Changing Names

You've received those emails before. "I just got married, so my name is changing from Susan Smith to Susan Weizenheimer. My email address will be this..." And if you have the slightest idea who Susan Smith is, you try to make a mental note of the change.

Recently, though, we got an email from an already married woman saying, "I'm officially changing my name from Susan Weizenheimer-Smith to Karen Weizenheimer. My email address will be this..." Odd. Very odd.

I have trouble when people change their names from the little-kid version to the grown-up version. From Danny to Dan or Bobby to Bob or PJ to Pamela. I can do it, but there's always a second's lagtime while I remember it's not Bobby anymore. I have this problem with one of my nephews, who had the nerve to become an adult. The other nephews spared me by breezing into adulthood with acceptable-to-them names.

So I recognize that I'm challenged by Susan/Karen's name change even more.

Today I saw her in the break room, and I asked her about it ("It's Karen, right?"). She assured me I remembered correctly. And then she told me her story.

She grew up in a predominantly Catholic country, and her parents weren't married. On the birth certificate was a box to be checked if the parents were married, and without that box checked, every Catholic institution was closed to her.

Her mother wanted Karen to attend Catholic school, because the prospects for a poor girl educated in the public schools were slim. She would probably end up married at 14, have lots of children and be used up by her mid-twenties. Catholic school would give her options.

So her mother had her baptized in the church, gave her a different name so it would be hard to trace the birth certificate with its damning empty "Married" box, and the baptismal documents gave her entree into the Catholic schools. As Susan.

Her family and neighbors knew her as Karen, and her schoolmates knew her as Susan. She spent her school years hiding out, living a double life, and hating the name she used at school. But when she came to America, her school documents had to come with her. She's been here twenty years, wearing a name that isn't hers that whole time.

Finally, she decided to become herself legally. She told some of her old classmates, "Susan has been laid to rest." Now she's Karen, and she feels relief.

But I can't help thinking about the little girl. How hard it must have been at five years old to be given a new name and denied her identity through no fault of her own. To learn over time that she was illegitimate, that the rest of her world saw her as wrong and undeserving of the respect other people had. Having to hide. Knowing shame. And wondering why.

I remember someone on the radio saying that there are no illegitimate people, only illegitimate relationships. He was right, but that hasn't stopped people through the ages from blaming the child for the sins of the parents. They blame the mother, too.

The only good thing that's come out of the sexual revolution, with its skyrocketing out-of-wedlock birth rates--and I mean the only good thing--is the loss of the stigma attached to the child. Nobody should have to endure what Karen went through.