What’s in a Name?

Anna Quindlen is one of my favorite authors. She is one of those people who just tell it how it is. She’s not fixated on trying to explain everything and sometimes simply states that she doesn’t know the answer or how to explain it all. Reading her work is often like being on the receiving end of a real conversation rather than comprehending a piece of literature.

While she also writes fiction, this is a story about herself and the decision to keep her name after marriage. Quindlen began writing a column for the New York Times entitled “Life in the 30s,” where her essay “The Name is Mine” first appeared in 1987. 

Check the story out in the New York Times archives: 

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/04/garden/life-in-the-30-s.html

I like this story because she doesn’t provide some in depth philosophical explanation for her choice; rather she implies that at the time she didn’t really think much about the choice at all. It is just that it was her name. The essay considers a few events that simply pushed her to examine the consequences of keeping her name- good or bad.

I can remember growing up talking about what my wedding would be like with friends, what type of man I’d want to marry, and even what my house would look like. What I can’t remember is ever considering whether to keep my name or not. I don’t know that I would think about it much now. But I do wonder, however, if most women started deciding to keep their own name how that may change the dynamics of some things be it government, work, or family. Does taking the name of someone else somehow drop you to a rung below them on some ladder of equality? I don’t know that there is a solid answer to that, but it certainly left me with some questions.