What's in a Name?

He used to be known as Robert E. Lee, which had a certain ring, but now he is called Roberto E. Leon, which has certain advantages -or so it seemed for a while. A retired Navy captain, Leon, 56, works as an engineer for Montgomery County, Md., outside Washington. When Lee took the Hispanic name Leon, he asked the county to grant him preferential status under its affirmative-action program. Leon noted that he had a Spanish grandfather and claimed that he had been considering the switch for years, but he also confessed: "What's wrong with being an opportunist?"

Plenty, decided the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which oversees federal antidiscrimination programs. Last week the EEOC frostily in formed Montgomery County that it would be "an abuse of federal law and regulations" to accept such a name change as a basis for conferring minority status. The county promptly launched an investigation into its whole affirmative-action program, and Roberto E. Leon is still being treated by his employers as though he were named Robert E. Lee.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.