealed from the world behind their husbands’ names. You were Miss Jane Smith until you married; you then immediately became Mrs. Thomas Brown. Few people who weren’t personally acquainted with you knew your first name, or dared to use it if they did. The name “Mrs. Thomas Brown” was generic and transferable; it did not designate a particular individual, but merely “the current wife of Thomas Brown.” At the time this seemed completely normal to us. In the 1960s I and a group of friends put out a cookbook to raise funds for the nursery school our children attended. All the recipes were signed with our married names: I was Mrs. Jonathan Bishop.
Today, most of us would probably sign our recipes with our first and last names. but we would expect to be called Ms. rather than Miss or Mrs. in our professional lives, partly because, like Mr., it does not reveal marital status. Miss or Mrs. is still used sometimes on formal private occasions: political banquets, society fund-raisers, and debutante balls. It is also favored by women whose only public identity is that of the wife of their (often well-known) husband.
Even today, it is common for women to take their husbands’ last names, especially in conservative circles. Problems start later. If your husband dies, you will still be Mrs. Thomas Brown, a respectable widow. But if you are divorced you automatically become Mrs. Jane Brown, thus informing the world that your marriage has failed. Tommy Brown, of course, never has to change his name, and can conceal his marital status all his life. If he remarries, another woman will immediately become Mrs. Thomas Brown.
If you were especially daring, or especially angry at Tommy, you could petition to resume your so-called “maiden” name. There were difficulties with that choice, however. Many of my divorced friends kept their husband’s last name so that it would continue to be the same as that of their children, or because it was associated with their public or professional identity. Some, too, had been glad to lose their original name. It is no fun for a little girl to be called Susie Hogg or Susie Mudd, and an acquaintance once told me that one of things about her first husband she liked most was that his last name was not Fink.
In the nineteenth century many women writers were known by their husband’s name only; some of the best-selling novels of the time were announced on their title pages as “By Mrs. Clfford” or “By Mrs. Oliphant.” Later, the usual thing to do when you published your first book was to use your first name and your husband’s last, as if you were already divorced. Of course, if you actually got divorced later, you might find yourself stuck with the last name of a person you disliked or even hated. Writers who did not marry, or started publishing early, like Willa Cather or Mary McCarthy, were luckier. I was lucky too: though I had been married for fourteen years when my first novel appeared, I decided to stick with my original name because I knew it would please my parents. I had no wish to please my mother-in-law, and anyhow there were already far too many writers called Bishop.
In the second wave of feminism in the 1960s and ‘70s, young women were encouraged to reject their patronymics—”slave names” was the term used by the most radical—and choose new surnames. Sometimes these honored the maternal line: Polly the daughter of Joan might become the photographer Polly Joan; she might have decided instead to be Polly Joans, Polly Joanchild, or (in a feminist version of the Icelandic custom) Polly Joansdaughter. Other women adopted the name of the state or city in which they were born or lived, like the artist Judy Chicago. Another popular choice was the month or day of one’s birth: Jane March, Susan Monday. You could also choose a name linked to your occupation or hobby: Mary Weaver, Ellen Fern.
All this was fine. Problems came later, when these feminists married. Many, even those who had been content to bear their fathers’ names, balked at the idea of dissolving their identity in their husband’s. A temporary solution, at the time, was to hyphenate the surnames of bride and groom. The pairings were not always ideal, as in the case of friends whom I will call Ann Fish and Bill Gold. For one thing, there was the question of whose name would come first. They could of course alternate, so that individuals called Ann Fish-Gold and Bill Gold-Fish would come into existence. This was sure to cause confusion in doctor’s offices and at work, let alone when Ann and Bill tried to rent an apartment, buy insurance, or set up a joint bank account. Usually, therefore, the choice was to put the husband’s name first.
There was potential trouble, too, when the children of hyphenated couples grew up and fell in love. Ann and Bill Gold-Fish were very happy when their daughter Jenny fell in love with Jerry, the intelligent and attractive son of friends whom I will call the Good-Littles. They were not surprised when the kids refused to become Jenny and Jerry Good-Little-Gold-Fish. Obviously, they would want to shorten their name, but which of their four parents would they symbolically reject? As it happened, Jenny and Jerry decided to solve the problem by discarding all four last names and adopting a brand new one, Tompkins, after the county in which they lived. This not only slightly hurt and embarrassed both sets of parents, it also involved tedious public announcements and legal proceedings.
Worse things have happened. A romantic couple I knew of, when they married, chose the last name of Joy. It was not prophetic, and two years later they split up. As a result, both of them had to go through lengthy, expensive, and somewhat mortifying procedures to restore their former names to their bank accounts, credit cards, drivers’ licenses, web addresses, and much, much more.
Today many brides have returned to the practices of a much earlier generation and become what my mother would have called “Lucy Stoners,” after the nineteenth-century feminist who refused to take her husband’s name. When they marry, they keep their surnames. But again, what about the children?
Fortunately, there is a simple solution to this problem, which I should like to recommend to everyone. In anthropological terms, it involves setting up a system of parallel matrilineal and patrilineal lines. Under this plan, both husband and wife will pass their own surnames on to all children of the same sex: boys will take their father’s last name, and girls will take their mother’s. If this sensible and equable custom is adopted, both women and men will have names that are theirs for life. It will be a sign to the world that marriage is an equal contract in which no one’s identity has to disappear. Eventually, this plan will also greatly simplify record-keeping and the work of genealogists. Daughters will be valued as much as sons, since they will also preserve a family name, and also, in some European countries, a family title.
Indeed, the idea seems so simple and intelligent that, if humans were rational beings, I would look forward to seeing it adopted throughout the world. My enthusiasm, by the way, is wholly philosophic and disinterested. As the mother of three sons, I would still be doomed to see my surname vanish under the enlightened new system as surely as it will under the antiquated patriarchal customs of the present.