Nominally Speaking

Dean linked to a post regarding name changing by women upon marriage. My own thoughts on the subject have a couple of unique twists to it.

Anyone who’s been reading for a few months might be familiar with the Name Follies:
being born with a Chinese-sounding last name without being born with a Chinese appearance.

As I’ve mentioned several times, my father is Kenyan and, having the kind of last name that I do, is an anomaly among black Americans, most of whom have European last names.

The thing that many Americans—black and white—tend to forget is why this is so.* Hint: it’s not from excessive intermarriage between the descendants of African and European immigrants.

Now I’m not one to wield American slavery as a weapon with which to bludgeon the descendents of slave-owners over the head, so don't get any underwear into wads that you may have to pick out of uncomfortable places. This isn’t about blame, but about facts. Fact: black Americans have inherited European surnames usually because of slavery. Fact: forbidding a group of humans the use of any totems of their culture, including the very names with which they were born, makes them better slaves. (Think about this the next time some polemicist begins to rant on the non-existence of legacies of American slavery or, conversely, some bogus legacy of same.) This is why one sees few, if any, West African traditions passed from the "old country," (also likely unknown) unlike, say, those Americans who are descended from Italian immigrants.

By no doing of my own, I was born without this legacy. As I got older and began to understand that I had something rare and what it meant, I began to cherish it.

That said, I did take the name of my ex-husband when got married. Why? Ironically, it was because of the uniqueness of my own last name in my own family: my parents divorced early and my father went back to his country. When my mother remarried, I was the only one in the family with my last name. In my new family, I didn’t want this for myself or for my prospective children. (This is an American cultural bias on my part, to be sure. See the above post, “Funny You Don’t Look Chinese” for information on how the Luo—my tribal brethren—name their children.)

However, as things happen, my ex and I never had any children and, after our divorce, I shed his name like a gangrenous arm and returned to the legal use of my maiden name.

Were I to marry again, would I change it? I’m not sure. When I returned to the use of my maiden name, it was like seeing an old friend that I hadn’t realized how much I cherished until it was gone. Additionally, it took the Air Force three years to figure out that I had gone back to my maiden name (and this was in the computer age). I’m not sure that I want all of that fit-pitching that I did to count for naught.

Likely, however, I’d go the hyphen or double name route. Though it’s unlikely that I’d have any children at this late stage in the game, a sense of family is more important to me than some point of pride; families have the same name. You can’t sleep with your lineage. Okay well you can, but I'm sure the phrase "cold comfort" is a familiar one.

*The adherents to the Nation of Islam did not forget this and this is what the X—as in Malcolm X--is all about, X signifying the unknown last name of the first African slave “imported” in a given black American’s lineage.

Comments

[Lola]

There's an open tag that needs to be closed - after the footnote the text is all appearing in small print.

[baldilocks]

Hmmm. I left it off on purpose, thinking that the font size would on affect the post in question. Oh well. Thanks, Lola.

[Dean Esmay]

It is a beautiful name.

You are certainly correct that it's usually the case that blacks in the U.S. with European names usually got them from slavery, although I suppose it's worth pointing out that this is not always so. After manumission, manly ex-slaves simply chose names for themselves, and wound up with names such as "Freeman" or "Lincoln" or "Brown" as a result. Nor would it surprise me if some of the Jeffersons running around took it through choice (yes Jefferson owned slaves, but the man's record on that was complicated and many admired him despite his hypocricy). Some few would have gotten it through intermarriage. And there was also a time in this country when immigrants very commonly would "anglicize" their names, either recasting them or shortening them to "sound American." Some African immigrants might do as much as anyone else. I'm not sure where Colin Powell got his name, for example, although I seem to recall reading that his family emigrated from a non-slaveholding region.

Not sure how you'd anglicize a name like "Ochieng" if you were so inclined to do so. Nor is that common anymore anyway. Just saying, if this were 100 years ago, your dad might have been encouraged to go by "Smith" or something.

Funny thing is here in Detroit, Arabs typically keep their last names but pick out an anglicize a first name. There are so many Arabs running around named Sam and Sal and Steve around here, you can just run into certain neighborhoods and yell one of those names and a dozen guys will say "What?" ;-)

Blah blah, woof woof, more information than you were looking for but you know me....

[Boyd]

Jeez, Juliette, and here I was thinking you were Sino-Irish, and just dropped the apostrophe after the "O." :-)

[hln]

If I had hyphenated, I'd have been pegged for a feminist for sure. It's a case of the sum of the parts being far greater than the whole. In Gs anyway.

Heather Igert-Noggle.

YUCK. (So I took his name).

Still, just a name. I'm certainly easy to find on Google - with either name. I'd imagine you are, too.

hln

[cardeblu]

I took my husband's name when we got married 22 years ago. If we were to divorce, I wouldn't change it back. If I were to remarry after a divorce or death, I probably wouldn't change it then, either. To me, it's really not worth the hassle of having to change my driver's license, SS card, and all of the other little things like checking/credit card accounts, etc. It's not a feminist thing or a proud name thing; I'm just lazy...

[wes jackson]

How about Juleen O'Keen? ;^)

[baldilocks]

I lean what?

[liz]

Names (and identity) have always been fluid in the US.

Many people were had their surnames anglicized by immigration officials at Ellis Island (especially those from countries that didn't use the Roman alphabet).

There's the gold-rush song:

"Oh what was your name in the States?
Was it Turner, or Johnson, or Bates?"

In other words, some argonauts took advantage of the chaos in the camps to reinvent themselves.

Then of course, there's the John Wayne phenomenon, in which "Marion Morrison" disappeared for reasons of marketing.

[willow]

I will probably take my husband's name when I get married. Just a preference I have. And since I live in Boulder I fully expect some flabbergasted reactions from militant misandrous feminists who can kindly go take a flying fuck and stay out of my business about it.

That said, Juliette, I love your last name. I have no idea what it sounds like but it looks cool as hell. I'd be hard pressed to give that one up, were it mine. I'm for whatever choice feels right to the person in question.

I grew up in a very germanic midwestern city. My last name is germanic and so are about 85% of the names of everything there: people, streets, hospitals, buildings, etc.etc. I had a social studies teacher with the name Lauderwasser in my senior year of high school who told me something amazing: lots of people anglicized their names during WWII to avoid association with Nazis or Nazi sympathizers. He was related to many of the 'Clearwaters' in town; his family just chose not to give up their heritage. Blew me away.

Some other interesting history.