What’s in a Name?
Fern: So when I called to schedule the winter furnace check, the woman couldn’t find our account. And you know why . . .
Joe: Because it was in my name?
Fern: Yes. I know it’s still a sticking point with you, that I didn’t become Fern Geha. And I just read an article: Tradition Going Strong. It was about women taking their husband’s names when they marry. Most women still do, it seems. We didn’t even discuss me taking your name when we got married thirty years ago.
Joe: It’s thirty-three years ago. But who’s counting?
Fern: Well, you are, apparently.
Joe: Paying the bills is a pain. I’m glad you do them. Isn’t everything in your name?
Fern: Mostly. Somehow the budget billing for the city is in yours. And for the first time in a while, I bought something downtown and wrote a check. The woman looked at the check and asked if I were the mother of a young woman with the same last name. I told her that she was the child of my first husband with his second wife. I didn’t go on to confuse her further by telling her that a few years ago I got the registered mail of his third wife. When I brought the envelope over to his house I suggested that he didn’t marry anyone else.
Joe: It would be one thing to have kept your maiden name . . .
Fern: Yes, when I was a maiden.
Joe: But keeping the name of the man you had divorced. Frankly, I still find that annoying.
Fern: I never thought of keeping my “maiden” name. Which was actually my father’s name, not my mother’s. Which is probably not even the given family name since my grandparents came to this country through Ellis Island where so many names were changed. Kupfer used to be “Kupferchevsky.” My mother’s maiden name “Wiener’ was originally “Vinograd.”
Joe: You’re making my head spin. All I know is that our day-to- day lives would be easier today if we had the same last name.
Fern: I kept my ex-husband’s name after I got divorced because – well, you know why. Not because I was particularly attached to it.
Joe: Or to him.
Fern: It was the writing. A name on a book is something. Even if it’s the name of someone you divorced. Men don’t have to make that choice.
Joe: Yes. Another male privilege. But I’m not saying you should have taken Geha for your last name. I mean Gee-haw? Not exactly euphonic. I prefer the Arabic pronunciation, Jeha.
In the Arabic tradition that I grew up in you hardly use your own name at all, neither first nor last. A father is known by his firstborn son’s name, in my older brother’s case “Abu Abdullah.” And my brother wouldn’t use his own name either; he’d be “Ibn Elias,” the son of our father. Where it really gets confusing—the firstborn son is named after his grandfather….
Fern: I would like to have had only one name. Like Cher. Or Madonna. Or Rianna. Or Beyonce. You can do that with a name like Fern.
Joe: Don’t you have to sing?
Fern: I don’t think so. Being known by one name is a mononym. Did you know that?
Joe: That’s a good Scrabble word. Sweetheart, I don’t care if you write as George Eliot or Mark Twain; I’m just saying that day to day business, from buying airline tickets to signing on to Substack would be simpler if we had the same last name.
Fern: When we married, my bio-daughter was going to college. She said that she would change her name if she married someone whose name she really liked.
Joe: Hard not to like her last name: Zolla. Maybe we should all change our last name to Zolla.
Fern: At least she didn’t hyphenate it. Hyphenated names are a nightmare. When I was teaching I never knew how to alphabetize or remember them.
Joe: And it’s a burden to put on a child learning to write a name for the first time.
Fern: In the last semester I taught, I announced that in forty years of teaching, I never had a “Fern” in any class. I told students that if they one day had a baby girl and promised now to name her “Fern” that I would give them an “A.” Someone said, “Really??”
Joe: That’s sweet.
Fern: College students can be kind of gullible.
Love this. My wife and I have had our own last names for 44 years. Whenever we introduce ourselves to someone and they look slightly confused, I helpfully point out that I kept my last name.
Thanks for the fun read. Love the picture!