The person who fought to change her name

If Shakespeare had been around in the 1970s to ask Ellen Cooperperson "What's in a name," he would've gotten an earful from the Nesconset woman who became a trailblazing feminist in a public legal battle to change her last name.

In the mid-1970s, when feminism was taking hold and women began keeping their maiden names, or hyphenating them when they got hitched, Cooperperson was a divorced Babylon mom using her married name, Ellen Donna Cooperman. Back then, says Cooperperson, now 65, she realized, "The word 'man,' as in mankind . . . was a very exclusionary word. I decided that I wanted a name that reflected a sense of human equality."

It didn't happen overnight. She drew inspiration from a book, "Words and Women: New Language in New Times," and determination from a disappointing experience with her father, who had a contracting business in Brooklyn. "I wanted to go into my father's business and help him," she explains, "and he told me that was not a place for girls."

Her turning point came during a bat mitzvah, a Jewish coming-of-age ceremony for girls. "The woman next to me was changing the liturgy as she was reading it," she says, "and the word 'men' became 'people,' 'fathers' became 'parents,' 'sons' became 'children,' and for the first time, the language came alive for me, where I started to feel included in what was being talked about."

She decided to use Cooperperson instead of Cooperman, but without official documents, the Department of Motor Vehicles refused to issue her a license under that name. In 1976, she filed a court application to change her name legally and, as reported in Newsday stories, her request was denied by State Supreme Court Justice John F. Scileppi, now deceased.

A Newsday story on the decision said that Scileppi feared national repercussions if he granted the request. People named Jackson would want to change their name to Jackchild, he stated. In his 15-page decision, he wrote, "The given name Carmen would be converted to 'Carpersons' . . . 'clergyman' might be changed to 'clergyperson.'" Cooperperson recalls that Scileppi "went a little further and said that 'manhole' covers could become 'personhole' covers and 'Manhattan' might become 'Personhattan.'"

Two years later, in 1978, she won on appeal and embarked on a career to help women in business. Nearly four decades after that legal battle, Cooperperson is married for a second time (to Nick Maslovs) and is still in business to improve things for career women. As president of Corporate Performance Consultants Inc. in Hauppauge, Cooperperson does top-level executive coaching to help women achieve their workplace goals.

One of her fans is Patricia Hill Williams of West Babylon, a former Farmingdale State College administrator who served on the advisory board for women's educational programs for President Ronald Reagan, and was also an adviser to Presidents Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.

"From Ellen Cooperman to Cooperperson, that was an awakening for a lot of people," says Williams, who knew Cooperperson in her Farmingdale State College days. Williams says when she serves on boards she asks to be called chairperson instead of chairman, in tribute to Cooperperson's influence. "She led the way in many instances for women in the corporate world," Williams says.

Scattered about Cooperperson's office are images of Wonder Woman, the comic book character who became a favorite symbol of feminists. And in her boardroom are souvenirs from her legal struggle, including court papers and a faded bumper sticker that reads, "LEGALIZE COOPERPERSON." She used to see the stickers on cars passing by. She also has her own entry in the book "Feminists Who Changed America, 1963-1975" (University of Illinois), based on documentaries she made for the women's movement. She also has been discussed in sociology courses across the country. "I feel like a fossil," she jokes.

Cooperperson's efforts to reinvent her last name drew both admiration from feminists and ire from opponents. It also provided a platform to voice her views. In those early years, not all women were persuaded by her strategy. She went on national television to debate a representative of Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum, the right-wing think tank. "Of course they were against it," Cooperperson says of the name change. Opponents believed that "women's independence was going to cause the demise of the American family."

She was even satirized in "The Official Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook" (Villard), which was dedicated to her with mockery: "For the former Donna Ellen Cooperman [sic], who, after a courageous yearlong battle through the New York State Court system, won the right to be known as Donna Ellen Cooperperson." It's unknown whether the authors intentionally flipped her first and middle names, but one of the authors, Christopher Cerf, later apologized for the way he treated her in the book, she says.

While her name change didn't prompt a stampede of people rushing to use more gender-neutral monikers (even her son, Brian Cooperman, kept his last name), Cooperperson -- who says she's become more conservative politically -- believes her campaign to change the way Americans think about women was a success. "The language, of course, has changed and so now you have television anchors who are both women and men, and instead of chairman, we have chairperson or chair, congressperson and congresswoman," she observes.

And helping women find their place is just as important now as it was then. Ideals have to be reinforced with each new generation, she says. "Young women today are fiercely ambitious. They're anxious to succeed," says Cooperperson, sitting in her office, its walls painted pink and lavender. "This generation is much more confident than their mothers were."

However, Cooperperson believes young women are choosing "horrendous" role models, including reality TV "stars" and actresses who are in and out of rehab. Older women need to sponsor younger ones to give them a "moral compass," she says. That's one of the reasons behind her decision to relaunch the Women's Leadership Development Center a nonprofit organization that "prepares women to navigate their way through the inevitable obstacles and roadblocks encountered as they move to higher levels of authority, power and accountability . . ." The center was an outgrowth of the Women's Educational & Counseling Center, founded and run by Cooperperson from 1978 to 1986 at Farmingdale State College.

"We've broken many barriers," Cooperperson says of her 36-year mission to promote equality. "I think we've done a very good job of opening people's minds to the possibility of talent coming in any form."

And she's determined to keep things moving forward, alerting or reminding others about using words that are inclusive, rather than exclusive. Cooperperson still hands out a sheet of recommendations for avoiding sexist language, such as using the terms business leaders instead of businessmen, or letter carriers instead of mailmen.

"This is about legacy -- what we learned and passing it on," she says.