March is Women’s History month, a practice started in the United States in 1897 and joined by Australia (starting in 2000), Canada, the United Kingdom, Russia, Hungary and Ukraine. We do have to share the month with the spring equinox and Saint Patrick’s Day, but it’s still a good time to recall a little “herstory” as we celebrate the women who made a difference in significant ways.  Before we do that, however, I want to remind you of a practice that has help to hide or erase history, and that is the common practice of women changing their last name to their husband’s. Remember the old song about “I’ll be with you in apple Blossom time ,I’ll be with you to change your name to m…,” The name change was for a long time just the tip of the iceberg.  Married women were the property of their husbands, who also owned the kids, her assets, her earnings. As they sing in the musical “Suffs”, a women dies when she gets married. She has ceased to exist as a separate person.

 Most of that changed since the suffragists caught the car they were chasing for 72 years and climbed in the back seat in 1920, but the name change is still a widely common practice in more recent years. I changed my name in 1962.  Two of my daughters did the same in 1993 and 1994, and in 2022 so did one of my grandchildren. My oldest daughter who still lives in our hometown told me only partly in jest that her decision to change her name was not only to acquire a name that was easier to spell and pronounce than Ulbrich but also one that would keep her from always being identified with her somewhat outspoken, activist mother.

There is also the challenge of connecting children to both parents, which is easier if the parents share a last name. Hyphenation is an awkward solution, especially in subsequent generations. What last name would you give to the offspring of Joseph Hall- Berwyck and Annabelle Shultz-Foster?   Where do we go next?

But now there is a new reason to NOT change your name.  If you want to be able to vote, get a credit card in your own name, get a passport, or a variety of other things you just might want to do, it is a whole lot simpler for you to do like your brother or your son or your spouse and just say, “This is me. I was named Susan Smith on the day I was born and I’m keeping that name till I die.  No, dear, it doesn’t mean I don’t love you.  But how can I love someone else if I don’t love myself enough to affirm separateness in togetherness?

Having a clear record of name changes since birth is pretty important.  Especially if you married and divorced and changed your name again.   had a grandmother whose name was Gladys Lillian Barber Hewitt Schultz Rockefeller. She carried her whole marital history on her shoulders.

Norse culture had a solution of sorts to the dilemma of family identification and the right to one’s own name.  If Susan Ingridsdottir and John Larson married, their male children would have the last name Johson and their female children would bear the surname Susansdottir. Only siblings of the same gender would share a surname .It might work in a small culture, but probably not in one as large and diverse as ours. And it relies too much on first names which results in a smaller pool of surnames.

So there is a simple solution.  Here’s your name, kid.  My infant great grandchild). .Mabel Kay Didio, bears her father’s surname. At age three weeks, she has no opinion, but she might develop one.  Got a problem with it?  Complain to your parents or hire a lawyer and change it, just like a movie star. Or find a husband with a last name you like better.   But don’t expect the Board of Elections to trust you unless you go through all those papers around the house to provide proof of name when you want to exercise your duty and privilege of choosing the people who run your country.

In subsequent blogs, I am going to offer brief bios of a selection of female heroines I especially admire for defying convention and/or making a significant impact on the course of human evenes..  I invite you to share your own.  Next installment: will feature ancient and medieval women I admire—Hypatia, Boudicca, Joan of Arc, Eleanor of Aquitaine.