Uncooperative

Ellen Cooperman, 30, is an ardent feminist. She is a member of the National Organization for Women and runs her own business, producing feminist films in Babylon, a Long Island town 37 miles east of Personhattan. Personhattan? Well, if Ellen had her way ...

Three years ago Cooperman decided that she could no longer tolerate the word man in her surname because of its sexist connotations. So she began using the name Cooperperson in her business and private life, explaining that it served as "a consciousness raiser." Soon friends were calling Ellen, who is divorced, and her child Brian (a nine-year-old male person) the Cooperpeople. But when her bank and credit-card companies steadfastly refused to list her as Cooperperson because it was not her legal name, she went to court to legitimize her name change. Her petition stated that Cooperperson "more properly reflects her sense of human equality than does the surname Cooperman."

But New York State Supreme Court Judge John Scileppi has now denied her application because it would "demean the women's movement and expose it to unjustified ridicule" and would "have serious and undesirable repercussions, perhaps throughout the entire country." The precedent, he wrote, might well lead not only to such "inane" name changes as Manning to Peopling and Carmen to Carpersons, but even to words like mankind becoming personkind. Says Cooperman, who plans to appeal: "I'm all for that."

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