Cultural English 427 - E.B. White; Name change after marriage; Q&A

Complete Transcript

This is English as a Second Language Podcast’s English Café episode 427.

I'm your host, Dr. Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.

On this Café, we’re going to talk about a famous American writer named E. B. White. You may never have heard of E. B. White, but you probably have heard of some of his famous books. We’re also going to talk about the custom and process of women who change their last names after marriage. And, as always, we’ll answer some of your questions. Let's get started.

We begin this Café with E. B. White, a famous American author. Elwyn Brooks White, more commonly known by his initials, “E. B.,” was born on July 11th, 1899, in the city of Mount Vernon in the state of New York. There are actually two famous Mount Vernons. The most famous one is in Virginia and is famous because it is the name of the home of George Washington, our first president. Mount Vernon, New York, is an actual town, and that's where E. B. White was born. It's about 21 miles, 34 kilometers, north of New York City.

E. B. White was the youngest of six children. He had two brothers and three sisters. He graduated from a university – a well-known university in the state of New York, called Cornell – in 1921. After graduation, E. B. White went to work for a few different newspapers and advertising companies. He eventually got a job as a contributing editor at one of the most famous literary magazines in the United States, The New Yorker. The New Yorker is considered to have some of the best writing in modern American English – the best reporting, the best reviews, and so forth.

There are, of course, many different magazines that have similar kinds of articles, but The New Yorker is considered the best – if not, one of the best – in the U.S. White joined as a contributing editor at the magazine. A “contributing editor” is a person typically who writes stories for a magazine, journal, or newspaper, and is allowed to write about whatever he or she likes. It depends, of course, on the magazine. The verb “to contribute” (contribute) means to be part of something, to give something to, usually, a common effort. In this case, it would be giving your writing to the magazine to publish.

White wrote at The New Yorker pretty much his entire career, until he died in 1985. He died of the effects of Alzheimer's disease, a disease of the mind where people slowly lose their memories and the ability to remember. In 1929, White married another editor at The New Yorker magazine, Katharine Sergeant Angell (Angell). Angell and White were married for 48 years. They had one child together, a son. They lived in New York City until 1938, when they moved to a farm – a house with a large space for animals and growing food. Their farm was in Maine. They moved because they wanted to live somewhere quiet and peaceful. New York City's very exciting, but it is not quiet and peaceful.

Even though they were in a different state, White and Katharine kept their jobs at the magazine. This is something that we consider quite common nowadays with the Internet, but imagine: this was back in the 1930s – late 30s – and all the way through the early 1980s. They lived in Maine, but worked for The New Yorker magazine in New York City. They loved living in Maine. They loved writing. They loved gardening. They loved being on their farm. Unhappily, Katharine, the wife of E. B. White, died in 1977, about eight years before White himself passed away, or died.

E. B. White is famous for three things, really: first, the one that we talked about already, his work on the magazine The New Yorker. He wrote more than 15 books of prose and poetry. “Prose” (prose) is the word we give for the normal kind of writing that you will find in a book. “Poetry” is something that is written in a very special format and doesn't necessarily have the same sentence structure or even grammatical structure as prose. People who write poetry are called “poets.” You can think of people such as Shakespeare, or John Milton, or T.S. Eliot, or Yeats, or Tennyson. There are hundreds of English poets throughout history. I'm giving you some of the famous English poets, or poets who wrote in English. “Prose” is everything that's not poetry, for the most part.

White also wrote many essays – short pieces of writing on specific topics – and these were the things that you could find in The New Yorker. Most of his essays were published in that magazine. White won many awards for his writing, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 and the Pulitzer Prize, which is the highest award for journalism and writing in the United States. However, White is more famous for the other two kinds of writing that he did. The first kind was writing for children.
White wrote a couple of very famous children's books, and the children's books ended up being more popular than his books for adults.

The most popular of his children's books, still read today in thousands of schools and millions of homes in the United States, is Charlotte's Web. Charlotte's Web was published in 1952. It's a story about a pig named Wilbur and his friend Charlotte, who is a beautiful spider. It's a story of friendship and love between friends. It's an amazing little story. If you ask any American who was born and raised here, or who went to school from a young age in the United States, they will tell you that they know and probably love Charlotte's Web. I do. I remember when my teacher in, I guess it was second or third grade, and read the story to our class.

This book is a very powerful one for young children, and if you haven't read it, I would strongly suggest you try to get a copy and read it. It's very well worth reading because it's written for children. The language is not too difficult. In fact, if you have children and are helping them improve their English, you might want to try Charlotte's Web. It's a “classic story,” we might say. It's a story that's considered one of the best children's stories of the last 75 years or so.

White also wrote a couple of other famous children's books, especially Stuart Little. Stuart Little is a book that was first published in 1945. It's a story of a mouse that is born to a human family, and we see Stuart growing up and learning to be independent in the family. There were a couple of movies that were made based on the Stuart Little books that you may have seen, or perhaps your children have seen. The third famous children's book by E. B. White is called The Trumpet of the Swan, which was published in 1970.

I said White was famous for three kinds of writing. The first kind was his essays for The New Yorker, including his books of prose and poetry. The second kind is the children's books that he wrote. The third kind was writing about how to write – specifically, how to write in English. White had a college professor at Cornell by the name of William S. Strunk, and Strunk wrote a book called The Elements of Style. White wrote an essay on the book for The New Yorker in 1957 and then published a revision – a new and updated version – of The Elements of Style in 1959.

This was the first of three revisions White would publish. They apparently published a fourth revision in the year 2000. Since White had died in 1985, of course he really didn't contribute very much to the fourth revision. By 2009, the revised version of The Elements of Style had sold more than 10 million copies. I have a copy of The Elements of Style. I think I have the second edition, actually. I've had it since probably the late 1970s when I was in high school.

Any serious writer in the United States – any journalist, anyone who wants to do writing, especially professionally – has a copy of Strunk and White's The Elements of Style. In fact, if they don't have a copy of The Elements of Style, I would be very suspicious of their writing, because it's a classic book that is considered one of the best advice books, really, about how to write in English. It's a short book, only about maybe 70, 75 pages. It's not a grammar book. It's a book that talks about how to use the English language.

Every language has its own style of writing. If you’ve read writing in a language other than your own, you know that there are different ways of expressing yourself. There are different ways of putting sentences together, putting paragraphs together, putting articles and longer pieces of writing together. Every language has its own way of doing that – not just the words, but the way it's actually structured. The Elements of Style gives you a lot of good information about how that works in English.

I don't normally recommend the book to someone learning English unless they're fairly advanced, but if you feel like you want to improve your writing – if you feel like you know all the basics of the vocabulary and the grammar, but you want now to sound more like a American writer – at least you might want to pick up a copy of The Elements of Style. I said the book is a short book. It's very clear and concise in its advice. The word “concise” (concise) means giving a lot of information in a short amount of time, and that's exactly what Strunk and White's book does. Next to the dictionary, it's probably the most common book you will find on the bookshelf of a writer in the U.S.

Our second topic is going to be the tradition of women changing their last names after they get married. This is extremely common in English-speaking countries, even today. I want to talk a little bit about how this tradition got started, or at least how it evolved and changed over the years, as well as talk about the actual steps you have to take, when you get married, to change your name.

In the United States, as in other countries, there is this tradition of a woman changing her last name to her husband's last name after the two of them get married. There are a number of ways that women have changed their names. Some women take their maiden name and make it their middle name. The “maiden (maiden) name” is the name of a woman who gets married and then changes her name. It's the name that the woman was born with.

So, if a woman's name is Sarah Brown and she marries Bob Johnson, she may change her name to “Sarah Johnson.” Brown is her “maiden name.” The word “maiden” just refers to a woman who is not married. It's an old word. We don't really use it very much anymore, other than in this particular case of talking about the “maiden name” of a woman who has gotten married and changed her last name.

Some women will make the maiden name their middle name, or they will just add the husband's name on at the end of their name. So, Sarah Brown could change her name to “Sarah Brown Johnson.” That happens sometimes. I'm not sure exact how common that is. It's more common, certainly, for a woman simply to change her last name and no longer use her maiden name. In recent years, perhaps the last 30 or 40 years, some women have started to hyphenate their last name, putting the maiden name “hyphen” (-) and then the husband's name. So, if Sarah Brown marries Bob Johnson, her last name would become “Sarah Brown-Johnson.”

There are also cases where both the husband and the wife will change their last names. I knew of a couple of cases of this when I was living back in Minnesota. Both the husband and the wife changed their name. So, Bob's new name would be “Bob Brown-Johnson.” I would say that was more popular back in the 1980s and 1990s than it is today, though there are still some couples who will do that.

The convention or tradition of a woman changing her name after marriage itself has changed over time. A major reason for this change is, at least in the United States, what we could describe as the “feminist movement.” The “feminist movement” was a social and political movement to get women the same rights and opportunities as men. We usually think about the 1960s and 70s in particular as being times when the feminist movement was considered most popular. However, there are other changes in American life that caused some women to decide not to change their names – to keep their maiden names – certainly, the increased participation of women in the workforce.

The fact that more women now work full-time than back in the 40s or 50s has caused some women to decide not to change their names, especially if they begin to become successful in whatever their job or career is. People know them by their name before they got married, so they want to keep that connection, if you will, with their last name, and so they don't change the last name.

Many times, changes in social convention, social customs, will sort of move in one direction. You start having people changing the way things are done, and it continues to change and it never goes back. However, that has not been the case with women and their last names after getting married. Many women in the 1990s, for example, decided they were going to keep their last name after marriage. In one poll, or one survey, 23 percent of women said they were keeping their maiden names after they got married. That was in the 1990s. In a more recent poll, in the year 2011, only 8 percent of women said they were going to keep their maiden names after marriage.

So, it's one of those things that was very popular in the 70s, 80s, and 90s – although it was always a relatively small percentage of women who did not change their name to their husbands last name – but now in the last 10, 15 years or so, it has become less popular. So, these conventions, these customs, change as the culture changes. I don't think we know yet what will happen in those countries and those states in the U.S. where people of the same sex marry.

I want to say a little bit about how women change their names – how they go through the process of changing their names. First, a woman needs to get a copy of her marriage certificate. Your “marriage certificate” is a document that the state gives you that says that you are married – you are legally married to, in this case, your husband. Then, a woman needs to send a copy of that marriage certificate to the Social Security Office.

“Social Security” is a government program in the U.S. that helps people after they retire, after they finish working. It's supposed to provide benefits – money – to people, and you pay taxes when you work in the United States that go toward the Social Security fund.
The Social Security system is probably the closest we have to a national system of identification in the U.S.

A woman would mail the marriage certificate, or perhaps nowadays email it, to the Social Security office. The woman would then be given a new Social Security card, although I suspect the number stays the same. Social Security gives everyone a number, a – let’s see . . . three, four, five . . . a nine digit number. Then the woman would bring a copy of the Social Security card and her marriage certificate and probably change things like her driver’s license and any other official documents that might be in her maiden name.

It is recommended that women go through this process within two months of getting married. That is, no later than two months after they get married. This helps you to be sure that there will be fewer complications or problems with the Internal Revenue Service, which is the government agency that collects taxes each year from people. They want your current name and, of course, your money.

Now let's answer some of the questions you have sent to us.

Our first question comes from Meng (Meng) in China. Meng wants to know the difference between an “appliance” and a “utensil.” An “appliance” (appliance) is any device or piece of equipment in a house, usually for cleaning and cooking, although it might also include a refrigerator. When we talk about “appliances,” usually we are talking about things in the kitchen part of the house: a refrigerator, an oven, a dishwasher, a stove – all of these would be considered “appliances.” There are a few other machines that we would also call an “appliance.” A vacuum cleaner, for example, which you use to clean floors, usually carpeted floors, with – that is also considered an appliance.

Sometimes, especially if you go into a department store to buy an appliance, they’ll be separated by large appliances and small appliances. Large appliances would include, as already mentioned, refrigerators, stoves, ovens, but also washing machines and dryers. Small appliances – most often used in the kitchen, and therefore sometimes also called “kitchen appliances” – would include microwaves, blenders (“blenders” are the things that you use to make juice, for example), toasters to toast your bread, coffee makers to make, let’s see, I think it's coffee. Those are examples of small appliances.

There are some small appliances that are not used in the kitchen. For example, an iron, to make sure there aren't any wrinkles in your clothing – so that you shirt is flat and your pants are flat. Sewing machines would also be considered perhaps a small appliance, although my mother had a very big sewing machine, very complicated. It could do all sorts of things. I think it had a computer in there or something. Anyway, that's a list of some appliances that would commonly be found in the home.

A “utensil” (utensil) is typically a smaller tool that is used in the home, especially in the kitchen, often for things like cooking – which is, of course, what you do primarily in a kitchen. Well, I don't do that, but some people do that in their kitchens. There are lots of examples of utensils. Those used specifically for cooking would include things like knives, spatulas – which is a flat utensil that you would use to turn a hamburger over, or turn eggs over in a pan, for example – cooking spoons, peelers – things that you would use to take the skin off of, say, a potato.

Even can openers would be considered utensils, cooking utensils, even though the food is often cooked when you open it. That's my favorite kind of canned food. Utensils that you use at the table to eat are called, logically enough, “eating utensils.” That would include forks, knives, and spoons. There are different kinds and sizes of these eating utensils. We could talk about a steak knife, which is a sharp knife used to cut meat like steak. We could also talk about butter knives, which are knives but they're not as sharp, and they would be used for things like putting butter on your bread.

A general term that you will often hear Americans use to refer to eating utensils is “silverware.” “Silverware” (silverware) is technically eating utensils that are made from silver. However, most eating utensils are not made from silver, especially in a restaurant, and yet people still use this term. So, if you hear someone say, “I need some silverware,” they’re not asking for utensils made from silver, necessarily. They're just talking about eating utensils.

Out next question comes from Julien (Julien) in the small, but I think beautiful, country of Andorra, which is in between Spain and France. Julien wants to know the meaning of the expressions “to jibe” and “at odds with.” “To jibe” (jibe) or “to jibe with” means to be in agreement with something, to be what is expected or is assumed. We often use this in talking about two different stories or two different versions of stories, or someone telling you a story and you already knowing something about it.

If one thing “jibes with” another, it's consistent. It follows the same pattern. You see that your son has had an accident, and you ask your son to explain what happened, and if what he tells you seems to be supported by the evidence of the car, then you might say, “Oh, well that jibes with what I see here – that you had this kind of accident.” “To jibe with” has this meaning of corresponding to the truth or corresponding to another version or another aspect of a story.

“To be at odds (odds) with” is the opposite. It's not to be in agreement with. It's not to jibe with what you already know. Somewhat more formal terms for these expressions would be “to agree with,” “to be consistent with,” or “to be in accord with.” Of course, the negatives would also work there: “not to agree with,” “not to be in accord with,” “not to be consistent with.”

Finally, Bruno (Bruno) in Brazil wants to know the difference between “I'm in here” and “I'm here” without the “in.” “I'm in here” means you are inside a certain place, such as a room. If you have a house or an apartment that has more than one room, and you don't know where someone is, you might call out their name – say, if you're looking for your daughter or your wife, you might say, “Julie.” And Julie, who is in her bedroom, might say, “I'm in here,” because you can't see her but you can hear her, and now you know where she is.

That's different from saying simply, “I'm here.” “I'm here” is something you might say when you arrive at a place. It is especially used when someone is looking for you, or expecting you, or calls your name, but doesn't realize that you're there. Perhaps there's a big group of people and someone says, “Where's Julie?” And Julie would say, “I'm here” – I am present, I am at this location where you are.

We can also actually use that expression on the phone sometimes. Someone might say, “Are you there?” Are you listening? Then you say, “Yes, I'm here,” meaning “Yes, I am listening.” This happens a lot on cell phones, on cellular phones. When the cellular signal – the telephone signal – is not very strong, sometimes you can’t hear a person, and you may say, “Are you there?” And they'll say, “Yes, I'm here.”

A final place you might hear this expression, “I'm here,” is in a classroom. If a teacher is going through the list of students and seeing who is present and not present, she will say “Julie Smith?” And Julie will say, “I'm here,” although it's more common in that situation for Julie simply to say, “Here,” meaning I am here. I am present. I am not out smoking a cigarette with my girlfriends. Well, not right now, anyway.

From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan. Thank you for listening. Come back and listen to us again right here on the English Café.

Glossary

contributing editor – a person who writes for a magazine, journal, or newspaper who can choose what stories he or she wants to write about

* One of the benefits of being a contributing editor is that you don’t have to ask permission to write about topics that interest you.

prose – writing that is consists of sentences and paragraphs

* Most novels are written in prose and can be easily read and understood.

poetry – writing with a certain rhythm or strong repeated pattern and often not in complete sentences

* Some people find poetry difficult to understand because it is written in short combinations of words instead of full sentences.

essay – a short piece of writing on a specific topic that makes a point or argument or gives information

* Toshi was asked to write a short essay on why he liked dogs more than cats.

concise – giving a lot of information or saying a lot of things in a few words; saying something complicated in only a few words

* Instead of giving a long explanation for why she was late, Susy gave the concise answer: “There was traffic.”

maiden name – a woman’s last name given to her at birth, before she changes it after marriage

* Sally’s maiden name was Thomas, and her married name is Gonzalez.

convention – tradition; something that is commonly done

* If we follow convention, we should list our parents’ names on our wedding invitations.

feminist movement – a movement to get women the same rights as men

* As a result of the feminist movement, many asked why women were expected to stay home with children instead of being able to work outside of the home.

poll – a method of research where many people are asked the same questions

* A poll conducted last year asked 1,000 women their views of on laws related to the environment.

marriage certificate – the government document showing that two people are legally married to each other

* A marriage certificate states the names of the two people who are married as well as the date and the state in which the marriage took place.

Social Security – a government program that gives money each month to people who are retired that is paid for by people who are working

* When people reach age 65, they are allowed to stop working and start collecting Social Security payments.

Internal Revenue Service – the national government agency that collects taxes

* Each year, Americans who have earned money during the previous year pays taxes to the Internal Revenue Service by the 15th of April.

appliance – a device or piece of equipment used to perform a specific task, usually one for doing work around the home, such as cleaning and cooking

* We’re looking to rent an apartment that has major appliances, such as a refrigerator and a washer and dryer.

utensil – a tool or container used for work around the home, especially the kitchen

* It’s hard to make bread without a rolling pin and other cooking utensils.

to jibe (with) – to be in agreement with; to be what is expected or assumed

* The police said that our explanations about what happened didn’t jibe.

to be at odds with – to not be in agreement with; to be different from what is expected or assumed

* Our building plans are at odds with the city’s regulations, so we’ll need to make changes.

I’m in here – I am inside of this room or other structure

* A: Hi, is anyone home?

B: I’m in here.

I’m here – I have arrived; I am present

* I’m here! Don’t leave without me.

What Insiders Know

Unusual Celebrity Name Changes

Many celebrities change their names for one reason or another. Here are a few of the most unusual name changes.

Snoop Dogg

Calvin Cordozar Broadus, Jr. is better known as “Snoop Dogg.” Snoop Dog is an American “rapper” (performer who rhymes to music), songwriter, and producer (person who supervises the making of different types of entertainment). He has also appeared in several TV “reality” (filming real people, not actors) shows like Snoop Dogg’s Fatherhood and Dogg After Dark. It’s not unusual for rappers to “adopt” (take) a “stage name” (name used for performing), and some rappers even change their stage names during their career. In 2013, Snoop Dog surprised everyone by announcing he had changed his name to “Snoop Lion.”

The Artist Formerly Known as Prince

Prince Rogers Nelson, also known as “Prince” is also an American songwriter, musician, and actor. He has won several “Grammy Awards” (awards for music), a “Golden Globe” (awards given for TV and films), and an “Academy Award” (award given for films). In 1993, Prince changed his name to a symbol, which he called “The Love Symbol.” The symbol was a combination of the symbols for a male and a female. People didn’t have any idea how to pronounce the symbol, and from that time on, Prince was known as “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.”

Chad Ochocinco

Chad Chavon Johnson was a professional football player. He played for the Cincinnati Bengals from 2001 to 2010, as well as the New England Patriots in 2011 and the Miami Dolphins in 2012. On October 25, 2006, he changed the name listed on the back of his “jersey” (uniform shirt) from “C. Johnson” to “Ochocinco” – which means 85 in Spanish – “in honor of” (to recognize and show respect for) “Spanish Heritage Month.” Although the National Football League – the official professional football organization – “penalized” (punished) him that night for changing his jersey name, Chad eventually “legalized” (made legal) his name change on August 29, 2008.