Confessions of a Stepford wife (was Names)

[Rita Winston]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., aichambaye at y... wrote:

> Me, I went from Heather A. Denton to Heather A. D. Mbaye. (snip)
>  Now I have a cool academic name.

It IS a cool academic name.  Names with multiple middle initials are 
disinctive. But there are so many forms to fill out and computerized 
databases that only allow one middle initial, that many people I know 
have had to choose.  (Usually the people I know who have multiple 
middle initials got them from their baptismal and confirmation names, 
not by marriage.)

A woman I know changed her name (not because of marriage) to Leigh 
(something) (something) Strother-Vien, of which her previous name had 
been Doris Elaine Strother, but her job forced her to to have only 
three initials for her ID for the computer system, so she chose LSV.

What I accidentally left out of the previous post (it isn't really 
relevant to this post) is that Miss Manners wrote that people can do 
whatever they want to their own names, but the actual rule of 
etiquette is to CHANGE the last name, that is, keep first and middle 
names, drop maiden name, add husband's surname. That is only one of 
a myriad of examples in which what EVERYONE does is opposite of what 
Miss Manners say is etiquette.