Names and Pronouns

One of the blogs I read has a post on these topics.  I've already discussed one of these topics, but I haven't discussed the traditions of naming after marriage.

My lover and I have occasionally discussed the issue of marriage, mostly because we like having health insurance so it'd be nice if one of us had a job with coverage for spouses as a benefit to be able to take advantage of that.  We've also discussed the subject of names.  The late great Richard Sylvan had an innovative solution to the problem.  He and his second wife were big feminists, so they didn't want to change her name to his, but they did want to have the same name.  So, since they were both big tree-huggers, they chose to both change their names to Sylvan (previously he was Richard Routley).

I commented on this story that this might not be a good move for most academics; in logic and metaphysics Sylvan was well enough known that most people probably knew about the change, but a more obscure scholar, or one in a larger field than philosophy where it's harder to keep track of everyone, might take a hit to their reputation from a name change, as some people might not realize that the older papers under a different name were by the same person.  So I thought academics should probably just keep their names regardless of their sex, at least if they have any publications prior to getting married.

Somehow, Shelly turned this into anyone who's published keeps their name, and anybody who isn't doesn't.  So she's not changing her name, since she has several published poems, and in her continuing effort to encourage me to get off my butt and get something published, she says unless I do get something published, if we get married I have to become a Chang.

Of course, this leaves the question of children.  I don't know what the good general solution to that is.  We're both pretty sure we don't want children, and quite sure we don't want biological children (she's got a history of genetic problems in her family for which she might be a carrier, and also has no interest in the whole pregnancy thing, and I was adopted myself and have warm feelings about the institution of adoption).  If we were ever suddenly wealthy and feeling like we had way to much free time and energy and needed something to sap all that, we've decided we'd probably want to adopt a Chinese girl.  If we did that, we'd probably make her a Chang.

Comments

[SteveG]

The publication thing should be a non-issue. (1) One can always contniue publishing under the original name, (2) unless you are a major figure, the lack of continuity really won't matter, and (3) if you do become a major fifure, it will be a cool fact that only the in-crowd knows when discussing your "early" work. My wife kept her name (but I call her sweetie), I kept mine, and we hyphenated for the kids (shorty and squirty, respectively). The worries about names strike me as remnants of nominalism -- I am called my name, but I am not my name.

[Jason Grossman]

My wife and I considered doing what the Sylvans did. The problem is that if you have the same name, people will tend to assume that the woman has changed her name to the man's. That makes you look unfeminist, just the opposite of what the Sylvans wanted.