What's in a Name—Different Pay?

There’s no sweeter sound than to hear one’s name! It means someone is addressing us, knows us, and is talking to us. Over the years we color our name with who we are and thus identify with it. Our name obtains meaning.

It jolts us if someone misspells or mispronounces it, or calls us by someone else’s name. There may be exceptions, though. I had an aunt who was extraordinarily beautiful and was always surrounded by countless beaus—too many to remember their names. So she called them all Peter—it was her favorite name, she told them, and she got away with it. Two of them even made the change of name legal.

It’s quite important to get people’s name right. I remember a beau who wanted to marry me, but I turned him down because he kept misspelling my name. Years later when he was between marriages he asked me a second time, and years later a third time. My friends were greatly in favor of it, he had looks, money and fame; but he still misspelled my name and I kept turning him down. I’m glad I did!  Who needs a life partner who’s so absorbed in his own world that he notices nothing else?

My grandmother chose my name after the Nun Roswitha von Gandersheim who lived a thousand years ago in Germany and is still famous today for the plays she wrote—not in Latin, as was the custom then, but in German so everyone could understand them. They were all about prostitutes! and their redemption to virtue and grace.

In the 70s I applied for a job as head of a research department. The director liked my credentials and the prospect of having to pay me only half as much as the male applicants. But something bothered him. In those days, the head of a department could not be a female! It had to be a man, after all, he had to sign research reports and letters for the company and would be receiving considerable mail.

Then it came to him. His face brightened and he turned to me, “Roswitha is a nice name, but you don’t mind if we shorten it to Ros—Mr. Ros McIntosh.

How about a man’s pay?  No way!

I nodded in stunned silence. A few months later I sent him my resignation: “Thank you for hiring me as Head of your Research Department,” it said. “But change my name and hide my gender—all for a secretary's meager wage? No thank you.”

It’s an up-hill battle for women to gain equal compensation, but then, it's just as tough for men to give up that pleasant status of male superiority.

Rosi