[L I F E] S O C I E T Y
What’s in a Name? By Jade Emerson Illustrations by Conny Gonzalez
When I changed my name, A Name That Feels Like My Own
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I was required to list the reason why I was requesting a name change. It was before 8 a.m. on a Wednesday. I was sitting on a bench in the back of my hometown courtroom. The room was packed. Every few minutes a loud shushing sound came from one of the clerks. But the chatter and buzz were a good distraction from my own apprehension. Once I checked in, a security guard handed me (yet another) pile of pages to fill out and read to the judge. It was in those pages, between boxes to check and blanks to initial, I found that question: Why was I doing this? I was given five lines to answer it. As I zipped through the rest of the questions (most I had answered so many times they were memorized), it kept buzzing in my mind until it was the only question left. I tried to hurry and think of something to scribble down. It had taken me enough courage to get this far, and I was scared any delays would stall me for good. I wanted to fill those five lines with how unfair I thought names were. Women in their lives are given the names of their fathers, then their husbands. They are given the names of men. But what about their own names? How different would history look if it was charted under different names?
