Alas, the arbitrary names that are inflicted on us! It reminds me of a news story. To help you understand the story, a little context first: a lot of Chinese nationalists still hate Japan for the Nanjing Massacre, and for Chinese names, the surname is written first (for example, Xi Jinping, Xi is his surname). Now, the story went that a man got a newborn son and he’d need to name him. This man had a rare surname: ‘操’. This character has multiple meanings and all of them are innocuous, except one: ‘fuck’. Apparently, this man was a true patriot because he named his boy ‘日本’, which means ‘Japan’. Yup, you’ve got it: the boy’s name was ‘Fuck Japan’.
I wonder, though, if the kid would grow up hating the foreign country or his own father.
My maternal grandfather's name was Rafael (or maybe Raphael?) but everybody called him Rifel. My mother wanted call me Rafael after him but my father, who was English (my mother was a Russian Jew), insisted I be named after his father, some thing I've always regretted. Talking of names, my mother was named after the Russian Bolshevik, Vera Zazulich, who went into exile to Zurich with Lenin. The British, who couldn't understand my granma's thick Yiddisher accent named her Lily instead.
Alas, the arbitrary names that are inflicted on us! It reminds me of a news story. To help you understand the story, a little context first: a lot of Chinese nationalists still hate Japan for the Nanjing Massacre, and for Chinese names, the surname is written first (for example, Xi Jinping, Xi is his surname). Now, the story went that a man got a newborn son and he’d need to name him. This man had a rare surname: ‘操’. This character has multiple meanings and all of them are innocuous, except one: ‘fuck’. Apparently, this man was a true patriot because he named his boy ‘日本’, which means ‘Japan’. Yup, you’ve got it: the boy’s name was ‘Fuck Japan’.
I wonder, though, if the kid would grow up hating the foreign country or his own father.
I love the name Portia - and it still relates to a quick witted and charming woman.
Laura Carmichael is stunning here. I liked her in Downton Abbey, but this is something else !!
Miss Piggy would not be pleased to know that her name in Italian equates to a whore!
My maternal grandfather's name was Rafael (or maybe Raphael?) but everybody called him Rifel. My mother wanted call me Rafael after him but my father, who was English (my mother was a Russian Jew), insisted I be named after his father, some thing I've always regretted. Talking of names, my mother was named after the Russian Bolshevik, Vera Zazulich, who went into exile to Zurich with Lenin. The British, who couldn't understand my granma's thick Yiddisher accent named her Lily instead.