“Mr. Nott, here is your wife’s insurance card.” I was just about to correct the medical assistant, when I looked over at my husband. “It doesn’t matter,” he said patiently, before getting up and retrieving the card. After all, it happens all the time. Three years ago, when we got married, I made the decision to keep my maiden name.
Back in the 1850s the movement to keep maiden names was started when a suffragette named Lucy Stone decided to keep her name when she married abolitionist Henry Blackwell. The Lucy Stone League was founded in 1921 by a small group of avant-garde women dedicated to preserving women’s names. Until the feminism of the 1970s brought a renewal of interest to the issue, almost all women changed their names to their husbands when they married. Of course, the majority of these women were married before they were 23. Now that women marry later, and live more of their adult life with their maiden names, it can feel unnatural to assume another name.
However, a recent Harvard study shows that fewer college-educated women are keeping their maiden names when they marry. The study’s authors find this difficult to understand because the societal trends that in previous decades led to women keeping their maiden names – late marriages, higher education levels and achievement in the workplace – continue today. Ironically, it may be the gains that women made over the past few decades that lead to the decline. It used to be that a woman would keep her name after marriage to make a statement of equality. Today, that is less important as many women enjoy equal access to education and jobs. Where previous generations of women felt a need to keep their own names as a way to make a statement, today that need is not felt as urgently. The study also shows that perhaps today’s young women are looking for ways to bind their families together. What better way to share than by sharing a name?
In 1935, when my parents were married, my mother decided to use her maiden name as her middle name and add dad’s last name of Nott. My mother’s maiden name was Wood. She loved telling the story about her wedding announcement in our hometown paper. Mom said the wedding almost didn’t happen because the headline in the engagement section read: “Wood-Nott Marry.” Mom once told me that it was her name that saved her from getting a speeding ticket. When the police officer read the name on her license, he laughed so hard that he only gave her a warning. So that day it turned out that “Margaret Wood Nott” get a speeding ticket.
In my previous marriage, I took my husband’s last name. When we divorced, I officially took back my maiden name. I strongly felt that since I was on my own, I wanted my own name again. When I remarried three years ago, I thought about using my maiden name as my middle name like my mom did and taking my husband’s last name of Crumby. After all, Hillary Clinton did it. After Bill lost his bid for re-election as governor in 1980, she injected “Rodham” as her middle name. Politically, for them, it was a good solution. For me, though, I would be Jeanne Nott Crumby. And if I were “Nott Crumby” – who would I be?
I am reminded of Shakespeare’s quote from Romero and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2): “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Juliet is saying that a name is a meaningless convention and that she loves the person who is called “Montague”, not the name itself. Well, that’s easy for Juliet Capulet her to say. After all, Juliet Capulet Montague sounds a heck of a lot better than Jeanne Nott Crumby!
Jeanne Nott (jeannenott@comcast.net) of Denver is property manager of Vita Flats in Denver.
