Our names, something most of us were given and birth had no control over for the most part, mean a lot. A name can present a person to the outside world through a variety of overt and not-so-subtle ways. As an individual, it represents who you are and what you've achieved. For many people (myself included), a name becomes an inextricable part of his or her identity.

In their book, The Language of Names: What We Call Ourselves and Why It Matters, Justin Kaplan and Ann Bernays examine names and their impact on people, including new names people were assigned at Ellis Island, "ethnic" names, and when women change their names to their husbands' after marriage. Of course, the chapter on marriage is the most controversial of the book, and thus the most interesting to me. As Marina Warner wrote in The New York Times Book Review:

Alongside these historical compromises and struggles, another story develops, one of the increasing power of names as money and of name-bearers as property holders. Ms. Bernays's mother, Doris Fleischman, was married to Edward Bernays and founded and worked alongside him in their pioneering public relations firm. She was also vice president of the Lucy Stone League, dedicated to promoting the use of maiden names; when the couple went to register their daughter, the clerk saw the mother's name and declared the baby illegitimate. Edward Bernays gave the cause full support -- the book suggests he was maybe even keener, possibly because he understood very well that a name could be a trademark, too, hence capital.

If names can mean money, they also mean power. Thus the Lucy Stone League was formed in 1921 to fight for women's rights to retain their names after marriage, and to be able to use them legally. Born in 1818, Lucy Stone was a tireless advocate for women's rights and active in the anti-slavery movement. She was the first woman in Massachusetts to receive a college degree. Stone died in 1893. According to the League, Stone:

...is perhaps best known for refusing to take her husband’s name. Rejecting what she had identified as an archaic and unequal custom, Stone saw no reason to sacrifice her right to identity by adopting her husband’s surname at the cost of her own individual freedoms and identity. Stone emphasized the deep connection between a person’s name and their identity, and dedicated much of her life towards protecting that bond from the many external pressures that inherently strived to deny it.

Stone's goal was not codified by the courts until 1972. Today, many women feel enormous social pressure to change their names to their husbands', as well as to pass their husbands' names on to their children. This is one of the Lucy Stone League's current focuses.

Another issue that the League focuses on today is equality of access to name change. If a woman gets married and want to change her name to her husband's, there is no fee by the local government. However, when men want to change their names - whether to their wives' names or to a hyphenated name or a new one entirely - they are subjected to clerical fees by the government. This discrimination against men indicates how society feels about changing names. It is natural, normal, acceptable, and in the public interest to encourage women to change our names, but men should not do so. If they do, they must pay for the privilege. (Whereas women have a right to change their names.)

On a personal level, I used to get completely bent out of shape when a contemporary woman chose to change her name to that of her husband's. Didn't she understand that she was losing her identity? That she was being subsumed to her husband? In the past few years, it occurred to me that people take their spouses' names for rmany reasons. It is not my business to judge them for doing so any more than it is theirs to judge me for keeping my name. Yet I cannot help but think every once in a while about what this says about the social value of women's names.

Lucy Stone said, "My name is my identity and must not be lost." I could not agree more. Both men and women deserve to have equal access to their identities.

Suzanne also blogs about life at Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS) & Other Rants and about feminism & gender at BlogHer.