13 Sep Names

When my daughters married, they took their husbands’ surnames – a once prominent tradition that has weakened over the past several decades. Taking their husbands’ names did not stop them from being my daughters, it just made it a little more difficult for strangers to identify them as such.
I know sons who have upon marriage taken their wives’ surnames names, rather than the reverse. Is this to better identify with the spouse, or an attempt to disguise their origins? One cannot know.

Names and titles are generally considered methods for identification and recognition. The title Doctor conveys recognition of an advanced level of educational attainment. The name Rockefeller has become synonymous with wealth, Kennedy with political power. Titles can also be used to obfuscate and mislead.

In the financial industry, this happens all the time. Mutual funds that perform poorly over consecutive years often change their names to distance themselves from their own histories. The self-regulatory body for the brokerage industry was called the National Association of Securities Dealers or NASD until brokers began to fall out of favor, where upon they changed their name to FINRA, removing the words ‘securities’ and ‘dealers’ from their title altogether.
Salespeople for brokerage and insurance companies also use titles to mislead. For example, one advertisement I recently read referred to a “Portfolio Manager’s designations and registrations,” citing a series of half-a-dozen numbered accomplishments – Series 7, Series 24, Series 31, etc. These FINRA registrations are in fact licenses to sell various types of securities. That makes the “Portfolio Manager” in fact the registered representative of (or salesperson for) a brokerage firm – not, apparently, what they want to communicate with any clarity.
Some of my favorite misleading names include the parkway upon which we drive and the driveway upon which we park; Greenland which is icy and Iceland which is greener; and the tufted titmouse which one might expect to find nibbling cheese beneath the kitchen table, but is more likely to be seen flying to and from the bird feeder.