Mr. Watanabe’s columns are always thought-provoking and entertaining. His latest one—about names– especially interested me because in the early 70s, a recent immigrant to Canada, I was often asked during interviews to change my first name to an English one.
I was thinking at the time about changing my name to one I really liked, like Shawn, but, much as I wasn’t overly fond of my first name, I figured that anyone that had a prejudice against foreign names wasn’t worth working for.
Years later a friend and colleague started to call me J-L and that solved the problem. I managed to have J-L on my work badge and even on credit cards and cheques. I have found that having a foreign name is a quick way to gauge people. Some can’t be bothered to pronounce it correctly. Others, that don’t even speak the official language of my country (my mother tongue is a native regional language) know at once how to pronounce my name.
Mr. Watanabe mentions his surprise at the serious names given to Italian children…like Cesare…
I was born in what is now South-Western France. For most of its history, the native language was Gascon, one of several dialects of a language called Occitan, spoken in most of the Southern half of France (Basque and Catalan are two other languages of southern France).
French wasn’t spoken by the majority of French people until the very late 19th century, early 20th century.
We speak French with a strong Gascon accent and use many words that are either Gascon or French translations of Gascon words that true French people do not understand. Quite a few other regions of France have their own native language and regional French (French itself has dialects, some quite different from standard French).
While most people in France understand and read standard French, many do not speak it. It sounds strange but it is not. It is always easier to understand and read a foreign language than to speak it.
Occitan doesn’t look like Italian but is much closer to it than to French and, of course, a large chunk of Southern France was under Roman rule and culture centuries before it spread northwards. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that in my youth older people had first names that were French translation of Roman names, other of Greek names.
Jules, Cesar, Antonin, Marius, Alban etc. were quite common names for men.
Interestingly, until the 1970s or so, French parents weren’t allowed to give to their children first names from regional languages (Breton, Basque, Alsatian, Corsican, Occitan etc. ) however foreign names were A1 OK….
Doesn’t that reminds you of the First Nations in Canada and also of immigrants that had to whitewash their names?
In my birth town I knew children my age that were named Marlene, Patricia, James, Archibald, Ivanhoe…..(the last two born in the well-known Johnston family, one of the old “aristocrats of the cork” families, i.e. wine growers and wholesalers that came to Bordeaux in the 18th century).
J-L Brussac, Coquitlam
J-L stands for Jean-Louis…..Joan-Loïs in Gascon…(both men’s names, Joan pronounced Ro-an, Loïs Lo-is of course)