I am, first and foremost, she thought, Irene Pollock, a person to whom the first name Irene had been given, who had then married a man called Stuart Pollock. That made her Irene Pollock, although she had always had her reservations about women adopting their husbands’ surnames. That was changing, of course, and more women were retaining their maiden names, but it would be a little bit complicated now to do that because Bertie was Bertie Pollock and Ulysses was Ulysses Pollock. She had her reservations, too, about the term maiden name. What a ridiculous notion that one was a maiden of all things before one got married. It would be far better, she felt, to use the term woman’s name, or possibly birth name, rather than maiden name. Or possibly authentic name; that had a good ring to it. You would have your authentic name, and then you would have your secondary name, another good term.

She knew of the old Scottish habit of calling women by their maiden names – or authentic names – first, and then writing or and giving their married, or secondary, name. This was the way legal documents had always been worded. So she was Irene Burgess or Pollock, which was better than being Irene Pollock née Burgess, because this form put the authentic name after the secondary name, which gave the wrong message. That implied that the state of being married – the state of being a Pollock – was more important than the state of being a person with an authentic identity – that of a Burgess. And then there was always the problem of people being unable to spell, which would mean that she might be described as Irene Pollock, nay Burgess. Of course, that at least had the merit of suggesting that Pollock was the less important identity, the nay negating its pretensions.

Had she retained her authentic name, of course, there would have been a question of what Bertie and Ulysses were called. Bertie’s full name was Bertie Wystan Pollock, but in a more egalitarian, less patriarchal society, he could as easily be called Bertie Wystan Burgess. Bertie Burgess, however, was rather too alliterative, and she had been determined not to burden her children with awkward or embarrassing names. What was that girl at school called? She cast her mind back to the roll call at the Mary Erskine School for Girls: Lorna Anderson, present, Nicola Ross, present, Mhairi Smellie, present … Poor Mhairi Smellie. Her first name, a Scots Gaelic name, was pronounced ‘vary’, which sounded close to very. The name Smellie was common enough in Scotland, but to be called something which sounded like ‘very smelly’ was a singular misfortune, and indicative, surely, of a lack of parental foresight.