Names have power, it’s why Hyacinth kicked the Bucket
MY wife recommended to our daughter the latest French drama we had been watching on television.
“In French?” she said. “With subtitles? How very cultured.” Pardon?
Since Scandi Noir broke onto our screens, with the popularity of The Bridge and The Killing, BBC2, Channel 4, All4 and Netflix have presented a variety of foreign language programmes, some excellent, some naff.
On the positive side, you get to discover new actors, new locations, new police procedurals and, with subtitles, you don’t have to struggle to hear the dialogue.
Years ago, you only used to get
WHAT’S name? It establishes who you are, sometimes where you are from, can denote aristocracy or infamy, and caused Mrs Bucket to pretentiously claim her name was pronounced Bouquet.
Names can be simple and anonymous like Smith, strange like mine, which caused schoolmates to call me Killer. They can suggest a class divide, like Rees-Mogg, which sounds like a Welshman who is fond of cats.
Some people don’t like their surnames because they can be seen as bawdy, funny, daft or difficult. My mother would always use the name Taylor if she ordered anything in a shop in Cheshire where I grew up. She said it was because it was easier to spell than Kilcommons but I have a sneaking feeling she didn’t want to be mistaken for an Irish itinerant.
People have memorials erected in their names which can, with historical perspective, seem unfortunate. There have been calls to remove the statues of a 17th century slave trader in Bristol and white supremacist Cecil Rhodes at Oxford University.
In America, 30 statues and memorials of the Confederacy have been moved to avoid being used as rallying points for extremists. The tragedy of the young woman killed in Charlottesville two years ago happened when Klansmen, neo-Nazis
in a
family sub-titled films in art house cinemas. The first I saw was And God Created Woman, although I confess I went to see Brigitte Bardot rather than for intellectual reasons. Ever since, sub-titled movies have held a niche interest. I am a fan of Jean Gabin, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Catherine Deneuve, Alain Delon and Jeanne Moreau.
And yes, I know they are all French.
It always seemed unfair they were restricted to small out of the way cinemas for decades, even though Brits had been reading sub-titles since silent film. At least these days, the best of foreign is now available in our own homes. and white racist groups rallied to support the retention of a statue of Robert E Lee. They carried swastikas, confederate flags and semi automatic rifles.
Swastikas are banned in Germany, as are any memorials to the Nazi Party or Hitler. One of Adolf ’s lasting legacies was making Hitler, as a name, the most reviled.
Except in Circleville, Ohio, a small town famous for its annual pumpkin festival, and home of generations of venerated Hitlers whose name is remembered on street signs, the Martha Hitler Park, Hitler Pond and Hitler Ludwig Cemetery.
George Hitler (b 1763) and his wife Susannah Gay were among the first settlers of the town in 1799. Among their off-spring were Abraham Hitler, George Washington Hitler, Nelson Hitler and Gay Hitler, who was the town dentist.
They had absolutely no connection with Adolf or his genealogy. Adolf ’s father Alois was illegitimate and born Shicklgruber. He took his step-father’s name which was Hiedler, which was registered by an official as Hitler, possibly in error, which would make Adolf Hitler an administrative mistake.
Only in Circleville is the name accepted and revered because of the philanthropic contributions of a family who settled there more than 200 years ago. Film-maker Matt Ogens made a documentary about them called Meet the Hitlers in 2014.
“I have a friend from college who married a guy by the last name of Hitler,” Ogens said. “I would get Christmas cards saying, ‘Happy Holidays from the Hitlers!’ and there was something quirky about it. It got me thinking what it must be like to take on that name or to be born with that name.”
After Charlottesville, a Circleville resident campaigned to have the names of these totally innocent Hitlers removed from civic sight. She failed. But did she have a point? And would the name have had the same impact if Adolf had been called Muller, Schmidt or Schneider, which are among the most common German surnames? Or Taylor, the name my mother preferred to her own?
Heil Taylor! doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, does it?
I can understand why those Hitlers in Ohio kept their name through family pride, but I would have changed it for the sake of their children growing up in a post-war world where the atrocities of the Nazis were still fresh in the mind.
Have you had a problem with a name? Have you changed Bucket to Bouquet?