Saturday, September 23, 2006

lucy stoners

I heard once, years and years ago, the name given to women who keep their own last names when marrying. I forgot it soon after and have since wondered what search might turn it up. Now I've stumbled onto the term quite by chance and also been given a clue about what search would do the trick.

Looking up information on Alice Stone Blackwell, a long-lived agitator for women's rights, I found her to be the daughter of Lucy Stone, who "was the first woman to earn a college degree in Massachusetts, the first woman to keep her maiden name when she married and she was also the first woman to speak full-time on woman’s rights."

So Lucy Stoner was the term I sought, and the search could have been "first woman keep maiden name." In fact this search turns up a Wikipedia page on the Lucy Stone League, a group organized to support use of maiden names by married women. Searching "Lucy Stoner" turns up a page with the title "I am a Lucy Stoner" and a bunch of other interesting sites.

Lucy Stone, from a painting by Numael Pulido; source: http://www.wwhp.org/Activities/Portraits/stone.html

addendum: An image search for lucy stoner turns up photos of a stoned Lucy or two.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dude, mom's a stoner?

Jeff said...

That's it!