Power of Words: On Naming Women

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1066

In the river of names, of all things, babies and wives are given their's by fathers and husbands--and the wives are solitary cases of having a name already given them taken away to take the husband's.   In the early- and mid-twentieth century and before, women leaving their parent's home with a husband followed the custom of leaving at least half of their social identity behind, and in many cases, all of their name disappeared as they became "Mrs. John F. Someone", burying women further into unrecoverable social and legal anonymity.   In earlier times this burial was literal--if you take a walk in a mid-19th century cemetery (and earlier) you will see some amount of smaller headstone(s) next to a larger simply reading "His Wife, Elizabeth" and some simply, in high tragedy, "His Wife".  Like burying property, the woman in death remains an asset.  

Having a woman follow a custom of taking her husband's name in marriage is an old practice in the United States, and a successful one (for centuries) of helping to keep woman as a subjugated class, and for at least maintaining a control of sorts on women's individuality.

And so far as I know this practice was a custom--I'm not aware of any state laws requiring a wife to take her husband's name. (Just in a way as "the Pirate's Code", as Capt Jack Sparrow pointed out, "was more a guideline than a set of rules".)  This was one of the great unspoken non-issues of the suffragist movement in the 19th century.  I think that the idea was too dicey and radical even for the far-liberals.  But not all:  Lucy Stone kept her name in marriage, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton so elegantly wrote about in the radical feminist magazine The Revolution in 1869 (see below).   But there were few others--the convention was perhaps too difficult and deep to deal with at the same time as  addressing the less-problematic issue of women voting.  The issue was left to the late 20th century top begin to deal with in any real way. 

So the control of an entire class of people is aided by the power of words--or a word, the husband's name.  This sort of control happens all of the time, at every level, every day.   Take "spill" for example.  There's nothing that I can think of in English that is suitable to describe exactly what continues to happen with every passing second with the BP Gulf Coast event horizon debacle.  I am certain that BP is relieved that we don't have twelves different classifications for the idea of "spill" as, say, a language for a culture which lives in perpetual snow conditions would have  twenty words for different types of snow.  No matter how much someone tries to explain what 100,000,000 gallons of oil looks like, calling it a "spill" in every breath lessens the impact of the event and the data. 

If you call something by a name right or wrong enough times, that is  what it becomes.  This is a standard advertising ploy, as the great American psychologist and inventor of behaviorism John B. Watson more or less discovered when he began work with the J. Walter Thompson agency--it didn't matter what the cigarette tasted like (hot toxic smoke and fumes from a burning plant inhaled into the lungs), so long as people remembered that they were told it was"good". 

This is also the way stereotyping functions, as well as the Big Lie.  With women, the naming process helped to subvert an individuality that suffered terribly in the courts for some time--in addition to giving up her name, a married woman (in many states) gave up much else, including the right to own her own income, the right to contest a divorce, and the right to have any say in the disposition of her children in the case of a suit for divorce brought by the husband.  Naming things does have great power. 

Notes:

From Ann Russo and Cheris Kramarae, The Radical Women's Press of the 1850's (sometimes the desired quote doesn't come up in this window; if you see just the cover of the book, advance to page 168 for the articles "Lucy Stone" and "Can a Married Woman Have a Name?"):

Comments

[Jylene61]

wonderful post John. I never thought about changing my name in that way before. very thought-provoking. I thank you very much.
I also like what you said about the 'spill'. I've been saying that all along, tho not as well as you have said it here.

[John F. Ptak]

Thanks so much, Jylene. Names are a big deal--what we call this is basically what they are (for most folks). Names define and so abbreviate, so our noggins don't have to think about the named things depths every time the name is used. The use of "spill" is a bloody joke--if "spill words" had say three levels to describe magnitude (like spill/spillroid/spillzeta or some such) and the news was using "spillzeta" all of the time, perhaps people would be treating the news differently. 10^9 gallons is something that is just difficult to visualize; 'spillzeta' is "a staggeringly enormous release of liquid" then at least there would be some sitting-up being done at the sound of the word. Or not.