My Name: LEE LADY

  • It's pronounced "lady," just as in "My Fair Lady" or "That's Why the Lady Is a Tramp," or "What do you say to a naked lady when you wander into the laundry room at three o'clock in the morning when everybody's supposed to be asleep?"

  • I sometimes get surprised email from people on the net who have just discovered that I'm a male. "I assumed that you must be female, since your last name is Lady."

    I have to explain to them that I come from a long line of lesbians, and was the first male child in several generations -- a source of some embarrassment to all my lesbian relatives.
    (But then how all those lesbians managed to get pregnant in order to perpetuate the family name is a mystery in itself. [ SMILEY ])

  • I can tell you that being a little boy with the last name Lady was no fun in first and second grade. On the other hand, growing up in Hawaii with a last name like Saruwatari or Keli'iho'umalu would also have been strange.

  • When I was living in California, I was quite annoyed to discover that the Lucky Grocery Stores there have a house brand they call Lady Lee. It's a good thing for them that I don't have litigious inclinations, because I'm sure that I had the name first.

    Sometimes people on the net refer to me as Lady Lee, either intentionally or otherwise. It doesn't especially bother me. It says something about them, but it doesn't really say anything about me. Actually, I kind of liked it back when almost everybody on the net assumed that I was female.

  • The name Lady is English, apparently derived from a German name Leidig or Leydich. One Johann Philipp Leydich, born in Germany, arrived in Philadelphia from Holland (or possibly England) on the good ship "Ann" in 1749. One Phillip Lady, presumably his son, served in the York County Volunteer Militia during the Revolutionary War and then seems to have migrated through the Cumberland Gap to eastern Tennessee. Some Ladys went to Kentucky, and others to Georgia, Ohio, and other places.

    Earlier, one Zackary Lady had arrived in Virginia, apparently from England, in 1650.

  • Somebody once called me up out of the blue while visiting Honolulu several years ago. He said that he had managed to trace the name back to a small town in Tennessee. I remember him saying that the name of the town was Foul Branch. It didn't sound like a place I'd want to brag about being from. More recently, I saw a list of various Lady families in the U.S. There were more in Tennessee than in any other state, and there were several in Fall Branch, TN. Probably I misheard what was said over the telephone, but I think it's more interesting to believe that the residents later had second thoughts and changed the name from Foul Branch.

    My father's father, who I don't think I ever met, moved to Indiana from Tennessee. My father had moved to Washington, D.C. from Indiana before I was born and went to law school at American University, where he met my mother, another law student. Since my father already had three years in engineering school at Purdue, he managed to get a job in the Patent Office in Washington, where he worked until he died.

  • My parents always said that there are two Lady families in the U.S. One family is all doctors and dentists, and the other one is us. Be that as it may, I know that in most large cities I will find two or three Ladys in the phone book, none of them known to me.

    I spent most of my childhood in Takoma Park, Maryland. It's just outside Washington, in Montgomery County, near Silver Spring, MD.

  • Here in Hawaii, when I talk to people on the phone they often ask if I'm Korean (or Chinese), since my name is Lee. I was named Lee after my grandfather (the one I never met). Since he was from Tennessee, it's probably a pretty safe bet that he was named after Robert E. Lee.

  • Lee is actually my middle name. My first name is Everett, which was my father's middle name. I've never cared for the name Everett myself, although the Computing Center here insists on using my full name on the email I send out. If they don't have my full name, then they can't figure out who I am (ah, the wonders of computers!) and then I get strange email from them saying that I don't seem to be a member of the university community, so how do I justify having an account with them?

    Mostly only dentists call me Everett. I've had the same dentist for almost twenty years now, and if I'd known from the beginning that he would turn out to be such a friendly guy, I would have allowed him the privilege of knowing that my friends call me Lee. I think by now he's probably figured it out, because when his receptionist calls me up to remind me of an appointment, my answering machine says, "Hi, this is Lee." But he's known me as Everett so long, I don't think he wants to have to adjust now.

  • Actually, what the answering machine says is,
    ``Hi, this is Lee. Of course I want to talk to you. What could possibly make you think I've been avoiding you? And of course I still love you. And the check is in the mail. And I'll never lie to you. So leave a message, okay?''

    The receptionist ignores all that, though. She just says, "Hello, Dr. Lady, this is Lily [or whoever] from Dr. Tabata's office, calling to remind you that you have an appointment at 11:30 tomorrow."

    She's a nice receptionist, but she's not paid to be witty in her messages.

    [Photo by Edward Brooks]

    And speaking of names, ...