I'm fired up today (not an abnormal state--I'm usually all fired up about something) because in the mail I received not one but two letters addressed to "Mr. and Mrs. Clay Kallman."

I looked around the house, wondering who the heck was calling herself such a silly name and saw only the dog--looking slightly confused--and myself, reflected in a mirror. It couldn't be the dog: he's a boy. I couldn't believe it, but I think the Mrs. Clay Kallman part referred to me.

I had kept my maiden name for many reasons beyond the fact that I'm a writer and had begun to publish under my original name (which was my convenient flak-suit to keep off the in-laws' heavy artillery). Basically, I had taken a Feminist Philosophy class during my formative years, and identity politics at eighteen is heady stuff. Since then I've been a fierce feminist (in the only rational definition of the word, of course: that I love women as much as I love men and want the world to have more equality between the sexes. Woe to the silly matron at the party who says, with a white pinch of disgust to her nostrils, that she is "no feminist"--but I digress, and that's the subject of another blog).

What my studies back then taught me is that there is great power in naming. The bully who hands out elementary school nicknames puts those nicknamed souls under his power; I, for one, will forever resent those boys who called me "Daisy Baggins" since fourth grade (so sue me for reading "The Hobbit" when they were reading "Horton Hears a Who"). A parent names a child, establishing authority over the child. I refused to give my husband more authority over me than that which he gave to me, and so suggested, when it was time to get married, that we would put both last names--Groff and Kallman--in a hat, and we would choose one randomly. One of my favorite couples took the wife's name--I saw nothing wrong with that. Clay demurred; I got to keep my name.

(Incidentally, the kids will be Kallmans--Clay's an only son, and I thought it cruel to insist on that, too. But it still seems a little mean that I'll have to suffer through forty weeks of pregnancy, and he, whose role in composition was notably small, gets the byline.)

Now, the offense of Mr. and Mrs. Clay Kallman wasn't so much that the addressing agents neglected to know that I had my very own name, or even that I chose very deliberately to be a Ms. That is understandable: they probably don't know me. But even had I taken my husband's last name, I find it utterly gross that the etiquette calls for the dissolution of the woman's whole identity in the addressed relationship. To be identified as the last name that you elected to take is totally fine: to be identified solely as the silent, invisible partner of the male party, who is by implication far more important, is simply insulting.

"I matter too," I said, letters in hand, to the dog: "I matter equally." He (male!) yawned and went back to his bed.

I know that this is something all etiquette books say is standard, but I think it's time to change the etiquette. It's no longer standard etiquette for a man to throw a cape over a mudpuddle so a woman can keep her feet dainty and dry (though bringing capes back would be a marvel); it's no longer seen as socially inappropriate to lop off the heads of serfs who can't keep up with the empress's sleigh.

Besides, the whole point of etiquette is to make people feel socially at ease, isn't it? Giving them full value as human beings in a relationship is a start.