What’s in the name Mullarkey?

A short but poignant reflection on names by my friend Maureen Mullarkey, What’s In a Name?. The most poignant part:

Early on in my professional life, I was encouraged to shed my married name. My maiden name was pretty; it had a sturdy British ring to it. No popular banality attached to it. Besides, women were increasingly accustomed to keeping the name they were born with. But I had not chosen my birth name nor the male line that gave it to me. I did choose my husband. I took his name as I took him, a gift. I understood it not an erasure of identity—as feminist thinking had it—but as a sign of the perfection of it.

Here’s her weblog and her website.