...or the hardships of having a Hungarian name as an expat
Having lived now for more than 2 years in the Netherlands, I feel like I have dealt well with to the struggles of living abroad. I can proudly say that I have pretty much acclimated to the necessary degree to living in the Netherlands: I have an Albert Heijn bonus card, I sometimes eat bitterballen, and I am even able to do my tax declaration in Dutch.
However, there is one thing that until this day causes me a headache, and seems impossible to solve. Despite all of the above listed fabulous achievements, I still do not know how to introduce myself.
Let's see why this is such a difficult task.
I come from Hungary, and have a not extremely common, but quite typical Hungarian name, which is Borbála. It's the Hungarian version of the internationally known name, Barbara.
It is important to mention though that literally no-one calls me by my full first name. Everyone knows me as Bori - the nickname that I believe all Borbálas of Hungary prefer over their full name. Even famous singers and protagonists of children's books wear this name, that's how much it is common to use it:
At the same time, introducing yourself with your nickname might seem strange and unprofessional in cultures where they don't know the concept. So I was somewhat torn in how to introduce myself at work, outside work, or in general when meeting non-Hungarians - resulting in somewhat of an identity crisis.
I have been somewhat fascinated by this newly found struggle, as I have never encountered it before and would have never thought it to be such a problem.
I believe the difficulty about understanding/decoding/reproducing/remembering both versions of my name for foreigners come on several different layers, which I have tried to sum up in the following table. For each section I gave a score ranging from 1-5, to signify the level of difficulty I believe foreigners have.
| Problem-category |
Borbála |
Level of difficulty |
| 1. Pronoun-ciation |
It has 3 different vowels in it, pronounced as: /ˈborbaːlɒ/ The last one, the 'a' does not seem to exist in other languages. |
♦♦♦♦ |
| 2 Writing |
Due to the accented letter, I usually just use it as Borbala, which does not seem that difficult to me, but I have seen way to many typos from foreigners - examples will be listed later on in the article. |
♦♦♦♦ |
| 3. Emphasis |
In Hungarian, the stress is generally always on the first syllable of a word. (one of the reasons for that is probably the next point:) |
♦♦♦♦ |
|
4. Context |
If you are not Hungarian, and have not already met a Hungarian person called Borbála, chances are very slim that you would have the slightest idea that this is a Hungarian name. Thus, people try to guess and put it in a bucket they already know: the most frequent guess so far is that it is Spanish, which also results in pronouncing it Spanish and stressing the second syllable. |
♦♦♦♦ |
|
5. Gender |
As mentioned above, if you are not Hungarian, and have not |
♦♦♦♦ |
| Total difficulty score: | 20 |
So, having reached a stunning 20 out of the maximal 25, I believe we can conclude, that this is not the best name to establish a life as an expat.
So let's see how my nickname does on the same topics:
| Problem-category |
Bori |
Level of difficulty |
| 1. Pronounciation |
The pronouncation is not that hard. I am not expecting US English speakers to do the rolling 'r', but the rest of the sounds is generally clear. |
♦♦ |
| 2. Writing |
Problematic, as people are more used to names that end with a 'y' due to English. Thus, 'Bory' is a common mis-spelling, which to me just looks really wrong. |
♦♦♦ |
| 3. Emphasis |
Since it's a 2 syllable word, it's quite ok for people to stress it on the first syllable |
♦ |
| 4. Context |
Same as for Borbála, but even worse, because the only context in which people usually here this letter combination is the word 'boring' and the slavic name 'Boris'. |
♦♦♦♦♦ |
| 5. Gender |
Just like with the full version, if you are not Hungarian, and have not already met a Hungarian female person called Borbála, who prefers to be called Bori, chances are very slim that you would have the slightest idea that this is a female name, let alone a Hungarian one. Probably because this name is so incredibly close to the slavic 'Boris' male name, people generally interpret this is a male name. |
♦♦♦♦♦ |
|
Total difficulty score: |
16 |
As you can see, it's almost a tie: Bori beats Borbála with 3 difficultiness levels. Considering the fact that my preference is 'Bori', my policy ended up being the following: usually I start out by saying my full first name, and then add that I prefer to be called Bori. As you can imagine, this does not make the process of introducing myself any easier...
Let's see some real life examples of what inspired me to write this article.
(Disclaimer: these are real example cases of people who have misspelled/misinterpreted/abused my name. Please do not feel ashamed if you recognize to be the participant of one of the examples, I do not consider any of these incidents offensive. On the contrary, it inspired me to write this article, and hopefully cause amusement to readers.)
1. Mystical typos
Just to be clear, I do not expect anyone to be able to spell my name correctly after hearing it. However, I cannot for the love of god figure out, how someone can misspell my name in an email reply, where before I have put my name properly in the signature. How did I become Barbolada?
I have also been addressed as Barbogola, Borbola, Borbla, etc. As if people go like 'oh that's an easy one, I don't need to copy+paste that'. Well guess what, yes you do, you moron.
2. New nicknames
In my previous company, the guys just gave up and started calling me B. Like the letter B.
Honestly, I like nicknames, because they are usually more personal than your formal name, but when the name is given only because your name is too complicated.. that has never happened to me before.
3. The wrong Bori
One of my favorites incidents was the below email thread, where it was accidentally a colleague called 'Borislav' who was autocompleted from the mail client first, and the mail got forwarded to me only after that:
4. Mistaken to be a guy
On my birthday, I sent an email around in the office that I have brought in some sweets. A colleague popped by and was asking where the birthday-boy sits. When I said it was me, I didn't know who felt more embarrased ::)
Yeah, so these are pretty much the highlights of my name-struggle in the Netherlands. Throughout, I also realized how much my name is my identity, and how weird of a feeling it is, having to think about how to construct my identity based on how I can ease the process of people calling my name and knowing who I am..
Conclusion - tips and tricks for future expat kids to survive
So, to conclude, I summarized some advice for future parents of expat kids: as the name of a person is going to be the first point of contact in any type of communication, the name of children who are going to be in international an environments should be chosen wisely and adhere to the following:
- constitues of letters of the English alphabet
- translate Cyrillic and other alphabets into an English version
- not even accents and dots
- is pronouncable at least for people who speak Englishis not long, i.e. 2-3 syllables long
- at least 1 vowel and at least 1 consonant
- can be related to, i.e. has equivalents in other languages
- is catchy, or has a catchy nickname to it
...and so on. These are the most important I could think of that will avoid this refraing becoming your child's anthem:
And for all my expat friends and colleauges, please keep trying to repeat:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Borb%C3%A1la
:)
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A hozzászólások a vonatkozó jogszabályok értelmében felhasználói tartalomnak minősülnek, értük a szolgáltatás technikai üzemeltetője semmilyen felelősséget nem vállal, azokat nem ellenőrzi. Kifogás esetén forduljon a blog szerkesztőjéhez. Részletek a Felhasználási feltételekben és az adatvédelmi tájékoztatóban.
kardigan 2013.11.11. 08:52:59
borsincka 2013.11.11. 13:29:14