What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

—William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

I'm a three-name person. When I got married, I followed the tradition of my mother and sisters and replaced my middle name with my maiden name. I did this for several reasons. First, it appeared to be a family tradition; second, I was fiercely proud of my Kelley surname and didn’t want to drop it; and third, I had established a reputation in the Marine Corps as Elizabeth Kelley and wanted people to recognize who I was. I was in public relations and felt this credibility and recognition was important to my success. Genealogical purposes were not part of the equation when I made this decision, although it would have been a legitimate reason, as I was involved in genealogy at the time.

I have often wondered why other women use three names. I’ve posed this question to my mother and several of my three-named, female genealogical friends. Much to my chagrin, my mother’s reason was far from romantic or traditional. She said that when she came to Chicago after marrying my father, she had a letter of recommendation from her former employer that referred to her by her maiden name. That’s it! No tales of female family traditions going back centuries or indications of a budding women’s liberation movement supporter.

My friends gave a variety of reasons for their three-namedness. One said her parents deprived her of a middle name and she had always longed for a three-letter monogram. Another began using her maiden name when she became executor of her mother’s estate. She found the name recognition eased contacts with people in the small town where her mother lived. One friend said that she had a couple of reasons: she was proud of her maiden name and felt that it was a way of passing it on (since she has no brothers), and she believed her name would be more readily recognizable in her area (she is a life-long resident). Another friend indicated that vanity motivated her to use her maiden name. With her common given and surnames, she felt that using her maiden name "jazzed" up her name.

Most of the women I queried also indicated that some aspect of genealogical research played a part in using their maiden names. Some did so to broadcast their background, so people would see they had research experience in different ethnic groups. Others did so in hopes of finding cousins.

While I can’t honestly say I use Kelley to catch cousins, I can report that I recently had wonderful success in this arena. Over the years, I’ve had many people ask me about my Kell(e)ys. It is, after all, the second most common surname in Ireland, and both Kelly and Kelley are within the top two hundred most-listed surnames on the 1990 U.S. Census. But because my surname is so common, I usually don’t expect much when someone asks me about my Kelley ancestors.

That is, until one day in February of this year. Although originally from the Chicago area, I’ve lived in the small city of Plymouth, Michigan for a little over a year. My great-grandfather Fred Kelley immigrated from Greenwich, England to Detroit when he was a child, along with his parents and eight of his nine siblings. Fred moved to Illinois in the 1890s, but most of his siblings remained in the Detroit area. I’ve been tracing this line forward for years, trying to find any relatives, and when we moved to the Detroit area, I was sure I’d eventually hit pay dirt.

In February I was preparing to give a presentation to the Plymouth Historical Society. My first slide for the lecture was on the screen, and it contained my full three names. A gentleman approached and asked if Kelley was my middle or maiden name. I indicated that it was my maiden name. He said Kelley was his middle name, after his mother’s maiden name. I asked for more information on his line, and we eventually got to his grandfather, James Kelley.

I said to him, "That wouldn’t be James Leonard Kelley, would it?"

His face turned white. Standing before me was Dale Kelley Miller, my second cousin once removed. His grandfather James was the youngest of the ten Kelley siblings on whom I had amassed a great deal of information, but had not been able to bring to the present day. Since that time, I’ve noticed that there is a significant family resemblance between Dale and my father.

Dale and his wife Albina live in Plymouth also and are volunteers at the historical society. Dale has helped me fill in a lot of blanks in my Kelley family history—holes that may never have been filled if we hadn’t met, due to my three names.