I was talking with my acquaintances Susi and Roger, and mentioned a third person, Charlie.

“Does he come around here? I don’t think I know him,” said Roger.

“Wait, I might know him,” said Susi.

“Ohhh,” said Roger, and to me, “Did he change his name recently?”

I, trying to be circumspect, said, “No, he’s had that name for a long time.”

“Yes, I know him,” said Susi, smiling slightly.

And Roger suddenly smiled and said, “Oh yeah, I know him.” 

And we went on talking about something else entirely, having established common ground.

It was a complicated conversation. I have the same name I was born with, I’m old, and I could be dangerous to all three people mentioned if they weren’t sure I was sympathetic. And because of all three of those things, I couldn’t behave as if I knew what Roger was talking about. But of course I knew what Roger was talking about, and he knew I did, because he knows I have an adult child who, though they have the same first name they were born with, is in the same general category as Susi, Roger, and Charlie. But Susi is a bit of an unknown, even though I’ve known her casually for several years, and I couldn’t assume she knew I was safe.

All of the names in the story above have been changed, and so have all the names.

There are lots of reasons to change your name. Many people change their names when they get married; the funny thing is, they don’t have to go through a legal process to do it; it’s so normal that, for most purposes, your birth name is called your “maiden name” as if your married one were your real one.

My sister had her name changed in court when she got married, but it was because she didn’t like the first name she was born with, and had always been called something else. She didn’t plan to change her last name, but just in case anyone called her by that, she couldn’t stand being called by her birth name and her married name together, because they conveyed a certain ethnicity and religion that she didn’t have. It was handy in the end, because my sister and her first husband divorced and she remarried. She still didn’t change her name, because she is an artist and it was her professional name.

My mother changed her name when she got married, and then changed it again with her second marriage, which meant that because she had a doctorate and was ordained, she was “The Reverend Doctor [First Name] [Third Last Name] when she died. The people in the nursing home called her by her first name, in a baby-talk voice, because to them she was just a little confused old lady.

When I was published, I used my whole name, including my middle name, because the whole thing sounded dignified and because my middle name is my mother’s family name and I liked it; I didn’t change my name when I got married, and neither did my husband, though he liked our name hyphenated and would have changed it if I had gone along with it. My middle name is a slightly higher class than my last name, though, and my father was a mess, so I didn’t go along with it; I don’t think my husband ever understood why I didn’t want to hyphenate.

Our adult kid is hyphenated with my husband’s last name and mine together, in that order, and my husband’s father’s Scots clan name as a middle name. My kid once had a teacher insist that the hyphenated names couldn’t be in that order, because the mother’s name is supposed to come first. There is not actually any such rule.

My kid doesn’t consider themself the grandkid’s mother, not exactly, though they gave birth to him. People who see my kid’s photo, or who meet us when we are out together, often try to figure out what to call them. I ran into a lesbian friend out with her wife at the children’s library, and my friend asked, “And that is your–“

“My kid,” I said firmly, and smiled over at my tall adult child, negotiating a book choice with the grandchild over on the other side of the room. I’m still not sure whether my lesbian friend ever figured out what I was saying.

My grandkid has my kid’s hyphenated last name. His middle name is his father’s last name. He handles it just fine and it makes sense to him.

When I was teaching, other teachers sometimes complained about student names, as if the parents were personally doing something offensive by adopting alternate spellings. They seemed to negotiate certain nicknames just fine, though; because it was a stuffy prep school, they had no problem calling some boys “Tripp” and “Trey” just because both boys were the third of that name. It was classism and racism masquerading as orthographia.

What is your proper name? If there is such a thing?