Rebekah is a married feminist and activist who has worked on projects for Planned Parenthood and has interned with her state legislature. She grew up on a ranch in the middle of nowhere New Mexico. She currently is majoring in accounting and lives in the suburbs of Seattle with her husband.

I don’t know how to feel about my name

I have a very complicated relationship to my name. To say that I grew up in a very conservative family is an understatement. Both of my parents are evangelical Christians. I am the black sheep of the family. From the very beginning I was strong willed and would not do what was socially expected of me. Needless to say I did not have a happy childhood.

My parents got divorced when I was five and both of my parents quickly remarried, with my mom taking her new husband’s last name, and my stepmother taking my father’s. My father quickly started building his new family, which didn’t have a lot of room for an unruly five year old who didn’t like sitting in church on Sundays and preferred climbing into trees and reading instead of playing with dolls. My mom, who was stuck with me by way of the court chose to lord it over my head that she and her new children had her husband’s last name and I had my absentee father’s.

I was taught from the very beginning that my name wasn’t my own. I was and would remain the property of men for all of my life. My parents purposefully chose my first name because it means bound in Hebrew.

It should not have been any surprise to either one of my parents that I left home at 18 to make my own way, far gone from the grasp of their emotional taunting and the pain that it caused to a child who desperately wanted the love and approval of her parents. It still shook the ground that they walked on and my mother has never quite forgiven me for that.

Six months ago my boyfriend of two years proposed. Up until that point we really hadn’t had a conversation about what we would do with our last names if and when we got married. My preference has always been to make a new last name. He as the child of a feminist who kept her last name when she got married.

Because it costs quite a bit of money, hassle, and time to change your name, when we got married we both kept our last names.

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Marna Nightingale lives in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. She is very married.

I put a lot of thought into the question of taking my hypothetical future husband’s name, when I was in my late teens and early twenties. Just as I felt I had come up with a plan, though, I got a girlfriend. Then I turned out to be poly. I now have two wives, a husband, and my birth name, not on principle, exactly, but because when it comes down to it, there is no practical alternative.

We did consider it, but all of us taking a new, made-up name didn’t appeal to any of us. Choosing one of the four names and going with it didn’t work either. As for hyphenation, I think quadruple-barrelled surnames should be given only to minor European nobility, who are presumably issued special passports with extra blank space to fit it all in.

Aside from all of that, I like my surname. If I didn’t, I might think differently; I don’t know. I don’t really think of it as “my father’s name”, either, even though he’s the reason I’ve got it. He carries it; he doesn’t own it any more than I do – or I don’t own it any less than he does.

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Trudy Hamilton is a writer and culture critic at Gradient Lair (@GradientLair), and a photographer, writer and eBook author at Tru Shots Photography. She has a Master’s Degree in Criminal Justice with additional graduate work in Psychology. Her interests include critical media/art examination, and media/art’s impact on a plethora of sociopolitical issues. She identifies as a Womanist/ intersectional feminist. Follow her daily musings on Twitter: @thetrudz

“Raceless” Names, “Acceptable” Names and Employment

A Rose by any other name may be a Black woman who has to worry about whether or not her name makes her “unemployable.” It doesn’t really matter if her actual name provides zero insight into whether or not she can perform the tasks required of a job and doesn’t correlate to her résumé indicating whether or not she has the education and skills that even warrant a callback. Her name alone can mean that a door is never opened to even be slammed in her face later.

We are in the age of the intersection of social media and labor, where protected class and other information is easily accessible prior to interviews and can be legally used to disqualify a candidate (though ridiculously, i.e. an after-hours party photograph interpreted as a person cannot perform their job during work hours) or illegally used to disqualify a candidate (i.e. a profile photo that reveals race, gender, and/or age and this information is used to disqualify a candidate).

However, easy access information was not always the norm. A name, address, high school/college attended and professional interests on a faxed or emailed résumé used to be almost all of the information available to employers prior to interviews, yet this is more than enough information to weed people out.

A zip code can reveal that a candidate lives in an area that’s not suburban or “White.” HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) listed in the education section of a résumé can reveal that the candidate is Black. A name deemed “urban,” “ghetto,” or just “ethnic” is enough information to disregard a candidate altogether. A name that doesn’t indicate race on sight is often assumed to be a White one. The presumed “universality” of Whiteness allows many employers to assume that if a name doesn’t appear to be “ethnic,” it’s a “good name” and must belong to a White person. Some especially think this is true if the résumé pleases them. Except for the times when it isn’t true.

I know these times well. My name is Trudy Hamilton. I’m a Black woman who’s always assumed to be White until proven otherwise.

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Laura is a feminist activist living in the suburbs of DC. She tweets as @crafting_change, is the voice behind the Fully Engaged Feminism Podcast and works locally with grassroots groups. Nearly middle aged and full of privilege Laura simultaneously pursues an undergrad degree at night while seeking to liberate education from traditional academic settings to promote enthusiastic learning in everywhere.

Naming

To be honest, I think the story on how I got my first name is far more interesting, and telling, than that of my last name. See, my father wanted to name me after a sexy “Bond girl” actress, purely because of her “sex appeal.” My mom wanted to name me Nikki (not even Nicole) for some reason she’s never elaborated on.

So when my Mom’s labor began and they still hadn’t decided on a name, they opened a baby names book to a random page and debated through contractions and the bustle of the hospital until ‘Laura’ was picked. As a pagan, it humors me to no end that my first name was found through a sort of reductive bibliomancy, since the last name typed on my birth certificate was one of various deceptions and concessions.

My father acquired his last name through adoption: at age 3, his stepfather gained custodial rights to him, and his name was changed. This identity and history that was kept from him until his teens, and in turn was not shared with my generation until we were old enough to start questioning family history. My mother’s paternal side of the family changed their last name upon fleeing Ireland, to hide their identity from the legal forces in pursuit. Through each name change on both sides of the family, what would eventually become my ‘original’ surname became more generically “white” and “relatable.’”

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