Maureen Dowd's column "A Tale Of Two Rachels" ran Saturday and we wanted to note it here.
(Apologies but we can only find it 'behind the wall' at The New York Times.)
So Dowd's trying to see if a chattered 'trend' is a really a trend (something more at the paper of record should do before reporting a 'trend') and she's examining the supposed "less than patriarchal trend towards guys agreeing to merge their last names". That would be less than matriarchal as well since it's a merger as opposed to taking a wife's last name.
But we read it with anticipation, waiting for her opinion. Not in terms of what people do in their private lives. But in terms of their public life. We don't, for instance, see her marrying John Jones and deciding to start writing under the byline of "Maureen Jones."
She covers the former Jodi Wilgoren who merged her last name with her husband and came up with Jodi Rudoren. If it's in her private life, no problem. If it's in her professional life, it strikes us as a problem.
You don't go through your professional life earning your public name only to drop it. Forget marriage for a moment (although considering the divorce rate, maybe we shouldn't?), it just makes little sense. When Prince changed his name to a symbol, it created a host of problems (including the fact that most type set didn't include the symbol). But he had a reason for doing it, a protest. We could respect that.
"I did it for love!" Well let's all hope you did it for a long-lasting love because the only thing more embarrasing than giving up your professional, established name to create a blend (or take on someone else's last name) would be having to turn around in a few years and change it again.
Maybe, like Cher or Roseanne, if the marriage doesn't work out (we're hoping it works out well), she can become a one-name personality: Jodi!
Back in May, C.I. wrote a lengthy piece on that but ended up saving it for another day (despite Dona and Jim encouraging that it should go up immediately as is). C.I. returned to the topic and dispensed it with a single sentence in June.
Dowd writes a lengthy column and (though we suspect having established "Maureen Dowd," she's not about to give it up) never offers an opinion on the issue. We think that's too bad because the issue needs to be tackled.
And it was April (as C.I. insisted) not May. Did we say argue just to get C.I. to pull it up, perhaps? Here's a portion from the thing that never ran at The Common Ills. (We think it should have and this wasn't Dona and Jim's favorite part but we'll all happily go with following.)
There's an actress who had a hideous maiden name. It's no surprise she wanted to ditch it. And to use her husband's name (which was and is "a name") also wasn't surprising. But she's been divorced from him for how many decades now (and married to the songwriter -- a lot of people thought when the two marriages broke up, the couple standing would break up as well but that hasn't been the case which proves you never know)? But she grasps that her professional name was long ago set in stone and, like it or not, she's stuck with it. The marriage could end (and did) but the name is now her professional name. That a reporter can't grasp that is sad. (Or that she doesn't care.)
In my college days (the "old days"), cross-referencing was a pain in the butt. The Times hasn't cross-reference her articles (nor should they be bound by any guideline to do so). She's divorced herself from her previous reporting (which might be a good thing). You earn your professional name and that's not something to monkey around with. Nor should your marital status be part of 'marketing' your name. (My opinion.)
I have a friend, a multi-married friend, who always swears in the first months of the latest marriage that she's either going to go hyphenated or change her last name to his name. As I've asked her repeatedly, "So forty years from now, if someone sees your credit, you're expecting that they will know you also worked on this and on this and on . . .?" Cross-referencing isn't a requirement. Sometimes it's done, sometimes it isn't. If you're trying to make a professional name for yourself, you need to do it in a professional manner. (My opinion.)
To be honest, one of us didn't get the big deal and had to have it explained to him. To his credit (Jim freely admits it was him), when it was explained to him, he got it.
Maureen Dowd's choosing to write about this. By the end of the column, you're left with the impression that the blended name isn't a trend that's running wild across the country. That she establishes. But as a writer, one who's established her own name, we wish she'd shared her own thoughts on the topic. She established her name in the eighties. We can't see her ditching it to become Maureen Jones. (Though if Big Babs and Poppy split . . .)
We're also suprised, considering how she enjoys working in pop-cultural references, she failed to note the blend non-trend is a shortened version of an early-to-mid-seventies practice -- the Simon-Taylors, the Lennon-Onos. C.I. says that actually got cross-referenced as such in periodical guides. The two examples cited dropped it before the seventies came to end. Carly Taylor or Carly Hart just doesn't conjure the same meaning Carly Simon does.