Lost in transit

What's in a Name ?

I'm always glad when Thursdays roll around, for once I have picked Meggie up from her nursery school in the next village the more tiresome parts of my week are over and it seems that the weekend has already begun.

I don't have to walk to the next village again until Monday.

We had actually wanted to name Meggie 'Maggie', but

after thinking it through, decided that 'Maggie' would call to mind the soup seasoning Maggi, and could already foresee a miserable future for our daughter, filled with taunting by her peers , ahead.

And so we settled upon the name 'Megan'. But wait , there is a village not too far away from ours called 'Megen', so to avoid naming our daughter the Dutch equivalent of ' Beloit', we searched through the baby-names books on our shelves and came up with the alternative spelling of 'Meaghan'.

And so that is our daughter Meaghan, Meggie to us.

When we first realized that we were going to be parents, we also realized that we couldn't just put our heads together and come up with names we liked. No, we had to consider the fact that Han's parents don't speak English and my parents don't speak Dutch.

Because there are so many programs in English on the TV here, using subtitles instead of being dubbed- in, Han's parents had heard many English names, become familiar with them. In fact, my name , 'Sue', sounded very strange to Dutch ears until I added ' Like in Sue Ellen, from Dallas' . But still, any name with a 'th' in it was out, as well as any names which actually meant something in Dutch, for example, 'Morgan' ( tomorrow).

We briefly considered Dutch names, but many that I thought sounded nice to the American ear were tossed aside by Han : no, that's what the bubble-headed receptionist is always named, no, then they'll call him 'Bas', and I hate that name .

The name 'Kees' flew out the window as I imagined my brother staring at me in disbelief as he asked " Case ? You named your kid 'Case', like in a case of beer ? ". Frisian names followed, as many sound either like a sneeze ( Sieske) or an esoteric herbal remedy ( Fenne, Wieke ) to the American ear.

We finally settled upon simple English names : Sally, Mike and Meggie.

And did our careful planning work ? Well, for Mike it did. It seems that everyone can pronounce his name correctly. But the girls go through the Dutch part of their lives answering to 'Sellie' and 'May-gen'.

Posted by at April 4, 2003 07:49 AM