What’s In a Name?

A beautiful poem by Israeli poet Zelda called “Each of Us Has a Name” begins:

Each of us has a name

given by God

and given by our parents

Each of us has a name

given by our stature and our smile

and given by what we wear.

What does your name mean to you? Is it part of your identity? For many women who divorce, the divorce process precipitates identity choices — and a post-divorce name, and how that relates to a women’s identity, is often one of those choices.

A colleague recently shared a fascinating article from the New York Times about a divorced woman who had initially kept her husband’s last name for many years. During treatment for a very difficult brush with cancer, she had an epiphany; one thing that was critically important for her was to take back her identity by reclaiming her maiden name. The woman asked herself the hard questions: What does it mean to keep the name of my ex-husband? How will this change affect my children who will have a different name? What does my maiden name mean to me, both before my marriage and after my divorce?

A woman’s decision about what to call herself post-divorce is a very personal and very individual one. Some women want to keep or take (if the maiden name was kept originally) the name of their soon-to-be ex-husband so that they have the same name as their children. Others may want to keep their married name because it has become a part of their identity over many decades.

Alternatively, many women are eager to take back their maiden name, yet this can feel like a major loss. To this point, the article quoted a woman who said, “I held on to my married name like a tether to the family I’d made.” She said further, “You come to own your name, just as you own your own body. It’s the skin of you, your packaging, your label, and your presentation.”

There is another alternative. One woman I worked with chose to create a new name for her post-divorce self. Her maiden name no longer felt right to her, and she wanted to shed her married name as well. Her new name reflected an ideal self and a core value that she wished to embrace in this next chapter of her life.

For many, the married name has become an identity, synonymous with the person herself. But on the other hand, depending on the circumstances of the divorce, shedding that label can be freeing.

Divorce brings about so much change on so many levels, and women can choose how they want to identify and define themselves post-divorce.