What a fascinating performance-art project! Interestingly, I know my paternal grandmother's birth name, but only because during the last years of my father's life, I did his banking and other personal business, and he used her birth name as a password in certain circumstances.

I have no idea what family name my maternal grandmother was born with.

What a thought!

I sat at her kitchen table one day many decades ago reading the personal letters of her mother, my great grandmother, addressed to the WWI soldier who would become my great grandfather after the war.

But I never asked her mother's name.

Isn't that something?