Many years ago, when I attended a rather preppy law school, there was a charming young lady with an undecipherable and equally unpronounceable surname.
It seemed to consisted of the letter “E” followed by a dozen or so consonants.
To save ourselves time and possibly a sprained tongue, as well as to uphold the preppy tradition of giving nicknames to our friends, we bestowed upon her the sobriquet ‘Eye Chart’… because that is what we were reminded of whenever we saw or tried to say her name.
(Yeah, that’s pretty much how we imagined it)
You see, up until that point, the most complicated names we had to deal with were either Italian [1] or some of the more polysyllabic German or Jewish names. The key advantage with those names is, I believe, that English has a linguistic connection to German, Yiddish (English and Yiddish are basically Germanic in form and structure) and also many Romance languages (either directly from Latin or, more commonly, via Old French). [2]
As far as we could tell, English bore no relation to whatever nation or culture conjured up our dear friend’s moniker. We were convinced it was some advanced and sadistic form of Czecho-Slovak-Serbo-Croat-Albano-Bulgarian-Roma-Gypsy child abuse. Letters which had no business being together were lined up in a seemingly unending stream… CSZCHMGWXBDTSKVFJLPR… etc. I mean, it just went on and on. It was horrible. But she was so charming and lovely and sweet, we were prepared to overlook difficulties in nomenclature. So… Eye Chart she was dubbed. Eye Chart she remained.
I encountered a similar situation several years later when I represented a young Tamil boy from the Jaffna Penninsula in Sri Lanka. My interpreter was a most excellent gentleman. He and I shared a love for the works of P.G. Wodehouse. An extremely witty and highly entertaining man, he tickled me to death every time he’d interrupt and correct the government-appointed interpreter during proceedings. I think the Refugee Tribunal granted the application and admitted my young client into Canada just to avoid the incessant bickering between the interpreters!
His surname, if I have it correctly, was Saravanalanganingham. I’ve heard of Sri Lankan surnames that are even longer.
Names like ‘Warnakulasuriya Patabendige Ushantha Joseph Chaminda Vaas’ and ‘Hewapathirana’ge Nimal Devendra Karunaratne’.
Good Lord. Even Spanish names don’t come close to that! Honestly. Eye Chart’s handle would be a snap compared to names like that! There should be a mandatory warning label for people with asthma before they attempt to read these out. Our western mouths can only handle so much! Ten letters, tops! [3]
Which is why I am imploring our federal members of parliament to pass a “Sanity in Surnames Act” or some other type of legislation.
We must take a firm stance on this issue, people! Multicultural mollycoddling will not save us. How many more innocent Canadian mangia cakes must be rushed to the hospital with bruised lips, their tongues hopelessly tied in knots? The time to act is now!
(If the Name Don’t Fit… You Must Change It!)
Stop the Madness! Stop the Vowelless Horror!
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[1] The nice thing about most Italian names is that, regardless of length, they are pronounced pretty much the way they are spelled and have an acceptable CTV (consonant-to-vowel) ratio.
[2] Later on, Polish and Ukrainian names added to the mix. We invariably called them either Stosh or Nick.
[3] Luckily, my own surname comes in under the wire at 9 letters, with an acceptable 6-3 CTV ratio.
[4] Some English words, like ‘rhythm’, technically have no vowels but in such cases, the letter “Y” represents a vowel sound so, for the purposes of this essay, we will treat “Y” as a vowel substitute or quasi-vowel.
