What's in a name

[Diana Daly]

Hi

I am working on a piece that I would like to do either a radio piece or a short film about. It's about Names. Particulary, surnames. I changed my last name almost five years ago and since then have found many many women who have done the same. I find it interesting.

So, I'm putting out a little survey for women who have changed their names; just for interests sake

1-Do you go by your father's surname or your mother's surname or another surname? Why?

2-If you have children, who's surname do they have? Is it hyphenated? Why?

3-If you changed your last name from the one given to you by your parents, please explain that decision.

4-Have you experienced positive or negative feedback from changing your name?

Any other thoughts?

Thanks,

Diana

[Irene Duma]

People say it's not a big deal - but I disagree. If it wasn't a big deal, guys would be taking their wives name at an equal rate - with little comment about the subject - no raising of eyebrows. But that is not the case. Natasha above only broached the subject once or twice before she learned to silence that idea.

When I was little my mom looked at letters addressed to herself and my dad, and said to me - "look I am no longer here. This is to Mr. and Mrs. William Duma. I am just the Mrs. It could be anyone."

It struck me deeply.

My oldest sister kept her name and was one of the first women in the second generation Ukrainian community of Toronto to do so. She took a bit of flack, but it bothered her not in the least, and so topic was quickly dropped. It was not, however, quickly adopted.

When she had children, they were given our family surname as a middle name. My mom liked that. My dad did too - since he had 3 daughters and no sons. My other sister followed suit when she had her two kids.

I know of 1 couple who when married both changed their name to a hyphenated version of their 2 surnames. I had never heard of that before. I stared at that man curiously when I met him. I had never met a man like that. I only knew men who rebuffed the notion - with loud mockery, derision and contempt, and who made it clear that that such a ridiculous notion was not to be broached ever again.

I kept my name when I married. He was Belgian and it was not that popular over there. My mother-in-law looked at me and said "you would be one of those that would do that."
I was actually flattered. Other women were curious about it, but uninterested for the most part - like they were about most aspects of my Canadian-ness.

It's a tough question. What happens to kids' names? can you call them House-Houssers or Duma-Gula's as in my other sister's case? How many middle names can you have?

I just know that I wanted to be more than Mrs. And that if guys made such a fuss about their names, keeping or changing them, then names must be worth something. They are worth keeping.

[Michele Horton]

My thoughts ...I go by my father's name - it's what I know - it's what I grew up with. As a child and even now, I am still known as "one of the Horton kids" (there were 9 of us). It is our family name - we all had it, including mom. Being from a large family and with most of us doing well in school and in sports, being a 'Horton' had some cachet (at least in our small community). However as a young woman reading my oldest sister's Ms. magazines, I understood that my mother had 'given up' her name according to patriarchal tradition. When I got married, I kept my name - it was, to me, a feminist thing to do. It is also practical - I did not have to get all of my identification changed. Two of my sisters have done the same. All but one of my brothers' wives changed their names to Horton. One brother insists on calling the three of us by our husbands' names in written communication rather than indicating the two surnames. None of us has divorced but many of my friends have and it always seems to be a big hassle to change back to their 'maiden' name (some more than once!) I appreciate and admire women who have devised their own last name, in some cases a name that is descriptive to their lives (artist Judy Chicago - for the city where she was born). Try to find a woman you used to go to school with - it's difficult because of course 9 times out of 10 they have changed their name ( again, sometimes more than once) - if they had kept their name, this would not happen!

[Rosemary House]

A prosaic prozesky! Great fun with this 'name' subject Diana. I really wouldn't have thought to so quickly find so many interesting stories on who how and why the choice of name....

[Diana Daly]

Whoa, that was worth the wait...weight.

interesting about children with different last names. Clans are interesting because it's like that Joey Smallwood school of thought "Every thing you do, you do in the name of Newfoundland". Holy Pressure!

anyway, yes...very interesting.

Thanks for that!

[Andreae Prozesky]

And finally - Di you mentioned earlier the Genesis naming issue - yes, you have it right, from the traditional JudeoChristian perspective naming is a specifically masculine act, because it was Adam's duty to name all the animals and such. So for a woman to take on the responsibility of naming (and, by extension, any creative use of language) is in itself an act of subversion. This is all on a really theoretical, academic level, of course, but it's the tradition out of which most of our customs come, so it's kind of interesting.

[Andreae Prozesky]

Oh, one more - the youngster I'm currently, uh, gestating, will have his/her father's last name, which is Callanan. I've given far more though to the fact that my children will have different last names from one another than to the fact that they will have different last names from me. Does anyone have any stories about that - growing up with a different last name from your siblings, or parenting children with different last names? I wonder what the impact will be, say, in school. It will be interesting.

[Andreae Prozesky]

Arright – sorry I’m just weighing on this now, I’ve been out of the loop for a while (pregnancy brain, mostly). But I’ve got all kinds of stuff to say about last names, so here goes.

I go by my father’s last name, but neither he nor my mother do. My folks split up when I was very young and my mom went back to her maiden name (Hogan); my father is a musician/performer and he dropped his last name when his career was getting on the go, long before I was born. So when I was growing up, my sister and I were Andreae and Jennifer Prozesky, our mom was Cathy Hogan and our dad was Don Paul. Having the name Prozesky always seemed pretty random, like it was drawn from a hat and assigned to me. It’s a name I associate with my sister more than with my father’s side of the family.

My mother remarried when I was a teenager, and much to my surprise, she took her new husband’s last name. When I asked her about that, her take on it was, “you end up with a man’s name either way, either your husband’s or your father’s, so you might as well go with the one you like better” (this is the hetero model, obviously). So she went from Cathy Hogan to Catherine Safer. She also moved to another city, so making the transition was probably easier that way. She published her first book under the name Catherine Safer, and has had all kinds of people from here say, “I would have read your book sooner if I knew it was yours!” So for her second book she used Catherine Hogan Safer. I think she’s going primarily by Hogan Safer now.

My daughter has her father’s last name, because it was important to him that she be named Lennox, while I have a hard time thinking of anyone but me and my sister being named Prozesky. I’ve joked before about being the last of my family line (well, me and my sister), but really, I just can’t see passing the name on. Having an unusual name is awesome if you have a story to go with it, if it connects you with a heritage that you’re proud of or if it stands for something that you believe in, but if you don’t relate to it at all, then it’s just a pain in the arse. My father did some genealogical research and apparently Prozesky is a made-up name, anyway. It doesn’t go back generations and generations, it doesn’t signify anything. It’s a dead end.

So, if it doesn’t mean anything to me, why do I keep it? I guess I’m attached to it somehow – I identify as Andreae Prozesky, even if I don’t identify as a Prozesky per se. I don’t even really know what a Prozesky is. I wouldn’t want to take my mom’s maiden name, even though I love the Hogans, because she doesn’t use it. It doesn’t make sense to take her current last name, since she and my stepdad got married when I was practically already an adult. My maternal grandmother uses her second husband’s last name, Barbour, even though they split up years ago. My sister might well take her fiancé’s last name when they get married, I’m not sure. When my partner and I get married, though, I don’t think I’ll take his name because we’re both writers in the same genre, and I think that if I were to take his name people would accuse me of trying to piggyback on his success and his reputation, which would be a bad move, career-wise.

Which is another complicated name thing. Because I'm a writer, my name is, in a major kind of way, my brand. At this point, I’ve already invested a fair amount of time in making the name Andreae Prozesky recognizable, and I feel that changing it now would undo some of the work that I’ve done. If I felt strongly about my name, then that undoing would surely be worth it, but since I’m simply ambivalent about it, it’s not really worth the hassle. As far as a brand goes, it seems to be working. People remember my name (even if they can’t pronounce or spell it), and there aren’t any other Andreae Prozeskys out there to confuse matters. So on that level, it’s working for me. I don't know if that's kind of unromantic, or crass and commercial even, but really, my relationship with my last name is a practical one, and not an emotional one. I don't know if that's weird, but it's true...

[Ruth Lawrence]

A name is so important and I agree you have to like your name, it's a confidence thing. I kept my father's name through a marriage & subsequent divorce and gave my son that surname for several reasons-first I was unmarried at the time and it was MY name, I didn't know how long his father would be in the picture. Also there are very few boys to carry on the name. And there was the HUGE problem that I didn't really like his father's surname-no one's fault. You have to be able to wear a name with pride and I made that choice for a baby, based on my own aesthetics. My son can change it later if he identifies with it, just like you did Diana. I think it's a great idea and an empowering one. One that I hope will become more easily acceptable to people.
Interestingly, my son's father, NEVER ONCE questioned that decision. And if he didn't like it, I'm certain he would have.
Rosemary's point is also good. If you chose to go by Housser, what's it to people? It's incredible the amount of opinion people will offer on a personal CHOICE.
I guess keeping/changing your surname means people refer and think of your family as an group of individuals rather than simply a group. "One of these things is not like the other..."
Ruth

[Desirée Baker]

Ooo.. I want to take up journalism. This is a sign! haha

Well back in the day, Pythagoras invented numerology (or at least made his own system that became more famous over other peoples attempts). Basically he asserted that every creature and object gives off a vibrational frequency. He associated these frequencies with numbers. And since everything comes down to numbers, he believed the letters in a persons name would reveal an affinity towards a certain frequency. So he created a system which designates a number to each letter in the alphabet. When calculations are made with these numbers, it can reveal personality, destiny, among other things.

I have down some calculations and they fit me to the tee. However, psychologists will say that people tend to personalize generalizations very well. So I don't know! Haha, I suppose any self knowledge you can obtain about yourself is good. It's fun to do. I'm really into metaphysics so I totally believe in the whole vibrational frequency. I do think there are a lot more variables involved though to predict ones future.

[Lois Brown]

When I was really small - about four, I had this plan to marry my cousin so I wouldn't have to change my last name...and hey my name is Brown - which really is only a step up from Beige...but I think I thought it would be awful to have to change my name - and so I came up with this very clever plan - or so I thought...I didn't know that it wasn't that cool to marry your cousin.