By Any Other Name

I took a lot of flak in the 80s when I got married and changed my name.  In those days, it was a bold choice; educated career women were not expected to assume their husband’s names.  It was considered a subversion of one’s identity.  As my readers are no doubt familiar, I had issues bordering on trauma from growing up with a last name that trailed all others alphabetically.  Having the opportunity to elevate myself to D-status, I took it.  But in truth, it was a slightly deeper story.

I got married just before completing graduate school in Health Policy and Management.  The School of Public Health where I studied is part of the Harvard Medical Campus, where a number of well-known Harvard teaching hospitals—Brigham and Women’s, Dana-Farber, Beth Israel-Deaconess, Children’s Hospital—are located.  Back in the early 80s, there was a well-regarded person of the same name who served as chief legal counsel for one of these hospitals.  I could not go about the simplest business on the campus without being confused with her.  

One day I walked over to her office and found her working at her desk.  I knocked politely at her door and when she looked up, I introduced myself using her own name.  She looked confused for a moment, but then the light came on.  She invited me in to chat.  As it turned out, she had heard about my existence from her colleagues.  At that time I was engaged, still considering whether or not to keep my maiden name.  After speaking with this woman I decided it would be easier all around to follow my instincts and accept the gift of my husband’s name.  Since I would graduate under this married name, it was easy enough to begin my career with a new identity.  And so it came to be.

It is an interesting footnote to this tale that I never saw this woman again.  Within a year after completing my graduate degree, my husband graduated and we moved to San Francisco for his residency.  It was fourteen years before we returned to Boston.  During that time, my maiden name took on a whole new identity;  a woman with that name and about my age became a Peabody-Award winning journalist and executive producer of NPR’s All Things Considered.  Every night as I drove home from work, I heard my old name doing amazing things on the radio.  Was there something charmed about this name?  Had I been hasty in casting it off?   I wonder if giving up a name is like giving away old clothes.  Is someone's life suddenly changed by wearing my old “lucky dress?”

We take great care to name our children, choosing not only a label by which they are called, but also an identity they will grow to inhabit.  Imagine the poor mother who innocently named her kid Bill Gates, or Ted Bundy long before those names had other meanings.  My own kids will never know how much I laugh at the way they resemble the particular character of each namesake that is referenced in their own names.   It makes me wonder whether I gave away something of myself as I shed my name.  Only after returning to the piano, and then later on Facebook, did I begin using my maiden name together with my married name.  It provides a breadcrumb that leads back to the original me.

I have never met anyone with my current name.  Just for fun, I thought I would research it.  Googling myself as I am now known, I found four others on LinkedIn with the same name.  They include a facilities planner at Columbia University, a reading teacher in Louisville, KY, a grocery manager in Bellingham, WA, and a church secretary in Portland.  Another person with this married name was born in 1863 and suffered an unknown fate.  Perhaps the strangest finding is the “Ellen Dodson Appreciation Society,” no doubt created by the young girl whose face adorns the page.  Apparently she loves steak and invites her friends to party at her house while her parents are away.  She poses burning questions, such as, “Do cows explode if they don’t get milked?”

I confess I am relieved to find that Google recognizes me as the first instance of my name, lining up YouTube videos posted by piano competitions, photos from my blog, and even references to presentations I gave at healthcare industry meetings over 15 years ago.  All of these appear, thankfully, well before the young miscreant cow philosopher.  I suppose it does not really matter what a search engine makes out of the cyber-particles of my existence.  I am still the best me I know how to be.

Tomorrow's blog:  The Wizard of Ahs