Mixing up names

 

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It’s not just an adult being forgetful or unconscious, in particular a mother:

It’s a proof of love

 

At least that is what a very small article in a magazine accompanying the Sunday paper informs me.

 

Thank goodness: my kids always thought that my calling them by each others names had some sinister meaning, or that I was having memory problems. Non several American psychologists have studied the question and determined that one most easily calls one child or sibling by another’s name when one loves them! And apparently the phenomenon is not limited to any age but can happen at any one of them.

 

I always told them when it upset them that they should be grateful that I wasn’t calling them by one of the cat’s names, but now I can say, it was love, pure love. Thank goodness.

 

Of course there is one small fly in the ointment: these were American psychologists….

 

https://images.app.goo.gl/HQjNBmTAtMvhPcd5A

Names or…

The mangling thereof.

I grew up in an English-speaking western world.

Then I moved to Europe and learned French. Still a Western World and although words and pronunciation entirely different, the basic ideas and particularly names remained legible and pronounceable. Then I met and married a German. Now there’s a logical language: need a new word? Simply put two already-existing ones together and voilà a new word that makes perfect sense for the new situation and doesn’t require (as do both English and French) an entire phrase to explain a new concept. Still as 60% of English and in particular names in the USA are of German origin, recognizable.

Where I first encountered problems was during my years working for the Luthern church here in Geneva. If Asian names were kind of o.k. (I had spent three years in Hawaii as a teenager), African ones were beyond me. It took quite some time before I had even a hope of saying them correctly never mind spelling them. And I am sure that they, too, faced the great divide when it came to some of our names!

Upon marrying I took my husband’s name, a double-barreled one at that. This posed problems as in Switzerland the last half of a hyphenated name is usually the woman’s maiden name. I will not mention the number of times I had to return official documents or credit and bank cards for the correction of my name. Then computerization hit the world.

The first computers were limited to about 7 letters maximum; anything thereafter got truncated so I was often very frustrated when formulas asked for my name, but wouldn’t take it, never mind the hyphen. It was particularly problematic in the travel industry and I basically ended up having a variety of last names depending upon the airline. Truncated I was kind of o.k. with, but one of the very best, that continues to this day, was KLM’s

I am Mme. Sxxxxx Leaf Fen.

Every time I get an email address to me I always wonder if I can’t go be a Leaf in a Fen – that would at least make sense.

What’s in a name?

Much has been written about the significance of our names, both last and first.

Some believe that our names are chosen unconsciously by our parents to reflect some trait. In my case, my first name was an accident. My mother’s favorite sister – the one that she protected the rest of her life when she and said sister were taken across country to live with the cousins when they were not yet 10 and 12 – had a name. Mine was meant to be a derivative of that name, but when the birth certificate came back, it was hers exactly!

(OK my mother’s birth certificate established by her father several months after her birth said that she was a male, but hey before computers things could get mixed up. Of course they still get mixed up but we now have machines to blame instead of people).

I digress.

Last names generations ago reflected in many parts of the world the person’s occupation.

Not a clue what my maiden name was supposed to represent although an internet search today shows that not only were and are there famous people holding that name, but there is also a small cove on one of the Orkney Islands (Scotland) that bears that name as well as a crater on the moon! OK when my parents first went to England way back in the 70s my father was sure that he could turn up some relatives by checking the phone book: at that point there were “only” some 20 pages in the London telephone book bearing that last name! According to Wikipedia it is a lowland Scottish personal name derived from “Adam”.

So a couple of hours later – once I start researching something I get lost online.

Then there is my husband’s last name. The original name was indeed derived from the familial occupation – smithies – they are easier to research as 1) of catholic persuasion, 2) with the exception of my husband and one of his cousins they have remained within a 30-mile radius of Cologne/Bonn in Germany. Still, unless one knows, one wouldn’t realize that the 4 children descended from Schmitz all ended up legally with different last names. The older son kept the simple Schmitz; the daughter married and changed to her husband’s name; my husband legally added his mother’s maiden name as it had died out and his younger brother did the same with the grandmother’s maiden name. Talk about complicated for ongoing genealogical research in 100 years!

Anyway this name often gets totally deformed as we live in a French-speaking area. What started this whole train of thought and the blog is one of the funnier mis-writings of my name. For KLM I am Mme. Schmitz Leaf Fen. I could simply unsubscribe as I haven’t taken a plane all year last year, but it makes me laugh every time I see it so we’ll wait awhile – and I certainly won’t be correcting it any time soon. I mean I love leaves and the thought that I could belong to a “fen” pleases me.

So perhaps my original point – that a name represents, even if subconsciously, a value of the person – is not too far wrong in my case!