What's In A Name?
Looking back, my first mistake was giving them my full name. I’d only been living in Germany for a few days when I went with my wife to set up a bank account. Naturally this required reams of paperwork, which at the time I blamed on the admin obsessed Germans, but in retrospect is probably the normal process for most banks across the globe. Once I finished scribbling, I handed the documents over to my wife and waited like a school child for the corrections. There was only one. “You haven’t put your name in the box” she said handing them back. Feeling rather embarrassed that I had missed the most obvious part of the form, I looked over it. Right at the top I could see my name in my distinctive scrawl. “What you talking about!? It’s right there!” I snorted incredulously and pointed at the two boxes with “Nic” and “Houghton”. “No, you need to put your full name” my wife replied. I picked up the pen and added “icholas” to the box marked Vornamen and handed it back for final approval. “NO!” she said sternly “you must include your middle name too”. And so began one of the many delightful intercultural arguments couples from different countries often have. Despite my objections that she was being overly picky, she argued that this is what the bank would demand. It was my legal name, this was a legal document and I was obligated to include my full name. Even when I showed her my British bank card emblazoned with “Nic Houghton” to prove my point that it didn’t matter, she persisted. Eventually I caved, and that ladies and gentlemen is why every communication from the bank to me begins “Sehr geehrter Herr Nicholas Edward Houghton”.
It’s not that I dislike my name, but ever since I was child I’ve been “Nic”. I chose it after a family holiday to the Isle of Wight, where my brother and I spent hours trying to get the high-score on various arcade machines. I’m sure things have changed, but back in the early 90s, arcade cabinets would only allow players to put in three letter names. I liked that my name could be easily shortened to fit this arbitrary demand while my brother could only fit in his initials. It made me feel special in a way the youngest child in a family always strives for. Ever since I’ve gone by this simplified name. Not anymore though. Despite my assumption that my wife was being pedantic, I’ve actually been told off for not using my full name by government officials and in one quite distressing moment, almost prevented from getting on a Lufthansa flight because I used “Nic” which didn’t match my passport.
It seems trite to point out that Germans can be overly particular about details, but at least in the case of names, it’s a stereotype that rings true. There’s even a bizarre law concerning last names that means that when a married couple gets married, they either change their last names to match each other or one partner can keep their last name, while the other can add a hyphenated combination of their original last name and their partners last name. By law, they can’t both have hyphenated names, that would be madness! Moreover, should the happy couple have a child, their offspring can only take on one of the names and not the hyphenated version. Why? I have no idea, but Germanys gotta German I suppose.
However, things might be changing. The new coalition government is preparing to make adjustments to the law that will see some of the more egregious elements removed to allow families to have the same name. Potentially, it could also allow people to more easily change their first and last names as they can in the UK. In addition, it will also enable individual from cultures with different naming conventions, such as those from the Slavic speaking world, to have the names that they prefer. Of course, the CDU opposes this rather minor alteration because someone has to stand up for meaningless laws that benefit absolutely no one.
This may be good news for some, but it doesn’t really help my current situation. I don’t plan on changing my name. I quite like my name, but I also like that I can choose how people refer to me at any given time. It also doesn’t change the fact that in many situations, especially with official documents, there isn’t an input field that allows me to choose how people should refer to me. I think that would be quite useful, especially for those people who choose to identify themselves differently from the name they were born with, yet also wish to keep the name they were born with. For example, I recently changed jobs and part of that process required, you guessed it, loads of paperwork. Since I’m now a good German, I dutifully filled in the forms with my full name and thought nothing of it until I went into the office for the first time and was greeted by a sign on my office door declaring in bold type “NICHOLAS EDWARD HOUGHTON”. I shrugged this off until I was introduced to my colleagues as “Nicholas Edward”, which I think we can all agree makes me sound like a tremendously pretentious bellend.
In fairness, I’ve spent my entire life correcting people’s random pronunciation of my last name, so this isn’t the worst thing. In fact in some instances it can actually be quite useful. In all my introductory lectures this semester I asked students to use my first name, specifically “Nic” and corrected students when they called me “Mr Houghton” or “Nicholas”. Now, whenever I receive an email from a student that begins “Dear Nicholas” or “Dear Mr. Houghton” they inadvertently out themselves as having never actually attended any of my lectures. I suppose next semester I could set about changing my name, then again, I don’t think I can face the paperwork.
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