On: Words

“What’s in a name?”, Juliet asks herself in exasperation as she waxes lyrical about a cute guy she met six hours earlier at a house party, then goes on to marry 12 hours later. Ah, young love.

Not much, Juliet concludes. Just as a rose would retain its sweet perfume if it was called, say, a thorny-stabby-prick-flower, so would her beloved retain his perfection even if he wasn’t the son of the rival mob boss. Ah, young love.

So, is Juliet right? Do words really matter? On the one hand, I think she has a point. Language is a signifier, an essential signpost, of what is a more deeply-rooted reality: change the name, the nature still remains. But the funny thing about language is that it is more than merely a set of sounds or symbols that we recognise as description. It is the chicken to the egg of existence. Without language, both verbal and non-verbal, the thing described ceases to be.

Okay, I am, perhaps, getting carried away.

I am known by many words (at times, no doubt, by some unpublishable). I am ‘Laura’, the name my mother bestowed upon the squirming, fleshy potato she had just birthed. She looked at this strange little human in her arms and believed the best descriptor of her was ‘victory’. The children in my care call me variations on ‘Dr MacKenzie’ (Doc Mac, Doc (“what’s up, Doc?” an unoriginal favourite)) but never ‘Miss’. To be known as ‘Dr’ is to be known by an academic achievement of which I am proud.

Do I cease to exist if these names by which I am known were different? If I was called ‘Sue’, I would still have been a wriggling egg-head of a baby. If the children call me ‘Miss’, it doesn’t change the fact I have a PhD. But names matter. For me, they are part of my identity.

When I was appointed to take charge of a boys’ boarding house at Oundle School in 2022, the Head asked me what I would like my title to be. That is a question none of my colleagues had been asked before because all the Housemasters are in charge of boys’ houses, and the Housemistresses in charge of the girls’. Here was I, an anomaly. I chose to be known as a Housemaster. (As an aside, the Head is also a woman and her title is ‘Head’. Not ‘Headmaster’, not ‘Headmistress’. I like that: simple, clear and without any unnecessary gendered waffle. Unfortunately, I couldn’t just be known as ‘House’.)

The response to my choice of title was really rather interesting. If anything, I would say there were so many eyebrows raised at my identification as a Housemaster that people seemed to forget the big news: a woman had been placed in charge of a boys’ house. I received no less than three comments about my having been “mis-gendered”. (Okay, so maybe there were six eyebrows raised. But still.)

It got me thinking about this job title, though. For me, it was a no-brainer. I was in charge of this boarding house: I was the master of it. I believe we should all be known as Housemasters: we are skilled in pastoral care and we take charge of the children placed under that care. The word itself is not a gendered noun. In fact, its association with maleness seems rather old-fashioned to me. I do not claim any linguistic mastery (see what I did there?), but I understand the connotations of the masculine with the word ‘master’ come from historical realities of male ownership of servants, or male dominance in organisations. In more modern usage, the word denotes skill and proficiency.

Perhaps, along with changing our view of the maleness of the word, we also need to revise our understanding of the role of the Housemaster. Yes, I am in charge of the boarding house: I make decisions, I set expectations, and I will be held to account for what happens here. But our view of the Housemaster should not end with him (her) being in charge. The Housemaster should also be proficient and skilled in the care of young people. The Housemaster should have acquired the relevant knowledge to inform his (her) pastoral approach.

I was appointed to this position because I was deemed to have those skills. I am a Housemaster.

There is not a consensus on the terminology we should use for the head of a house across British boarding schools. Some schools prefer ‘House Parent’, others use the abbreviation ‘HM’. Oundle uses, informally, ‘Hsm’ which I like for its lack of gendered identification, even if I think it sounds like a sneeze.

But I choose to be a Housemaster. Even if people assume that Dr L C O MacKenzie is a man. After all, I have a Master’s degree, not a Mistress’s degree.

Touché.