Well, I’ve had a question stuck in my head for quite some time now. It’s about what to call myself or let you call me.

What we call ourselves and each other really matters. There are hundreds of books of suggested names for children and even some for pets. Today we are seeing a virtual storm of made-up names or made-up spellings…just look at the Births column of any newspaper. When we got married, we had to make a choice of what to call our in-laws. It was a decision often similar to picking your way through a field of land mines.

When my son hit puberty, he started calling my husband and me “You guys.” Through the years, he tried out my first name for a while in his twenties and has now settled on “Mom,” although when he’s teasing he says, “Mommy.” When he has a bad cold and sits around his house whining, his wife always says, “I think you should go over to your mommy’s house.”

For many years in the business world, I fought the battle of being called a “girl.” You know,

“Have your girl call my girl and make an appointment.” Which got changed to “Have your people call my people,” which isn’t much better if you are the “people” referred to. I retaliated by calling formidable senior male executives “boys,” which only got me a reputation as a troublemaker. Of course, women today call each other “girlfriends” the way members of ethnic groups call each other names outsiders wouldn’t dare to use.

Now that I’m an older person (which is what I call myself to telephone survey callers) my pressing question is, what do we call old women, especially cranky old women? Which is what I am when the telephone survey caller interrupts my cocktail hour. I don’t like crone and biddy and old gal. I have a friend who even squirms when she hears women called ladies. “I’m not royalty,” she says, “not even close.” And she’s pretty cranky about it.

We have much better names for crabby older men, like geezers and coots and one I won’t mention here. I suppose you could call a person of either sex crotchety. But it’s not a name, it’s a description. And curmudgeon (although the dictionary says it applies to a person) just somehow doesn’t seem to apply to a woman.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what we older folk are called, as the word “senior” falls out of favor along with its mate “retirement.” Many organizations across the country have dropped the word “retirement” from their names, following a trend started because so many people 55+ don’t want to join groups bearing the word. In reality many are still employed full-time, part-time, or busy with volunteer or self-improvement projects. And as they press relentlessly forward while trying to hold back aging, they don’t want to be reminded of the passage of time or the end of their working years. For example, ALR (Academy for Learning In Retirement) here in Saratoga Springs recently changed its name to A.L.L. (Academy for Lifelong Learning).

So names matter, as Shakespeare and Gertrude Stein certainly informed us. They say who we are and what we do and how we’d like to be viewed. That’s why you’ll notice a new name heading our column today: We hope you like it. We hope it describes us. We hope we can live up to it.

(And if you think of a good name for a cranky old woman, let us know…)