What’s in a Name? An Exercise in Feminist Genealogy
My full name used to be Dana Louise Brown. I married a Weitzenberg when I was 22; I took his last name. Our two children are Weitzenbergs.
My parents made the unusual move of giving me, as a first name, my mother’s maiden name, Dana. My uncle, Howard Hinkley Dana Jr., inherited and then continued a lot of genealogy research about my mother’s side of our family. So I have always felt very connected to my “Dana line” and can spout random genealogical facts, such as: All Danas in the U.S. are descendants of one immigrant, Richard Dana (1617–1690) … and Dana Point in California is named for my fourth cousin five times removed, Richard Henry Dana Jr. (1815–1882). He wrote about first seeing the beautiful coastal spot in his famous book Two Years Before the Mast.
My maiden name, Brown, cannot claim the same commonality among namesakes in this country. There are a LOT of us, and all Browns in the U.S. are NOT descendants of a single immigrant. There are at least three separate Brown lines in my ancestry alone. And, ironically, the Browns on my mother’s side have a more significant claim to fame in New England, where I grew up, than the Browns of my maiden name — my mother’s great-great-grandfather J.B. Brown was a prominent figure in Portland, Maine’s history.
As mentioned earlier, I took my husband’s last name when we married. At that time, I decided to keep my middle name, Louise (my paternal grandmother’s first name), instead of the more traditional convention of taking one’s maiden name as one’s middle name at marriage. I remember saying, “It just sounds better, and it’s not like the name Brown is going to die out…”
So I became a Weitzenberg, and I was no longer a Brown — by name. But, still a Dana.
What’s in a name? Our naming convention seems so arbitrary and more than a little sexist. Year after year, generation after generation, we drop our mother’s name and keep our father’s.
A name is just a name. But it is also is a constant reminder of who you are, a tangible connection to others. I was recently contacted via LinkedIn by a Weitzenberg in Germany, who sent me his genealogy research in hopes that we could connect our lineage. Jeff’s cousin is fond of telling his sons, “You’re a Weitzenberg,” in a stern tone that suggests that the name carries a profound weight of strength, toughness, and I’m not sure what else. The way he says it implies that it “means something” to be a Weitzenberg; that it’s more than just a name.
Recently I was daydreaming about what it would be like if we flipped the script on this patriarchal genealogy. What if we were all walking around carrying the names of our mothers — our women ancestors — and we had dropped the men’s names, year after year? Who would we be today? In my head, I dubbed this concept “Feminist Genealogy.”
It’s a fun exercise. If you’re a genealogy buff like me, open up your ancestry file and go back, mother by mother, as far as your research goes. Whatever woman you end up on: she provides you with your Feminist Genealogy name.
My name would be Dana Bunbury, proud descendant of Hannah Bunbury, born in 1763 in Massachusetts. I know almost nothing else about Hannah Bunbury, unfortunately. But I will be researching. Bunbury! A name I’ve never even heard mentioned by my uncle or anyone else. I imagine telling my sons, “You’re a Bunbury,” in a tone that implies it means something important, to be a Bunbury.
Of course, as fun as it is to imagine a strong line of women proudly carrying on their mother’s names, this method of arriving at the last name is also arbitrary. Why should my mother’s mother’s name be passed on to me while my father’s mother’s name is not?
Combining our parents’ last names would surely be the fairest method. This is not an original idea: I address quite a few of my holiday cards to hyphenated family names. In some cultures, primarily Spanish-speaking countries, including both parents’ surnames in a child’s name is the norm. Had my parents hyphenated their last names at marriage and passed that on to us, that would have made my given name Dana Dana-Brown (or Dana Brown-Dana, depending on the order they settled on). I’m guessing they might have chosen a different first name for me if this were the naming convention!
But wait — this hyphenated name is just the last names of my two grandfathers. What about my grandmothers? Shouldn’t my name reflect theirs, too? Adding their two last names would make me Dana Clifford-Dana-Williams-Brown (or Dana Brown-Williams-Dana-Clifford). Better … except now I would be carrying on the names of my four great-grandfathers and not my four great-grandmothers.
You see where this is going. My Feminist Genealogy last name of Bunbury is still nowhere to be seen, and it won’t appear until I keep adding mothers’ names all the way back to Hannah Bunbury’s generation. Which, in this particular case, would give me 256 last names.
The patriarchy runs deep in our past. Accepted norms of naming continue to influence how we see ourselves and our place in this world. In our not-so-distant history, men were the ones who “made a name for themselves” while women played a supporting role. Gender roles may be changing in today’s world, but our naming conventions haven’t changed much. Should they? That is a big question.
All I know for sure is: I’m a Weitzenberg by marriage; by birth, I’m a Brown and a Dana. And, thanks to Feminist Genealogy, I just found out that I’m also a Bunbury. Plus hundreds and hundreds of other names, including an important one that I haven’t discovered yet. At least not until I can figure out who Hannah Bunbury’s mother was.
