Baby's Last Name

In 1977 it was pretty radical for a married couple not to give a baby the father’s name. Actually, it still is. But Tom and I were feminists, and we recognized that a patrinominal system reflects a patriarchal society, which reflects a sexist society, which we did not support. So we decided our baby did not necessarily have to have his name. Our small decision did not change society, as I’m sure you all know, but back to my story. 

We did know one couple, our friends Bob and Linda, who also planned to buck the father’s-name system, but their plan was not being tested by an actual pregnancy. Their plan was that any girl children would have Linda’s surname, and boys would have Bob’s. But Tom and I didn’t want to go in that direction and let sex determine the name. As it turned out for Bob and Linda (for those of you who like to tie up loose threads), they did later carry out their plan. Conveniently, they had one boy and one girl.

We considered combining our names. Goode and Wiseman were, after all, not bad contenders for a merger. Sure, Wisegoode sucked, but Goodman sounded fine. However, we felt Goodman, or even Goodman, would sacrifice the integrity of both our names. The integrity of a name was just a vague notion to me at the time, but in the years since I’ve developed a clearer sense that a name does have an integrity—a wholeness and a clarity that should not be distorted.

We thought about hyphenation. Goode-Wiseman? Wiseman-Goode? But what would happen when a Wiseman-Goode married a Nowinski-Nykoruk, and then the Wiseman-Goode-Nowinski-Nykoruk married a Baker-VerPorter-Waeckerle-Heitman? This clearly could not end well.

Using my name as Baby’s middle name was a possibility we considered. There were plenty of models for such use of family names. Franklin Delano Roosevelt. John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Lyndon Baines Johnson. Richard Milhous Nixon. But I really didn’t want to saddle Baby with having to become President.

Ultimately, we decided we would name one child Goode and one Wiseman. Naturally we intended to have only two children, doing our part toward zero population growth.

Then the friends started weighing in: A kid without the father’s name would make people question whether we were really married. We would be sentencing a child to playground ridicule about being a bastard. Everyone would think the kids were step-siblings, thrown together from two divorces. Our children would have lifelong identity problems. Different names would provide a breeding ground for divisiveness in our family, would worsen sibling rivalry, would lead to each child’s emotionally aligning more with one parent than the other. 

You have to put this in the perspective of 1977, mind, long before the term “blended family” came into common parlance. Also, this was before 40.2% (I just checked) was the proportion of babies being born to unmarried women. And, really, hardly any of them are called bastards. (OK, I didn’t check on that, but you hardly ever hear that name being yelled out on the Metro.)

Ignoring our friends, Tom and I stuck by our plan to divvy up the surnames of our planned two kids. But whose name would go to this first baby? In the end, it was the opposition from our friends that convinced us to give Baby my name—Wiseman. Our thinking was that if we chose Tom’s name for the Baby 1, we would make people happy, but all hell would break loose when we switched to Wiseman for Baby 2. Conversely, by using Wiseman first, the opposition would feel relieved when we named the second child Goode. (“Tom and Marian have finally come to their senses!”) Or, failing that, the outrage would have been spent because of Baby Wiseman, and they would no longer care. 

Once Rachel Wiseman arrived, I was astonished by the pleasure it gave me that she had my name. What exactly was this feeling? It was more than the extraordinary love I felt, more than the bond of motherhood. It was a feeling of great satisfaction connected specifically to her having my name. I had never suspected such a feeling even existed in the universe of human emotions. Is this what men have felt for generations? All the patriarchs of history? Small wonder the patrinominal system is so entrenched. 

None of the repercussions portended by our friends came true. Sure, Tom was Mr. Wiseman to all of her teachers, but he never objected. 

One time—she just have been eight or nine—Rachel told me that she and her best friend had been talking about what their names might be when they got married. I give myself great credit for my self-control when I heard this. I did not start shrieking, “You’ll change your name over my dead body!! You think you’re going to cave in to male dominance and set feminism back 30 years?!! Do you think your father and I gave you your name for nothing?!”

No. I was calm. Serene, even. “You do realize, don’t you, honey, that you don’t have to change your name?” With great objectivity I pointed out that it was her choice. I conceded that many women still do take their husband’s name. And I’m quite certain I did not roll my eyes when I said that, though I admit my tone might have hinted that those poor, unenlightened souls were to be pitied. I reassured her that it would be up to her when the time came.

To my friends I said, “If she changes her name, I’ll kill her.”