ABSTRACT
Women's interest in naming themselves and their experiences is central to feminist theories of identity, knowledge, and language. Its most obvious manifestation is the continuing debate in the United States about women who do not change their surnames on marriage. The first-wave women's rights advocate Lucy Stone made the issue prominent when she retained her name in her marriage in 1855 to Henry Blackwell. Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century women who followed suit were often ridiculed as "Lucy Stoners."
